Transcript

[00:00:00] Do you have an idea you want to work on? Do you have hundreds? Or you're just interested in working in a given area and have no ideas yet at all, regardless where yet it can be hard to find the right problems. So while making sure you're not overlooking anything too important. So today. I'll share how I identify opportunities worth working on.

[00:00:36] Okay. I'm Thomas Essel and you're listening to episode 15 of product nuggets. And the second episode in my mini series and how to kickstart a new project. Last time we talked about principles for getting started. If you haven't yet, you might want to go and check out that episode today. Well, ready to get working.

[00:01:01] [00:01:00] I think amazing products, people love is not as easy as asking users and stakeholders, what they need either for you to fix or what features they want you to build. Why? Well people tell you what they want. That is only one possible representation of a possible solution. It's your job to identify problems and opportunities.

[00:01:23] First choose the right ones to solve and identify the best solution. Don't be tempted to come up with the solution or just work on an idea too soon. Otherwise you run the risk of building something that is solving the wrong problem in the wrong way for the wrong people who don't need it. Sadly, there are no shortcuts or if there are, please do let me know.

[00:01:44] Fortunately though, while it's not as simple as asking around it also doesn't have to be at all that complicated. All we need to do is gather a decent understanding of the process. We want to innovate in, use it to discover opportunities [00:02:00] and then prioritize those. And I'll show you a single method that makes this really easy.

[00:02:14] The backbone of this is a process map. This is a diagram that shows what your value chain looks like. In other words, what happens at each step of the process that generates value to a business user base or industry, and then stakeholders to it who is involved in this process. Who did they talk to? What do they need?

[00:02:37] What is important to them? What do they struggle with? And then I also map what are the relevant tools and processes being used. And by whom, lastly, uh, draw connections. How are all of these three things connected? How does information flow through and across the system? Now, the question is how do you actually go about generating this diagram and getting all the information to filling it in.

[00:02:59] I [00:03:00] generally like to lean most heavily on very simple techniques that only require me to apply a single method, really a combination of stakeholder interviews and user research. And here's how it works first down, some baseline understanding of the process, just whatever is in my head. Even if I know very little about this area, I just put down my assumptions.

[00:03:25] And then I do some basic online research, literally Googling things like how does this process work? What people are involved in this task. If you're looking into the profession of some individual, you just say, what does a X kind of person do? And then you just kind of grow your process diagram from there.

[00:03:48] All of this is not to generate tons and tons of research. That should be relatively quickly. It's just to get a baseline understanding of where. You were at, if there are any gaps, that's totally [00:04:00] fine. We're going to be filling those in soon. The focus is really just on identifying the people that are involved and their actions.

[00:04:08] Then I invite identified stakeholders for a conversation typically around 45 minutes each. So those would be the people. That I've identified just based on my assumptions and based on my very basic online research earlier, I tried to find representatives of those groups and just try to sit them down and have a chat with them.

[00:04:29] This conversation comes in two parts. At first, I kind of warm up with a more typical stakeholder interview kind of structure. I've made two episodes on stakeholder interviews before episodes, 12 and 13 at do recommend check them out. And then in the second and main part of the conversation, I show them the preliminary process map that I've created.

[00:04:51] I asked him to talk me through the process from their perspective and fix anything that is not quite right about what I've drawn out [00:05:00] in front of them. What's important here is that the process that you're co-creating at this point, the process map that you co-creating should be a representation of the process as it is not how it ideally should be.

[00:05:15] This is something. I find that a lot of people get very tempted to, to kind of idealized and draw process they're imagining, or that they've been taught, but that they've heard about it onboarding in an organization, but most processes don't follow. The theoretical framework. And so it's important to stick to reality here at each step of this process.

[00:05:38] I then ask what works well and what presents a problem to them. Where does the process break? And then note those points of friction down pain points and even positive things. Opportunities might say. With red or green dots alongside and, um, yeah, just keep track of them.

[00:06:00] [00:06:20] Pentagon, how many different types of people are involved in this process? Mature show, the same diagram to around three or five more if there are any discrepancies. So if you're doing the first two or three conversations, and everybody says something completely different than you just have to make up with it, by asking more and more people trying to drill down into where those differences come from.

[00:06:42] But I wouldn't worry about it too much. It doesn't tend to happen too often. Vast majority of the time, people really to 80% say what the person before them said already. Typically you'll start to see patterns emerge where people are agreeing with each other, and then it's time [00:07:00] to generate the next iteration of your diagram that incorporates all those findings from your research.

[00:07:06] The more concrete. The diagram becomes the more I started focusing on the content of each box in this diagram at each given step again, what works, what doesn't, what needs to the different kinds of people have at each stage, what are dependencies between steps, et cetera. I'll also note down how often each point.

[00:07:30] So each kind of like pain point or friction point. Is mentioned to get some kind of basic confidence value, this kind of sample size, nothing's going to be statistically relevant, but you still want to keep track of everybody. You talk to mentioned the same problem, or if you do have a few outliers in there, finally, I recommend identifying one specific user group to learn more about as early on as possible.

[00:08:00] [00:08:00] Focusing on a single user type is extremely important. Even if you're dealing with a problem, that's a multi-system multi-stakeholder issue. It's important to kind of not muddle all the learnings and processes and experiences together, but keep track of the individual experiences and issues. A single kind of user type might experience that leading to a solution that is most appropriate to them.

[00:08:27] If you repeat this process over a couple of iterations, you should end up with a diagram of a complete process. That includes all the main relevant stakeholders or the pain points and opportunities that they've been talking about. And then you might ask, so what, so you have to stay diagram. What do you do with it?

[00:08:46] Well, often you'll find that a few related parts of the user experience hold a large chunk of such opportunities. If you find that one or just a few steps in the process are riddled with lots of issues, larger, [00:09:00] small, that indicates an opportunity for transformation right there. This point points are often connected to a theme as well, which brings me to my next point.

[00:09:12] Especially when there are many smaller issues to look at, I would then group them into larger themes that may or may not be solvable by a product it's these themed stacks of post-its that I consider my opportunities and continue to work with next.

[00:09:41] Yeah. And, uh, you have it within just a few steps. We've gone from a great degree of uncertainty to a set of opportunities to consider, to summarize, to identify high value opportunities, choose a process you would like to innovate in. Generate a baseline diagram of [00:10:00] this process end to end, including stakeholders and technologies involved, then go through iterations of user interviews co-creating and more accurate, higher fidelity version of this map while adding pain points and opportunities for improvement, then you take all the pain and gain points.

[00:10:18] You discovered and grouped them into themes.

[00:10:26] So here what to do with these themes and how all of this leads to the definition of a product vision tune in again, next time until then make sure you subscribe to my newsletter. Seven things. At seven things dot Thomas sol.com or@mywebsitewwwtoalmostsol.com. You can also follow me on Twitter at Thomas underscore.

[00:10:48] So I'd love to hear what you think about the show.

[00:10:54] Product nuggets is produced by me. The music is from blue dot sessions and the opinions expressed on my own. [00:11:00] Thank you for listening to next time.