Creating an environment for successful products and services
Introduction
Current product management thinking recognises four big risks to the success of a product or service:
- Value risk – Doesn’t solve a sufficiently important problem well enough for a sufficiently large number of people.
- Usability risk – Is difficult to use by its intended users (not just when they are interacting with the product but how they integrate it into their lives).
- Feasibility risk – Can’t be built and maintained (often with the technology and skills the organisation current has).
- Viability risk – Doesn’t support the organisation’s goals.
(Cagan, 2017)
Mitigating these risks requires certain things to be in place to create the environment that enables successful products to be built and maintained.
Below does not describe a process for developing products and services, nor is it a checklist of things for each new product and service to consider in isolation. The aim is for these things to be in place as standard, always there as a solid foundation. By putting things in place that enable us to mitigate these risks, we create an environment for all products and services to be more successful.
Further reading:
A successful product and service is…
Valuable
A valuable product and service is one that solves a sufficiently important problem for a sufficiently large number of users well enough that they want to use it instead of other solutions.
Understanding what problems users have and how valuable solving those problems might be for them requires research and analysis.
Data analysis
Data is analysed to understand how users interact with the product
This is assessed against:
Horizon scanning
Trends and possible futures are considered
This is assessed against:
Market analysis
The current market for the product is analysed to understand
This is assessed against:
User research
This is assessed against:
Usable
A usable product and service is one that users understand how to use to solve a problem, when they are interacting with the product and service.
Creating a product that is usable for its intended users
Accessible
A product should be accessible to its intended users.
Informed by:
Assessed against:
Using:
Mobile-first
Products and services should take a ‘progressive enhancement’ approach, not only in the technical sense but also for design, content and usability, so that users with older devices and/or poor internet connection can still use the product.
Informed by:
Assessed by:
Using:
Safe
If the product allows users to interact, it is safe for them to do so.
Informed by:
This is assessed against:
Testable
Product and services should be testable against
This is assessed against:
- Compatibility – does the product and service work on all devices and browsers.
- Functionality – does the product and service function as expected.
- Usability – does the product and service enable its users to use it, e.g. font size big enough.
Using:
Usable
This is assessed against:
Viable
A viable product aligns with organisational strategy and resourcing.
Compliant
A product complies with laws and organisational policies.
This is assessed against:
Cost-efficient
A product needs to deliver more benefit to the organisation and the users than it takes to provide that value.
This is assessed against:
- Financial cost
- People’s time
Data usage
A product needs to collect, generate, manage and use high quality data.
Using:
Ethical
A product needs to treat it’s users ethically.
Informed by:
This is assessed against:
- Attention – Ethical people can behave unethically because their attention is focused elsewhere.
- Construal – Individuals’ behaviour is influenced by how they interpret their environment.
- Motivation – People are motivated by more than material incentives, they also have intrinsic prosocial motivations
Using:
Manageable
The product can be operationalised and integrated into business as usual activities.
This is assessed against:
Measurable
The product’s performance against metrics can be measured and analysed.
This is assessed against:
Strategic
The product is aligned with the organisation’s strategy and aims to achieve organisational goals.
This is assessed against:
Sustainable
The environmental impact of the product is understood and minimised.
This is assessed against:
Feasible
A feasible product is one that can be built and maintained to sufficient standard using the technology and skills available.
Maintainable
This is assessed against:
Performant
This is assessed against:
Private
This is assessed against:
Reliable
The product is built on resilient and reliable infrastructure.
This is assessed against:
Secure
The product prevents unathorised access to systems.
This is assessed against:
Notes
Creating this uses a deductive reasoning approach which assumes that the four big risks are logically valid and that mitigating those risks can be achieved by breaking down those risks into constituent parts and putting measures in place.
The term ‘Users’ is used to mean customers and/or users interchangeably.