Feature process – short overview

Any established product led companies need to have a properly defined product process. This is in essence the flow that one defines the end to end feature process – from initial idea acquisition to sun setting a feature or product. This is a laborious process and while this article aims on providing a short overview which will only cover the process up to release, each section should have it’s own article.

In any product process the first step is to acquire the idea and this is usually done from three main sources:

• customer or prospect – through the sales or customer success team either as feedback or request
• product owner / manager – from competitor analysis, industry review, event or conference, etc.
• other internal stakeholder – meetings, conferences, etc.

No matter who the source of the idea is the most important aspect is to capture it and keep track of it. More mature companies usually story ideas in dedicated product management tools, but start ups can store them in excel sheets (or even notepad). Once the idea is stored it is up to the Product Manager to review it, group it together with other similar ideas (link it to an epic if one already exists) and assign it a score. When the idea it is important that the product owner reviews it against the product goals, product strategy, themes and roadmap as well as if it’s in line with the company goals.

Based on the score that the idea achieved (there are instances in which a product manager can overwrite the score) the idea is reviewed by the product manager together with various stakeholders both internal (devs, customer success, sales, leadership, etc.) as well as external customers. Doing this will enrich the data we have for that idea and can answer some of the following questions:

• what are the customer expectations?
• what do competitors do to solve the same problem?
• do we have another feature that might solve the problem out of the box?
• can we expand our existing functionality in order to solve the problem instead of building something from scratch?
• is the problem valid across the industry / market or is only valid for a segment?
• how big is the segment that would buy this feature?
• is it technically feasible?
• are there any technical constraints?
• how would a ball park estimate look?
• how would the estimated ROI look?
• how would the user and buyer persona look like?
• etc.

Once all this unknowns are answered the idea the product manager will put together a case for the feature which will be discussed with the rest of the team in order to assess cross product impact (the impact that will have on other product managers) and if the feature gets the go ahead form the head of product it can be added to the roadmap.

There are multiple ways in which an idea can be validated and unknowns answered and for more complex ideas or ones with a lot of unknowns a design sprint might be required.

Based on the data gathered the product manager starts to write the initial epics and stories required for the feature. This is a very collaborative process, one that will require input from multiple stakeholders, especially from the development team. They are the ones that can add all technical details and they should be involved in the process as early as possible in order to understand the reasoning behind the story as well as it’s evolution.

Once the epics and stories are completed they will be validated against the initial requirements as well as in customer interviews. The product manager has to make sure that what he builds solves a valid need and will be used by customers.

After the feature is validated the epics and stories can go through the refinement process where final details are added as well as a more accurate estimate. This is also the moment when the product manager hast to start work on the go to market strategy.

The teams usually involved in the commercial strategy are Marketing (promotion, personas, marketing campaigns and messaging), Customer Success (documentation, training and on-boarding) and Sales (distribution channels, pricing). If the feature is unique and has the potential to define the market this is when the Marketing team will start to release messages in order to prepare customers and generate demand.

Once the stories are fully defined and estimated they can be planned in sprints (if agile methodology is used) based on their priority, their inter-dependencies as well as their dependencies to other work that has to be completed by other teams.

It’s critical that throughout the development process the stakeholders are kept updated on the progress. This is also when we can select early adopters and involve them in the development process by giving them access to beta environments and asking for feedback through user interviews. It’s important that we build a community around our products as the early adopters will become the product champions.

Once development is complete the product manager will do a company wide product / feature presentation and special training sessions for the customer success/ on-boarding team as well as the sales teams. These training sessions will be structured to each team objective (e.g. the sales demo will put more emphasis on the commercial aspect and customer value).

Once all teams are ready and the agreed released data is reached the feature is distributed and it’s KPIs are tracked.

Although ideally this process will apply to all features in the real world this will be used for more complex functionality and not all steps should be mandatory for more simpler functionality. It’s important to remember that each company is different and each product team unique so each should tailor the process to their needs and level of experience.

This post has been published on www.productschool.com communities.