Product Development

Alex Gault
Small World Ventures
alex@smallworldventures.com
November 22, 2022
Product Development Pyramid
 Product Vision
4 principles which determine a compelling,
sustainable product vision statement

❑ Aspirational: Paint a picture of what your product

aims to achieve.

❑ Achievable: If it’s too challenging, you’ll have a hard

time rallying your team to achieve it.

❑ Customer-focused: Develop with your target

customers and users top of mind.

❑ Concise: It's clear and gets the message across

without any extra fluff.
 Product Vision: Examples

Provide access to the world's information in one click.

- Google
Capture and share the world’s moments.
- Instagram
Accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.
- Tesla
Offer our customers the lowest possible prices,
the best available selection and the utmost convenience.
- Amazon
Changing the way the world moves.
- Uber
 Product Development Strategy
Market Research
❑ Identify an initial target audience: needs and preferences.
❑ Competition: Determine strengths, weaknesses,
opportunities and threats (SWOT analysis).
❑ Identify social, economic and technology trends that will
possibly influence your target customer base and industry.

Finalize Your Business Model

❑ Ensure that the product or service match a projected
return on investment (ROI) and your business goals.

Set Actionable Metrics

❑ Track performance relative to objectives outlined in the
Roadmap.
 Team: Roles & Responsibilities
Function Responsibilities
Product Management
❑ Set product vision & strategy
❑ Plan & deliver releases
❑ Collect & curate new ideas
❑ Define new product features
User Experience
❑ Conduct user research
❑ Build user story maps
❑ Create wireframes, mockups &
prototypes
❑ Perform usability testing
Function Responsibilities
Analytics
❑ Integrate data sources
❑ Research market trends
❑ Understand user journeys
❑ Reveal user behaviors & pain points
Product Marketing
❑ Research the competitive landscape
❑ Define buyer personas
❑ Create and coordinate launch plans
❑ Craft positioning & messaging
 Product Roadmap
Purpose
❑ Displays workflow and milestones of the
product development pipeline
❑ Enables tracking of scheduled work.

Benefits
❑ Transparency, accountability & ownership
❑ Highlights objectives & goals
❑ Information sharing (internally & externally)
❑ Workflow prioritization (enabling efficient
resource allocation)
Tips for Building a Product Roadmap
❑ The roadmap must be goal-oriented.

❑ Actively collaborate with team members and other

stakeholders to ensure buy-in.

❑ Ensure accountability, by adding measurable goals,

KPIs, dates and assigned stakeholders.

❑ Estimate people and skills required for each feature and

milestone.

❑ Review and update the roadmap on a regular basis.

 Product Roadmap Tools

Monday Productboard
https://monday.com https://www.productboard.com

Wrike Roadmunk
https://www.wrike.com https://roadmunk.com

Airfocus ProductPlan
http://airfocus.com https://www.productplan.com

Aha!
https://www.aha.io
 Product Design: Gamification
“It's kind of an open secret among tech designers that the most cutting-
edge user experience work tends to come from the video game industry.”
- Julie Zhuo, former VP of product Design, Facebook

Consider Gamifying the User Experience

❑ Objectives: Provide users with clear guidelines
regarding what they need to achieve to receive a reward.
❑ Rewards: When rewarded, users feel happy
and experience less stress.
❑ Competition: Pushes users to perform better, engage
more fully, without trying to impede other users.
Minimal Viable Product (MVP)

A MVP is version of a new product which allows you

to collect the maximum amount of validated learning
about customers with the least effort.

The Challenge:
❑ Figure out the smallest amount of product features
and capabilities necessary for release, and then
slowly add more functionality as needed.
Minimal Viable Product - Plan

Pick approximately 1,000 people who are likely to

love your product, and design an end-to-end
experience that you believe match their interests.

Picking a narrower audience means that you can

truly test your vision and product strategy without
compromise.
 Scenario Planning: Pivot
A pivot is when a startup breaks with its core focus and changes
direction in a fundamental way

Early-stage teams get fixated on new products that

everyone has come together to build to the point
they ignore warning signs in the market and miss the
potential to build a different product of more value.
 Resources
Eric Ries
❑ http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/
❑ The Lean Startup

Scott Belsky (Chief Product Officer, Adobe)

❑ http://www.scottbelsky.com/

Julie Zhuo (Former VP of Product Design, Facebook)

❑ https://lg.substack.com/archive?sort=new
❑ https://medium.com/the-year-of-the-looking-glass

Ryan Hoover (Founder, Product Hunt)

❑ https://www.ryanhoover.me/

Nir Eyal
❑ Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products

Ken Norton
❑ https://www.bringthedonuts.com/