Planning and initiation is a key part of any project be it a traditional project or an agile project. While traditional project delivery includes planning everything up front and then moving to design and other phases, agile planning involves a concept of “Just enough”.
Why does Agile recommend ‘just enough planning’? In this VUCA world, it is almost impossible to plan everything upfront because of changes in tech, customer needs, business environment, etc. But at the same time, it is also crucial to broadly know the direction in which we need to head.
Discovering is finding out, exploring for answers, and knowing more than what is apparent at the start. It is an art of answering a few questions which eventually gives us a direction of where we are heading and what we are going to do. When it comes to a project there are a few questions that come up as part of knowing and they include:
- What are we building and why?
- For whom are we building?
- Who will use the system or who is our end user?
- Who will be building the system?
- What is the journey we need to take?
Product discovery or simply discovery is a set of activities done predominantly in the planning or initiation phase of a project which helps organizations to answer the above questions.
This Blog attempts to guide you through the step-by-step approach and help you identify key areas of the product like the Product Vision statement, deriving the backlog of the product, and backlog sizing among other things leveraging our experience as an agile consulting company.
We will attempt to answer the following questions in this blog:
- What is Product Discovery and why is it important?
- Which teams are part of a Product Discovery session?
- What are key elements to consider when doing Product Discovery?
- How to do Product Discovery?
- What is a step-by-step guide to Product Discovery?
- What is an Elevator Pitch?
- What is a walking skeleton?
- What is a customer journey map?
- What is Persona and what is Persona mapping?
- What is release slicing and how to do it?
- What is the output of Product Discovery?
Let’s dive in.
What is Product Discovery and why is it important?
Product discovery is a series of activities in the product development lifecycle that focuses on understanding customer needs, market demands, and the feasibility of potential product ideas before they enter the development stage. It is a systematic approach used by product teams to identify, validate, and prioritize product opportunities that align with business goals and customer expectations.
The primary objective of the discovery session is to understand the project/product just enough and also derive the direction of execution. Below are the main aspects or End Goals of the project discovery sessions
- Understand and Derive the Vision of the Product
- Consumer / Customer assessment
- Identify and derive the backlog – Scope
- Identify the timeline – Time
- Slice MVPs and releases
Which Teams are part of Product Discovery?
Product discovery is a collaborative process that requires input and expertise from multiple roles within an organization. Each role brings unique thoughts and skills that contribute to a detailed understanding of the problem and the development of solutions. A successful product discovery process uses the collective expertise of a cross-functional team, ensuring that the ideas are well-informed, user-centered, and aligned with business objectives. Some of the key roles involve:
- Product Representatives – To explain and brainstorm the problem statement. Also, Prioritizing ideas, defining success metrics, coordinating activities, and making strategic decisions based on insights, conducting market research, competitive analysis, and defining the product’s value proposition
- UI/UX Team – Creating wireframes, prototypes, and mockups; conducting usability testing; and iterating on designs based on user feedback.
- Engineering Team – Evaluating the technical feasibility of ideas, developing prototypes, and estimating development efforts and timelines
- Stakeholders – Offering insights into business goals, market strategy, and financial considerations
- Subject matter experts – Offering expertise on specific aspects of the product, such as regulatory requirements, industry standards, or technical specifications.
The key element to consider while doing a Product Discovery
Product discovery is a structured process aimed at identifying, validating, and prioritizing product ideas to ensure they meet customer needs and align with business goals. Here are the key elements necessary to conduct effective product discovery,
- Vision Statement – A vision statement helps the company/customer or the team to understand various aspects of the product like what is the product they want to build, why they are building it, what are the key benefits of the product, what problem statement the product will solve and for whom
- User and Persona – Personas are people or systems who directly influence the product, are affected by the product, or use the product. Understand your users’ needs, behaviors, and pain points
- Empathy Mapping – Empathy mapping is a collaborative tool used in product discovery to gain a deeper understanding of the users’ experiences, needs, and emotions. It helps teams visualize what users think, feel, see, hear, say, and do, fostering empathy and guiding the design and development process to create user-centered products.
- Customer / User Journey – A customer journey map is a visual representation of the process a customer goes through to achieve a specific goal with a product or service. It captures the entire experience from the customer’s perspective. Understand the customer’s current journey and “To Be” journey and the reason behind the need for change
- Story Map – A story map is a visual representation of a product backlog that helps teams understand the user journey and prioritize features based on user needs and business value. It provides a high-level view of the user’s interactions with the product and organizes user stories in a way that aligns with the overall user experience
- Prioritizing – Prioritize the most promising ideas based on various criteria using MOSCOW, Value-based priority, risk-based priority, or any other framework.
How to conduct Product Discovery?
A discovery session is the first meeting or an exploration activity that happens before product development kicks off. The product team, development team, and key stakeholders collaborate in a single room to brainstorm/explore various aspects of the product.
Prerequisites :
- The POD/Scrum team is formed
- Meeting or Invites booked/sent
- Necessary stationeries in place ( Markers, Sticky Notes, tapes, Whiteboards etc )
- Necessary tools like Winsical, Mural boards, etc in place for Virtual Set up
The Product Discovery Session Journey:
A Discovery Session is a series of activities usually spanning across 4-5 working days. An ideal discovery session journey is depicted in the image below.
Step 1: Vision Statement Identification
Essence: The first step in the discovery session is to derive/identify the vision statement. A vision statement helps the company/customer or the team in understanding various aspects of the product like what product they want to build, why they are building it, what are the key benefits of the product, what problem statement the product will solve, and for whom.
Participants: Product team, Development team, Key business stakeholders
Timebox : 3-4 Hours ( This is a rough estimate and may vary )
Method / Template: There are several templates/methods to derive the vision statement, while the most effective template and widely used is the elevator pitch technique.
Steps:
- Team to get together in a meeting room or a virtual meeting
- Everyone to explore the options or answers for the set of questions mentioned in the below template
- Team to converge and finalize the right answer and fill the template
Sample Vision Statement :
“For consumers with mobile in rural areas, who are wasting a lot of time standing in a queue to make a payment, XXXX product is a mobile app which enables users to make payment from any location, reducing the effort made by a consumer to make payments“
Step 2: Persona and their mapping
Essence: Personas are people or systems who directly influence the product, are affected by the product, or use the product. 2nd Step in the discovery session is to identify personas for the product the team is trying to build.
Participants: Product team, Development team, Key business stakeholders
Timebox: 6-8 Hours ( This is a rough estimate and may vary )
Method / Template: Again, there are several templates available for identifying and mapping personas. You can pick any template that suits your team, a sample template is shown in the picture below.
Steps:
- Team to identify the list of personas
- Choose the first persona and understand key behavioral traits and concerns
- Move to the next persona and repeat 2nd step
Picture Courtesy – cacoo.com
Step 3: User Journey Mapping
Essence: Once the persona mapping is complete, the 3rd and next step in the discovery session is to understand the customer’s current journey and “To Be” journey and the reason behind the need for change ( which is an opportunity for the product itself )
Participants: Product team, Development team, Key business stakeholders
Timebox: 6-8 Hours ( This is a rough estimate and may vary )
Method / Template: You can create a simple template as shown in the image below or adopt any template that is available on the internet.
Steps:
- Choose the first persona and understand the as-is process they are going through
- Understand the pain points in each of the step and the emotions associated with each step
- Identify how your product can help the persona in each step
- Plot it as “To be” state which is the product’s breadth
- Repeat the above steps for all the personas in the product
Simple Excel Sheet Template
Sample template 2 : Courtesy Wondershare
Step 4: Story Mapping
Essence: With Persona mapping, we would now have identified the opportunity / To Be the customer journey or the breadth of the product we are building. 4th step in the discovery session is to explore the breadth and depth of the customer journey.
Participants: Product team, Development team, Key business stakeholders
Timebox: 8 – 12 Hours ( This is a rough estimate and may vary )
Method / Template: An ideal customer journey and story map template will look something like the image shown below
Steps:
- Expand the Opportunity / To be state of the persona to derive the breadth of the product
- Plot the journey of the persona mapping to the “To Be”. Explore, discuss, and derive a happy path of the user journey and plot it. Each Stage in the customer journey can be mapped as your Epics in the project ( Ex: For amazon users a customer journey can be User Onboarding> Browse Products > Cart management > Payments > Delivery Tracking > Return and refund )
- Pick up one stage of the journey and explore the ideas as to how the product can help users achieve it. ( Ex: Login > Social media login, OTP login, Email ID login, Biometrics login, etc )
- Repeat the above steps for the rest of the stages in the user journey
- End result of these would result in a story map as shown in the image below
Step 5: Release Slicing
Essence: 5th and the next step in the discovery session is to identify the potential MVP stories and subsequent releases. This meeting is optional and can be skipped if the delivery is continuous and the project does not visualize a release cadence
Participants: Product team, Key business stakeholders
Timebox: 6 – 8 Hours ( This is a rough estimate and may vary )
Method / Template: An ideal customer journey and story map template will look something like the image shown below
Steps:
- Use simple prioritization techniques like NOW, NEXT, and LATER or even the MOSCOW rule of prioritization to slice the releases
- This should give the team a direction of what we are achieving in staggered release cycles
Image Courtesy – Google
Step 6: Backlog Preparation and Sizing
Essence: The last step ( 6th Step ) in a product discovery session is to prepare just enough backlog and size it to derive the roadmap of the product.
Participants: Product team, Development team
Timebox: 8 – 12 Hours (This is a rough estimate and may vary)
Steps:
- Convert all the ideas into user stories in the format “ As a <Persona>, I want <Demand>, So that <Purpose>”
- Use the INVEST technique to write the user stories
- Write well-defined acceptance criteria ( If not for the entire backlog, at least to cater to the first 20% of the user stories )
- Use the Planning poker technique / White elephant technique to estimate the backlog
- Add the user stories and all necessary data in the project management tool you are using
- Understand the predictive velocity to predict the incremental delivery view/timeline view/roadmap with a dummy capacity planning
- An example of the timeline view / incremental view is shown below
Story Level Timeline / Roadmap / Increments
Epic Level Roadmap / Timeline
What is the output of Product Discovery?
The output of a product discovery session is a set of consensus, insights, and action items that gives direction to the team on the next phases of product development. These outputs provide clarity on the problem space, user needs, potential solutions, and strategic direction, some of the key outputs are:
- Clear vision and problem statement – A clear and concise articulation of the problem or opportunity being addressed
- Personas – Detailed profiles representing different segments of the target audience
- Empathy maps – Visual tools that capture what users think, feel, see, hear, say, and do
- User Journey – Visual representations of the user’s experience across different stages and touchpoints.
- Story Map – Visual representation of a product backlog that helps teams understand the user journey and prioritize features based on user needs
- Release Slicing – A list of user stories or features ranked by importance and impact
- High-Level Roadmap – A high-level roadmap outlining the next steps and timelines for product development.
How does a consulting firm help in conducting a product discovery?
An Agile consulting firm brings a structured approach to product discovery, with expertise in facilitation of the whole discovery session and ensuring that the process is user-centered and outcome-driven. Here are some ways agile transformation services can enhance your team’s product discovery:
- Facilitation of all the ceremonies – Facilitate workshops such as design sprints, story mapping, and brainstorming sessions to generate ideas and align on the product vision with continuous unbiased probing
- Vision Statement / Problem statement identification – Engage with stakeholders to align on the problem statement. Use frameworks like elevator pitches to clarify the scope.
- Persona Identification – Creating awareness about personas, asking the right questions, and helping teams prepare the persona roster
- Empathy Mapping and customer journeys – Conduct brainstorming sessions with cross-functional teams. Encourage open and diverse thinking to explore various possibilities.
- Bringing Alignment – Facilitate discussions to address concerns and gather input. Present findings and recommendations to stakeholders
- Creating success metrics – Help define key performance indicators (KPIs) and success metrics. Align metrics with business objectives with OKRs
- Documenting – Coordinate with the participants to use visual aids like journey maps, affinity diagrams, and flowcharts
Conclusion:
Product discovery isn’t just about finding solutions, it’s about asking the right questions, empathizing with users, and continuously learning and adapting. Three important aspects of a successful discovery are curiosity, collaboration, and continuous learning and a strong expectation on these are a must with all the participants.
Product Discovery, usually done during the planning/Initiation phase of a project or a product is a continuous process. Few teams do it at a release level and a few at a program level. What becomes crucial is the understanding that the roadmap and the direction derived in the product discovery is not written in stone and may change as per the needs and the market which is the whole point of agility.
This Concludes our blog on “How to do Product Discovery Session”. Hope this was a useful read. Please contact us at “consult@benzne.com” for any feedback, suggestions, or questions.
Frequently Asked Questions:
1. Is Product Discovery relevant for specific teams and scenarios?
Product discovery is not limited to specific teams or scenarios but is instead a flexible approach that can be applied across various industries, teams, and contexts. Its principles and practices can be tailored to fit the specific needs and goals of different industries, teams, and scenarios, making it a valuable tool across various domains of business and technology.
2. What tools can help me in Product Discovery?
The choice of tools for product discovery depends on the specific needs of the project, team preferences, and budget considerations. Here are a few tools specific to needs that can be used in the session:
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- Interviews and Surveys – Google forms, survey monkey, or type forms
- Persona identification – AHA, JIRA, Persona creator, Make my persona, etc
- Collaboration tools – Miro, Mural, excel sheets, Stormboards, etc
- Prioritization, backlog management, and release slicing – JIRA, Trello, Azure DevOps, Asana, AHA, etc
- Communication Tools – Slack, Teams, Meet etc
- Document Management – Basecamp, Confluence, Google Drive, One Drive etc
3. What is the relevance of product discovery in agile ways of working?
It is almost impossible to plan everything upfront because of changes in tech, customer needs, business environment, etc. But at the same time, it is also crucial to broadly know the direction in which we need to head. A discovery session is a systematic approach used by product teams to identify, validate, and prioritize product opportunities that align with business goals and customer expectations. Since it gives Just enough direction for the teams to start with and incrementally deliver value to the customer, it plays a crucial role in any agile project.
4. How do I leverage product discovery to get a great product roadmap?
The product roadmap is a timeline view of the direction the product is going towards. To derive an effective roadmap, it is important to understand the customer needs, the vision, the personas involved, success metrics, and even the increments. Here are a few pointers on how product discovery can be leveraged:
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- Understanding and common understanding of a clear and concise articulation of the problem or opportunity being addressed
- Detailed profiles representing different segments of the target audience
- By capturing what users think, feel, see, hear, say, and do
- Clarity on user’s experience across different stages and touchpoints.
- Visual representation of a product backlog that helps teams understand the user journey and prioritize features based on user needs
- A list of user stories or features ranked by importance and impact
