product evolution Archives | ProdPad

Integrate, integrate, and integrate? Building Products for a Connected World

Janna Bastow — Tue, 26 Aug 2014 13:30:00 +0000

One of the most hotly discussed topics for the future of products is the increasing connectivity of devices, also known as the ‘Internet of Things’. According to Accenture’s Technology Vision 2014 report, by 2020 over 30 billion devices are predicted to be connected to the internet. By 2017, more than 50% of analytics implementations will make use of event data streams generated from instrumented machines, applications, and/or individuals. And global IP traffic is expected to nearly double between 2013 and 2016, while broadband is expected to speed up more than twofold.

But what does all of this mean for the products we’re building?

Well again, according to Accenture, “Consumers become better informed and better equipped to influence the ways they experience everything around them. And businesses get real-time connections to the physical world that allow machines as well as employees to act and react faster—and more intelligently”.

When you collect a load of data, fire it back to your users, and allow them to take actions on that data, from anywhere, you can make their lives better.

At least that’s the possibility.

In fact building connected products presents us with much broader product challenges than the technicalities of software integrations. An astute product manager will probably think about integrations, an API or multiple device capability when making decisions about development infrastructures. But what about the people actually using your connected products? Have you considered how they should navigate data across different locations seamlessly? Do you have consistency and continuity in your design and data? What about how you communicate with users when something goes wrong and any one device loses connectivity? Building integrated products requires a 360 degree perspective of the user experience, which becomes much more intricate as you expand interactivity across systems and devices.

And perhaps most importantly, building more connected products should never come at the expense of good user experience. If people don’t have a need or desire to use your products, they just won’t work. In a recent ProductTank talk, focused on the Internet of Things, Alex Jones summarized the risks of the integration and connectivity trend quite succinctly; “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you have to.”

Whether building products for the workplace, where our focus is on integration between systems and streamlining business processes, or for consumers, where the focus is on connectivity wherever we happen to be, the ultimate goal is the same. Are your integrations and your mobile versions helping your users to make better, faster decisions? Whether you look at a business app like Salesforce, promising a full connected view of the customer; or consumer app like Waze, allowing drivers to share real-time information on traffic disruptions; when it’s done well better connectivity is about enabling users to make use of data to do things they couldn’t do before.

So although we’re facing a very different technical landscape moving forward, the ultimate message for product managers looking to build products in a connected world is not all that different to what we usually say. Yes, you should be conscious of changes in consumer and business relationships with technology to be sure you’re always innovating new solutions, but never build things your users don’t want just because it’s technically possible.

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Product Planning with Product Marketing Teams

Janna Bastow — Fri, 27 Jun 2014 13:36:00 +0000

Product Management sits at the intersection of customer, technology and business. The product manager’s role is a continual balancing act between each of these areas, which means involving the right people, in the right ways, at the right times. In this post, we take you through how to involve marketing in product planning from idea to launch, using good processes and ProdPad tools.

Your marketing team holds important customer insight that can be invaluable in understanding both particular product needs and the big picture of your target users. Alongside the specific prospect feedback you collect from your sales team, your marketers – specifically any colleagues focused on customer or product marketing – have additional information to share from competitive research to customer interviews.

There are a number of ways in which ProdPad allows them to do so easily – from adding customer feedback and new ideas, to commenting on existing suggestions and even directly on user persona pages. Product Managers can call in marketing opinion at any time using @mentions, and marketers can follow ideas of interest to stay involved in their development.

Support the business case

Once you’ve found a promising idea, there’s still more work to do before you can start to prioritize. Every idea canvas should have a validated business case to help you evaluate whether the new product or change will merit the resources required. For certain product developments, marketing will be able to help form commercial objectives, such as awareness or new registration numbers. Accessible collaboration tools are key at this stage where defining – and ultimately delivering on – success criteria is dependent on the involvement of team members company-wide.

Plan coordinated product launches

Although we don’t believe in fixing specific dates to your roadmap, communication is still key to coordinating product and commercial strategies. As your new products move closer and closer to implementation, the marketing team will have plenty of work to do from press to sales materials. When roadmapping you may wish to attach broad timeframes to ‘current’ and ‘near-term’ products and features so that your marketing team can start to plan out launches for these new releases. As ideas make their way into development, make sure that your marketing team is following their progress. With the help of systems integrations and email notifications, there are no unexpected surprises.

Bring consistency to product messaging

Finally, new and updated products can be supported with marketing-approved resources, all centralized in a single location – your ProdPad product pages. Materials can be uploaded so they can be accessed by your entire team, helping product managers to keep product management in one place, and marketing teams to rest assured only on-message content is being shared externally.

If you’d like to find out more about how marketers and product managers can work together using ProdPad, get in touch with us here

Catch up on how to involve your executive team in product management decisions here, and stay tuned next week for how ProdPad can help you to keep compliance and legal happy.

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How to Open Product Management to Your Sales Team

Janna Bastow — Fri, 20 Jun 2014 09:00:00 +0000

Product Management sits at the intersection of customer, technology and business. The product manager’s role is a continual balancing act between each of these areas, which means involving the right people, in the right ways, at the right times.

In this post, we take you through how to open up product management to a sales team in the right way, using good processes and ProdPad tools.

Source valuable feedback from the field

Your sales or business development people are your commercial ears on the ground – they have daily conversations with prospects about what would encourage them to buy. Ideas and suggestions often come thick and fast from sales teams, so it’s important to be able to validate the ones of real value. ProdPad distinguishes user feedback from the ideas list so that every valuable piece of information can be captured while reserving the product backlog for specific suggestions and ideas. Sales teams can use tools that fit into their own daily jobs to share those suggestions, from email to Google Chrome.

Get commercial input to decisions

Collaboration doesn’t stop as soon as an idea is marked out as having potential. Defining user requirements and a business case for development can often rely heavily on the input of your commercial team. ProdPad’s in-tool communication allows your sales team to share comments on any idea canvas, and product managers can reach out for specific information directly through @mentions. A simple voting mechanism for idea canvases means that opinions for and against different features can be measured and business development teams can be assured their input is heard.

Help keep prospects and customers in the loop

Your sales team is not only a mouthpiece for customer opinion, but can be an important link back to users and prospects to keep them informed about upcoming product changes. ProdPad roadmaps focus on current, near-team and future developments, allowing you and your sales team to give safe projections for what’s in the pipeline. Cards can be made public or private to prepare your sales team with a roadmap that’s appropriate to share externally via PNG or PDF exports or even a live site embed.

Individual salespeople can follow ideas to remain updated on feature progress all the way through to implementation. And when ProdPad is integrated with project management tools, these updates are completely automated, meaning your sales team need to do nothing more than await the latest email notifications.

Catch up on how to involve executives in product management decisions here, and stay tuned for the next instalment where we take you through how to involve marketing in product planning.

If you’d like to see how ProdPad can help you to open up product management to Sales, you can sign up for a free 14 day trial here.

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How ProdPad Fits In: Sharing Ideas

Janna Bastow — Wed, 18 Jun 2014 09:00:00 +0000

When done right, product management is probably the business function that integrates with more people and processes than any other. So it’s essential that a product management system fits into this complex intersection between customers, colleagues and technology. And without too much disruption. This week, we take you through how ProdPad fits in when propagating potential product ideas to colleagues and customers.

Flag up relevant ideas

Your product backlog should be an open and transparent environment where ideas go to flourish, not to die. However, not every prospective product spec is relevant for your entire team. ProdPad helps you to flag up ideas to the attention specific colleagues using idea following and @mentions. Daily and weekly email digests mean that your team can remain in the loop on what’s happening with the backlog and follow up should anything pique their interest.

@Mention colleagues to get their attention on any idea

Quick ballot collaboration

At any stage in the idea management process, voting can be a direct and simple way to collect the opinions of your team on whether an idea should be prioritized for development. ‘Yea’s or ‘nay’s should always be qualified by a reason to help product managers make collaborative but informed decisions. ProdPad attaches an easy-to-use voting mechanism to every idea canvas to provide an easy way for your team to give feedback on the product backlog.

Get the entire team to weigh in on ideas by adding their vote.

Open, easy roadmapping

Once priorities have been set, it’s important that you can share your planned product direction with colleagues and customers alike. A roadmap should be reactive to change and continually up to date, but at the same time accessible to all. In ProdPad you can demonstrate the impact of changes to your roadmap with a drag and drop interface, and export the most recent version to PNG or PDF to send around. You can even embed private and public versions of your roadmaps into any live site. Giving users and team members an instant and dependable location to seek out the most up-to-date plans.

Share your roadmap with your team members and others

A complete feedback loop

If businesses are ever to coordinate on product changes, it’s important to register who has staked interest in different product ideas. Tracking the progress of an idea is important all the way through to implementation and ProdPad helps product managers to do this in a number of different ways. Communication with customers is made easier via traceable links from idea canvases to pieces of user feedback, with fields for contact details. The feedback loop can even be automated via two-way integrations between statuses in ProdPad and other systems. With colleagues and customers kept comfortably in the loop, product managers can finally reduce the number of daily requests for new information.

Catch up on how ProdPad fits into building product specs here, and next week read about how ProdPad supports the transition to implementation.

If you’d like to hear more about how ProdPad can help product managers to better collaborate with team members and customers, get in touch or sign up for a 14 day free trial here.

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Autosave to the rescue!

Janna Bastow — Tue, 03 Sep 2013 14:54:56 +0000

We know how frustrating it is to lose even just a tiny fraction of your work. It’s happened to us all: You’re typing away and an accidental bump or click or backspace causes the browser to reload, losing your hard work with it.

It can be catastrophic (we know how impossible it is to retype it to sounds just as good as the first time), or plain annoying (sure, it was only a few words, but it’s the principle!).

This is why we’ve implemented a lifesaver of a feature: Autosave.

As you type, ProdPad will helpfully save every last bit for you!

Peace of mind

From now on, you can type away happily, knowing your every last word is being caught and saved, whether you’re updating a new feature request, fleshing out your product strategy, or adding some flair to your product roadmap.

Simply put, you won’t lose your work again.

Quicker to edit

An extra bonus for you is that this also makes it faster and easier for you to work. You no longer need to click to get into ‘edit mode’ and the click to save your work. It’s all done in one smooth movement. Click what you want to edit, type away, and as you go, we’ll save every last bit. We’ll even helpfully tell you when everything’s being saved, so you’re never left unsure.

Full coverage

This is more than just one little autosave box we’re talking about. We’ve rolled out these helpful changes through our app, whether you’re triaging new ideas, updating your product canvas, adding user feedback, user personas, or your roadmap.

Check it out in the following pages:

Ideas Management: Idea title, description, business case, user stories and user acceptance test criteria, functional specs and any additional notes
Product Canvas: Product name, description, key KPIs, and product vision
User Personas: Persona name, description, behaviors, goals, and frustrations/limitations
User Feedback: Any feedback snippet from users
Product Roadmap: Roadmap card titles and descriptions

If you’re not already on ProdPad, you can start your free trial today!

It’s the little things that make a product delightful to use, and this one is our latest to help you work smoothly and delightfully. We hope it helps! If you have other suggestions on how we can make ProdPad even better to use, get in touch any time at feedback@prodpad.com.

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Product roadmap put to the test

Janna Bastow — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 10:49:00 +0000

With the massive changes we’d made to the roadmap with the latest major release, we were ready to put our roadmap to the ultimate test: A full-on digital meets physical roadmapping session.

Product Roadmapping Goals

Our goal was two-fold:
1) To determine where we wanted to take ProdPad next, now that the roadmap updates were out, following a slew of user feedback and other insights. This involved taking a good, hard look at what was on the current roadmap, and really hashing out some plans and thoughts on where we want to go next.

2) Put the product roadmap building tool to the test, in a live meeting environment. We cracked open the projector, and got the roadmap on the wall and a stack of sticky notes in hand. With this mixture of digital and physical, the session was pretty painless and collaborative. We had everything we needed to jot down ideas on what should go where on the roadmap, and our digital roadmap tool allowing us to simply drag and drop to update in real time.

As far as roadmapping sessions go, this was a breeze!

Along the way, we came up with a series of new wishlist items for the product roadmap template, minor but impactful things, inspired by either our usage or our users’ feedback. That same day, we set to updating a number of things with the roadmap and the site as a whole.

Changes to our Product Roadmap Building Software

Here’s a few of the updates now live:

The Roadmap Export is now available in both a ‘Regular’ and a ‘Detailed’ view. Detailed view shows the full associated Idea and User Story details for each roadmap card, instead of the more compact count visible in the Regular view.
When complete, roadmap cards can now be archived. These are then found in a new section for completed cards, showing your ‘Completed Roadmap’ as you go.
You can now create a new roadmap card directly from the Idea Canvas page, without going back and forth.
You can add multiple ideas to a card at once, using the Bulk Edit feature.
Various usability tweaks, and some performance tweaks that should make the whole thing feel faster and easier to use.

Throughout the website, you’ll now find these and a whole pile of other little tweaks. If there’s something else you’d like to see, we’re all ears! Get in touch at hello@prodpad.com.

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Roadmapping Without Dates: Build Yourself A Better Strategic Plan

Simon Cast — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 12:57:55 +0000

You may have noticed that roadmaps in ProdPad don’t have any dates on them. Instead, you’ll only find the column headings “Now”, “Next” and “Later.”

We have a very good reason for that.

It’s roadmapping for the way product managers work

Product leaders like Martin Eriksson have been arguing against dates on roadmaps for years.

As Martin has pointed out, product managers can’t do more than make an educated guess around when a project might be completed. After all, there are so many variables that you can’t factor into a long-term roadmap: team capacity, market changes, quarterly budgets and so on.

So why bother communicating dates and deadlines on your product roadmap at all? So we made a pretty radical change: we ditched dates altogether.

The original version of our roadmap template was like a cross between a Gantt chart and an Excel spreadsheet.

It was one of the first parts of ProdPad we built, until we realized that if we could design a much better roadmap if we ditched the dates. It would would give product managers a level of flexibility to focus on the bigger picture: product strategy and vision.
Related: How to build a product roadmap everyone understands

A product roadmap to show off your strategic plans

After we worked through a version for some clients, we added the only structure you’ll find on our roadmap: three columns called Now, Next and Later.

An original view of ProdPad’s roadmap.

This brought us a lot closer to what product managers actually need: a tool to communicate their long-term product plans and strategy.

We threw out deadlines and replaced them with broader time horizons that help you show off the ranking order of your priorities.

Each card represents a theme (or “problem to be solved”) rather than a single granular idea, and cards get more and more defined as they move to from the right to left. This made strategy and priorities much clearer and easier to understand.

We’ve gotten a lot of great feedback on this – we’ve purposely left it simple and non-prescriptive, yet clear enough to help you structure a long-term product direction around.

It turns out that so much more is possible when you keep dates off your roadmap. It frees you up to think about the bigger picture. What kind of product do you want to build? Who should we build for? How steps should we take to meet those goals?

Watch: The guide to product roadmapping

My co-founder Janna Bastow gave an excellent talk on our approach to roadmapping at ProductTank. I highly recommend it!

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