Over the past few years I had some experiences working as a Product Owner with digital products. Since then, I studied a lot about UX, product management, design thinking, agile, customer experience and a wide range of subjects that are related to delivering a great experience to the user. Studying all of those subjects, there is one thing that I’ve noticed as a pattern: Whichever the article, paper, workshop that you read or attend to, there will always be some sort of steps you need to go through in order to be successful. That is what I´m calling “magical framework”. I can bring as examples the Design Thinking process, the Build-Measure-Learn from Lean Startup, the Double Diamond and so on…

The point is that worklife in large organizations, or even startups, can bring to the table many factors that won’t allow you and your team to follow those steps and, yes, you have to live with this. But do you know what is worse? Your customer does not even care about it! Expectations of the market are getting higher and your product needs to meet them.

So, in this post I want to do the opposite: I won´t give you one more “magical framework”. I want to share my thoughts about what principles lie behind those frameworks and how you can apply them regardless the framework you are using, size of your team/organization and maturity of your product without getting frustrated if you are not able to do everything by the book.

1. Have a clear vision where to go and what your product does

Even if you are not into product development you might have heard this sentence: “If you don´t know where you are going, you are always going in the wrong direction”. This is also true when related to digital products. If you do not have a clear vision of what problems you are trying to solve, you don´t know which features and tasks to prioritize or the value users will notice in your product. In larger or more complex teams this is even worse, because people start doing things that are not connected. You can solve this in very simple ways. An Elevator Pitch might be a good start!

PS: You can also take a look at the MTP from Exponential Organzations (https://exponentialorgs.com/)

2. Have a clear vision of what your product does not do

On a regular basis, many people will come to you and ask for features or improvements based on their opinion. This will happen with your team, stakeholders and users. If you don´t have this in mind, you might end up doing things just because people asked for it, not because it is alligned to your product´s vision. In the image below you can see a simple exercise that will help you building this!

3. Your goals are not your roadmap

Goals and roadmap are (totally) different things. Even though your roadmap must be in line with your goals, goals are more high-level and drive the direction of the product. The product roadmap is made of a list of deliverables to achieve goals. To make this more tangible, OKR´s (Objectives and Key Results) are a good tool to work with mid-term objectives and keep them in mind of all team. You can also take a look at Exponential Organizations to have more examples of OKR´s.

4. A Business Model Canvas is good, but knowing how to monetize your product is essential

Business Model Canvas is a very good and complex tool. There you can see your Key Partners, Activities, Resources, Value Proposition, Channels, Customer Relationships, Customer Segments, Cost Structure and Revenue Streams. All those points are pretty important and can clarify your direction, but many times knowing how you are going to monetize is what makes your product live.

5. Study techniques and work as a toolbox

All techniques and frameworks can teach you something and be useful for a situation that you face during your work. The main challenge for a product manager or leader is to identify which situation requires each technique. Try to apply techniques as painkillers for problems rather than trying to follow a step by step “magical framework”.

6. Know your Customer and target-audience

There is a lot of techniques for doing that. You can go into user interviews, make a quantitative research, market research and I really encourage you to do so. Each technique answers to a different question and has its unique value, but there is one thing that can be less time consuming and give you lots of insights about an audience´s needs: The old and gold competitor´s analysis. In Jaime Levy´s book UX Strategy you can find useful tips about this subject.

7. Remember, you will always have to think about this equation:

I hope this article was helpful to give you insights and tools about how you can drive your team and product better. Also, I´m trying to make you don´t feel frustrated if you think you are not following one of the “magical frameworks”. Your product can still be successful!

Have any thoughts about it? Like, comment and share!

Looking forward for your feedback!