Series Overview
Getting the most out of your digital product starts with understanding the lived experiences of those using it, and using this to identify any challenges and areas for improvement.
Having this objective approach reduces ‘design by committee’ or ‘too many cooks’ and helps you to avoid following the HIPPO (Highest Paid Person’s Opinion), in favour of delivering meaningful change that has measurable impact.
At Huddle, I run a series of workshops that enable our clients to do just this, and in this Think Like a Product Manager series, I share key takeaways from these workshops, along with tips and advice on how you fit these processes into your existing role.
Note: These articles are not designed for full-time product managers, but rather people who have found themselves with this responsibility and are trying to do this effectively alongside other role commitments.
The series is split into four articles, outlined below.
1. Research
An overview of UX and user research tips and techniques, such as surveys, 1-on-1 interviews, and more.
2. Problem framing
How to make sense of research findings to uncover the right problems to solve and some useful brainstorming tools.
3. Solution ideation
Three techniques for problem-solving and coming up with creative ideas.
You are here!
4. Prioritisation
We will take all of the raw ideation materials obtained so far and rewrite them as discrete actionable ideas.
Impact vs Effort Prioritisation
Going into this final step, it is useful to take all of the raw ideation materials from the last last exercises (e.g. Round Robins, Crazy 8s, etc) and rewrite them as discrete actionable ideas.
They might look like this:
- New calendar interface for events
- Install heatmap tracking tool
- Infographic for customers
- Clean up article tags
- Create more ad space
Now, at this stage these ideas may not feel “complete” or directly actionable – that’s okay!
You don’t need to be able to take these and run with them just yet – each of these ideas will raise more questions and require some discussion and planning later. Some will take more effort than others – hence the next step.
Exercise Setup
You are about to rank each of the ideas in terms of their potential impact and their perceived effort, giving each of these a score out of five.
You can do this in another group setting, if you’re able, or solo, with consultation with colleagues where appropriate.
A great way to do this is using an Impact Effort Matrix.
Draw out a 5×5 grid like the image on the right, with the numbers 1-5 along the left and bottom, and the word “Impact” on the top and “Effort” down the right.
You would then put an idea in the top left if it scores 5/5 effort (i.e. a lot of effort) but 5/5 impact (i.e. could be very impactful). Post-its in the middle at the top for example would be 5/5 effort but only a 3/5 impact.
Categorising ideas
Place each post-it where it feels natural on the grid. Remember this isn’t an exact science, and there are a lot of other factors that go into the effort or impact of these ideas.
The point of this exercise is just to have a systemic way of prioritising ideas, and an effective way of communicating that process to others and involving them.
Once you have done this, you will be able to visually see how all of your ideas stack up in terms of how much effort is involved, and the potential impact they will have.
Now, the next step is where most people go wrong with Impact and Effort – so it’s worth taking a moment to really think about what’s going to happen next.
Prioritising ideas
It can be tempting to just start working on everything in the bottom right box (low effort but high impact).
Or, to simply prioritise everything down the right-hand side (5/5 impact).
Or, to transfer these to a spreadsheet and come up with a calculated score with which to sort the ideas (e.g. impact minus effort).
In reality, remember that:
- When you start working on these things, it might not be plain sailing to the end – you may encounter roadblocks or find yourself waiting on third parties to progress
- You’re unlikely to be working on a single one of these ideas at a time – you will want to have a few ideas on the go
- You may come to start some of these ideas and immediately realise they’re unfeasible, unfortunately sometimes for political reasons (e.g. the CEO completely shuts down the idea)
Account for nuance
You will want to find some way of prioritising ideas that works for you, considering the fact that you can work on multiple things at once.
For example:
- Over the next 12 months, pick 2 high effort, 5 medium effort and 10 low effort things to do. Treat these three ‘tracks’ separately and prioritise within those.
- Plan more for the short term – pick one high effort, one medium effort, and one low effort, and aim to complete all of them in the next month.
- Focus on impact above all else – sort by highest impact first, and then for equal impact ideas, sort by least effort first.
The way you do this last stage is very bespoke to you, and you should plan for this to change. Regularly review and evaluate your priorities to make sure they still work for you.
That’s it! What now?
You’ve now come to the end of the entire process and established a prioritised list of actions. Now comes the easy part – getting it all done…!
Naturally your approach to this depends entirely on your role and workplace. One thing to remember with all of this is that this process is not the be-all and end-all!
You should expect to go through this entire process (research, problem framing, ideation, prioritisation) more than once with your digital product.
Some teams go through this process every 6 months, every year, every 5 years – it just depends on how quickly things move in your sector and how fast your research will become outdated.
This can be disappointing, but remember, it takes the pressure off any one instance and means you are free to run with ideas, knowing you’ll revisit things later.
Do I really need to do this regularly?
It can be easy to find this revelation a bit demoralising – what’s the point of going to all this effort if you’re not going to fix everything once and for all?
But remember:
- Doing this process on a cycle puts far less pressure on it each time, and helps people come up with better ideas.
- In our fast-moving culture, user needs and requirements change all the time, not least because the other tools they are using are evolving and changing regularly.
- In the world of digital, nothing lasts forever and nothing is ever finished. Once you embrace this, it can be very liberating.
Regularly going through this process enables you to stay ahead of this curve and respond to changing requirements.
Series Conclusion
This marks the end of our Think Like a Product Manager series. We hope this gave you some food for thought and empowered you to use Product Management techniques within your team.
Even if you aren’t able to follow this whole process, and you are only able to conduct one Crazy 8s session, for example, that in itself will go a long way to empowering you to make sure that your product is performing to its fullest, making customers happy, and meeting stakeholder requirements. Let us know your experiences with this on LinkedIn and if you have any questions about the process reach out to us!
