For any product that has users and a future, inputs for product direction come in from different quarters.
- Product marketing and sales guys
- Senior management
- Product manager's vision
- Existing customers
- Prospective customers
- End user input via support channel
- End user feedback via social media
- Competition
- Industry trends
- Product development team
These inputs may be at the granularity of feature requests or more strategic. If these inputs are collected and curated carefully, it can be an invaluable basis for prioritizing the backlog. But this calls for a fair amount of effort and typically, the product owner or product manager don't have the time to do justice to this job. As a result, we end up with a uncurated backlog that is scattered in people's minds, emails, ticket management system, project management tool, presentations etc. This leads to somewhat unscientific prioritization.
There is a role of backlog curator lurking in here. Need not a full time role but something that a product analyst (BA) can do for say one-third of the time. In the talk/workshop we'll explore some techniques for effective curation and retrieval that enable a more data-informed approach to backlog prioritization.
7. Sources
Marke-ng
Sales
Product
Vision
Execs
Prospects
Customers
End
users
Compe--on
Industry
trends
Prod
dev
team
Other
internal
users
Channels
Email
Mee-ng
Social
Media
Blog
post
Support
Call
center
VoC
interviews
Surveys
11. What
insights
do
we
want?
• Top
missing
features/capabili-es
leading
to
opportunity
loss
• Our
weaknesses
compared
to
compe--on
• Our
strengths
compared
to
compe--on
• Overlap
of
vision
with
demand
• Top
missing
features/capabili-es
leading
to
customer
aVri-on
12. • Most
used
features
• Most
un-‐used
features
• Most
liked
features
• Most
requested
S/M/L
features,
by
user
segment
• Top
usability
complaints
• Most
under-‐documented
features
15. Form
teams
of
4-‐6
45
seconds
per
card
Ques-ons
welcome
16. Tips
• Cura-on,
not
priori-za-on
• Don’t
think
about
accep-ng/rejec-ng
the
input
• Rota-ng
scribe
• Use
the
bigger
s-cky
to
copy
the
descrip-on
• Curate
on
the
fly
• First
one
-‐
sample
17. 14-‐Mar-‐13
Who:
ITC
Via:
f2f
Allow
me
to
add
resources
(rooms,
projectors)
to
meeEngs
created
by
others
1
of
20
Date
Who:
Customer/
other
Via:
email/social
media/f2f…
DescripEon
of
input
39. Good
curator
types
Type
CharacterisEcs
VocaEons
INFJ
Observer,
organized,
values
solitude
Art/museum
curator,
archivist,
librarian,
art
historian
INTP
observer,
relies
more
on
mind
Researcher,
historian
INTJ
observer,
orderly,
clean,
organized
Researcher,
curator,
librarian
Source:
similarminds.com
40. What
next?
• A
curated
backlog
can
be
used
as
a
sound
basis
for
– Valida-ng,
tweaking
the
roadmap
– Deciding
the
next
set
of
features
to
work
on
– Data-‐informed
priori-za-on