It takes a long time and costs money to code features in jira product discovery.
However, once their new feature is available to the public, many teams discover that they erroneously assumed what users really require in jira product discovery. Consequently, the feature is not used enough. Nevertheless, life is too short for that. Additionally, any business that conducts its operations in this manner will soon cease to exist.
Fortunately, there is a better way.
The standard procedure for assigning a priority to the projects the delivery team works on is as follows:
Adapted method for product discovery from Kevin on Code: Product Discovery” is the name of the second track, which comes before and after product delivery.
This is how the legendary Marty Cagan put it:
“First, you need to determine whether there are actual customers who want this product. Second, you need to locate a product solution to this problem that is usable, useful, and possible.”
Product discovery, is a method for assisting product teams
In fine-tuning their concepts by first gaining an in-depth understanding of actual user issues and then determining the most effective solution. Productboard is a big fan of this approach, and the steps below will show you how we find products.
The goal of the product discovery process is to create the right products with the right features for your customers. Uncertainty is always present when selecting a product. To lessen the risks associated with the products we decide to build, we conduct product discovery. Most of the time, putting discovery first leads to a gap between the products that are made and what users want.
Marty Cagan, a product manager, identifies four major dangers:
Product development: the four dangers:risk of value (whether customers will purchase or use it);risk related to usability (whether or not users will be able to use it);risk of feasibility (whether our engineers have the time, skills, and technology to build what we need);viability risk (whether or not this solution applies to all aspects of our company);and value risk (whether customers will buy it or use it). This gives your team a laser-like focus on the problems and needs of users while also allowing them to acquire in-depth user insights through ongoing learning.
It is essential to keep in mind that product discovery does not always involve the release of features. Instead, the objective is to create a learning environment that will allow you to incrementally and consistently enhance your product.
Product discovery does not always focus on the provision of features.
Instead, the objective is to create a learning environment that will allow you to incrementally and consistently enhance your product.
A step-by-step guide for product discovery Productboard employs the Double Diamond approach to product discovery, which is structured as follows:
Create a prototype, define the underlying user need, identify the best solution, and test it. Let’s now proceed step by step through each section.
Find out what the real user need is. Identifying the major problems you want to solve with your product is the first step in the product discovery process. At this point, the details should take precedence over the big picture, or high-level goals or themes, for your product team.
A Productboard issue might look something like this:
How can we improve Productboard’s utility for mid-market companies?
Choosing the right obstacles can be challenging. You are given a blank canvas to work with in new product challenges. Your users’ current issues and requirements are the focus of value- and need-oriented challenges. Then there are technical obstacles to expansion. Enhancing a quantitative metric, such as user retention in your product, is typically the solution to growth challenges. Technical issues frequently contribute to poor product performance.
Challenge identification stage, you learn about and define your problem.
To accurately identify challenges, it is essential to comprehend the underlying user needs you want to address with your product. Product teams heavily rely on quantitative and qualitative research for answers at this stage. Among the useful methods are user research, focus groups, observation, customer interviews, data analytics, competitive research, empathy mapping, and others.
Define Once you have identified the user requirements that you wish to satisfy, you must clearly define those requirements. Several steps are required to accomplish this:
Determine the problem: Make an effort to sum up everything you want to solve in a single sentence. This facilitates clear communication with your team and unites them around a common objective. If you formulate the issue loosely, it will be difficult to keep everyone focused.
Confirm the situation: Make sure you are actually working on problems with solutions. How much of an impact will alleviating your customers’ pain actually have on the bottom line?
Prioritize: In a nutshell, you need to choose which of the identified issues needs to be addressed first. Product teams use a variety of well-known frameworks to accomplish this. At Productboard, value is more important to us than complexity, but there are other approaches, such as the RICE method and ICE.
The product discovery process includes the use prioritization matrix
To clearly define problems, many product teams use journey mapping, the Five Whys or other similar methods, or a SWOT analysis.
The best way to deal with user issues is to break them down into smaller, more manageable pieces.
For Productboard, the overarching challenge can be reframed and subdivided into the following categories:
Due to the fact that mid-market businesses want to communicate with multiple audiences simultaneously, Productboard’s public Portal has limitations for them.
During the reframing phase, you and your team prioritize potential solution concepts and brainstorm, prototype, and test them. This is all due diligence to ensure that features and products are checked before shipping.
Ideate You think about ideas to come up with a plan for resolving user issues. Your team can get really creative here through innovation exercises, other ideation techniques like team brainstorming, mind mapping, storyboarding, and running design sprints.
Your team can prioritize which ideas to prototype and present to customers, taking into account their potential impact and viability.
Prototype Teams can their concepts through the use of prototypes.
Sketches, mockups, clickable prototypes, MVPs, and even products that are competitive with one another or similar to one another are all examples of prototypes.
The types of prototypes that teams decide to build are all influenced by what they are trying to learn, what needs to be tested, and what questions remain.
Learn more about prototypes here:
Why every product manager should be able to prototype Eight examples of prototypes you can make for your MVP Test Testing determines whether the suggested solutions can actually solve the problem. Here, popular techniques and tools include A/B testing, customer interviews, user testing, survey distribution, and product beta testing.
Present solutions At the solution stage, nothing has been built yet; however, you are prepared to demonstrate concepts to stakeholders and users. Remember that not all features and solutions are created equal.
Here is a solution that can be implemented by following example:
Allow customers to create multiple Portals so they can communicate with various audiences.
The solution may require multiple iterations. After all, the team behind the product wants to ensure that users receive the desired outcome. Presenting the solution to stakeholders (in Productboard’s case, product leadership, delivery teams, and cross-functional teams) will be crucial for securing buy-in and alignment.
At this point, you probably won’t move on to delivery with a finished design. There are still flaws in your solution.
Advice for customers and internal teams: Best practices for using solutions should be codified by product teams.
Intercom adheres to an excellent product principle in this regard: Maintain flexibility while remaining opinionated. A solution can be designed with an idea of how best to use it for your customers, but it must also be adaptable so that customers can use it in the way that works best for them.
Include excellence in the process of discovering new products. Productboard’s development as a result of this process is summarized below:
Challenge:How can we improve utility for mid-market companies?
Change the subject: Because mid-market businesses want to share and validate their ideas with multiple audiences simultaneously, Productboard’s public Portal has limitations for them.
Find a solution that works: Customers ought to be able to set up multiple Portals so that they can test and share their ideas with various groups.
(In case you were curious, Productboard now permits the creation of multiple Product Portals. Check it out!
We wanted to share this framework because many product teams spend most of their time working on solutions rather than problems. It makes sense as well. With fewer steps, it’s a tempting shortcut. However, if teams don’t go through the discovery process, they might ship the wrong things, resulting in features and products that don’t live up to expectations and aren’t used.
