Lean and Mean: Building the Roadmap Machine by Expedia Group PM
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- How to deliver on your long term strategy while remaining agile - Using both qual and quant data to solve business and user problems - Roadmap planning: who is your audience and how to get it right
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Lean and Mean: Building the Roadmap Machine by Expedia Group PM
- 1. www.productschool.com Lean and Mean: Building the Roadmap Machine by Expedia Group PM
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- 13. 13
- 14. Where Why How Strategy Business case Roadmap The same applies to planning a roadmap 14
- 15. Who am I? 15 Stefania Mourouzis
- 16. Agenda Timing (minutes) Understand Refine Execute What will we be covering today? 10 10 5 16
- 19. Company goals Team Structure Inputs There are key elements that build the foundation to your roadmap 19
- 20. Customer feedback The problems The solution The added value Product data Internal feedback Customer data Prototype validations 20 Inputs Outcomes Inputs helps define key outcomes
- 21. 21 Company goals Increase customer conversion by x% And these can be the catalyst to your narrative Customer reviews “I have so many choices and do not know what is best for me” Product data We have a high bounce rate on the checkout page Customer data Your customers tend to book last minute holidays Internal feedback Many of our customers call our contact centre pre checkout as they have questions about their potential booking
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- 24. KPI Reduce bounce rate by 10% As a user I would like support on knowing what the best accommodation option is for me 1 Problem We have a high bounce rate on our checkout page 24 Goal Increase customer conversion to x Then you begin to build your business case
- 25. Research 25 Brain- storming Opportunities Business case Roadmap planning 1 2 3 4 5 Roadmap planning involves a lot of prep work
- 26. Refining to find the best solution 10 26
- 27. 27 Customer feedback User feedback Strategy Internal feedback Data Finance Marketing Analytics As a product manager you need ask why? Product team
- 28. KPI Reduce bounce rate by 10% As a user I would like support on knowing what the best accommodation option is for me 1 Problem We have a high bounce rate on our checkout page 28 Goal Increase customer conversion to x Looking back at our previous example
- 29. Solution 1 2 3 Dependencies Anticipated impact Chatbot Improve search filters Add “Suggestion for you” section Reduce calls by 10% Data science, Business development Data science Customer operations GP (PA) Increase conversion by 8% Increase conversion by 7% Increase conversion by 11% £3M 29 £1M £2MIncrease partner revenue by 5%
- 30. Benefit 1 2 3 Complexity Priority Overall score 4/5 2/3 4/5 2/5 3/3 2/5 3/5 3/52/3 4 2.5 30 4 Chatbot Search Suggestion
- 31. 31 What are your competitors doing? What themes continue to reoccur? What will impact multiple stakeholders? However, being a PM involves balancing the qualitative and quantitative information
- 32. “Amazing hotel, the staff where super friendly and welcoming even though we arrived late at night. Will definitely return” The same applies when you are planning a trip 32 Qualitative Quantitative
- 33. 33
- 34. Solution 1 2 3 Dependencies Anticipated impact Chatbot Improve filters customers can apply Add “Suggestion for you” section Reduce calls by 10% Data science, Business development Data science Customer operations GP (PA) Increase conversion by 8% Reduce calls by 5% Increase conversion by 7% Increase conversion by 11% £3M 34 £1M £2MIncrease partner revenue by 5%
- 35. July 35 August September October November December Add “Suggestion for you” section Chatbot Item Y Item X And now you have a roadmap for Q3 & 4 70%+ 70%+ 70%+ 70%+ 70%+ 50-70% R e d u c e B o u n c e R a t e 2 2 Customer service dev work
- 36. 36
- 38. 38 What is your roadmap? Communicate your strategy Set an end goal Build your vision Outcome =
- 39. 40 There are many frameworks that help us build and deliver
- 40. 41 Flexibility Innovation Faster release cycles Lack of focus Uncertainty Frequent changes There is a fine line between being agile and losing focus
- 41. 42 You need to balance your release plan with your long term strategy Feature releases Long term strategy
- 42. I 43 Reduce bounce rate by 10% KPI High bounce rate on checkout page Problem Add “Suggestions for you sections” Solution Blockers Feedback Testing Data Iterate Therefore, you need to always go back to your origins QA Designs Development
- 44. 45 Key learnings 1 Understand your problem and gather all the relevant information Refine your options by building mini business cases2 3 Execute while balancing the long term vision with the short term benefits
- 45. 46 Your roadmap is not your release plan, it is a living prioritisation sequence of problems you are trying to solve.
- 46. 47 Going from fragile and agile podcast: Aaron De Smet and Chris Gagnon 200 Outcomes over Output is Product management: Josh Seiden Lean Analytics use data to build a better startup faster: Alistair Croll and Benhamin Yoskovitz Useful reads Stefania Mourouzis stefiemour@gmail.com
- 47. www.productschool.com Part-time Product Management, Coding, Data Analytics, Digital Marketing, UX Design, Product Leadership courses and Corporate Training
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- Travelling is complicated
- You need to figure out where you are going
- Why you are going
- And how you will get there. Gathering all the relevant information, managing stakeholders is essential to planning the ultimate trip. The same applies to your roadmap.
- Planning a trip is similar, there is a lot of research, key facts you need to get right, and multiple stakeholders you need to manage. Where you are going is your strategy, it your end destination and end goal whether it be increase conversion, increase number of active users etc. The why is your business case, what are you trying to solve, and the how is your roadmap.
- My name is Stefania Mourouzis and I am a product manager at Expedia focusing on customer Loyalty
- And today I will be discussing how to understand what business problems you need to solve, refining to find the best solution and finally executing your roadmap. I will be using travel as a comparison for two reason reasons a) I work for a travel company b) it is something we can all relate to. I do not have much time so I have decided to cover some essential parts of a PM’s journey at a higher level, but if you have any specific questions at the end I am happy to answer these.
- Planning your roadmap is a long and basically never ending path and involves a set of decisions. The first stop you have to make is to review your feedback this includes your quant and qual information.
- There are three key elements that build the foundation of your roadmap, the majority of it stem from your company goals and direction, followed by your team structure and finally feedback you receive from customers and other stakeholders and this results in a pool of potential.
- There is a lot of available information that help understand three things: Your problems, potential solutions and the added value And these are defined by your company goals, customer reviews, internal feedback, data generated by your products and data around your customers.
- Your customer data is your customer demographics, who are your customers what are your trying to build?
- And this is when your team generates ideas
- So if you take all this feedback you can begin building opportunities with your team. Your team need to be a part of this process, you need them to have ownership and buy into what you will be building. You want to empower them and engage from an early stafe
- You have your first theme, and that is “Improve customer happiness” for example. The problem you have is you have a high bounce rate on the check out page, and your goal or OKR is to reduce bounce rate by 10%. Now there are several solutions for this, you can find a solution to support customers on key decisions such as chat, you can improve payment options so customers can pay through apple pay for example, you can help customers make the right decision by sorting and surfacing relevant content or you can make the booking journey seamless by reducing clicks and customer input for example.
- Therefore you need to do your prep work, you need to to the relevant research before and what a lot of PMs fail to do is do the upfront work prior to the relevant meetings that determine your company's strategy. You may find yourself planning for the next quarter a month in advanced.
- So now you know what problems you are trying to solve, the next step is deciding what your team should focus on.
- FOCUS AND BALANCE And as i mentioned earlier there are so many different feedback loops, customer feedback, data, your colleagues input. As a pm your key role is just right there. You are the fuinnel that helps sive out all the clutter to find the best solution. If we simply executed on everything, not only would the company's strategy dilute but but your product will not tell the story you want it to tell. So how do you know what is right, how do you know what is next to build. But there are so many feedback channels, so what to choose next? What to choose next? Well this is when you start building what I like to call your mini business case. You are building a case for an investment your company is about to make.
- You have your first theme, and that is “Improve customer happiness” for example. The problem you have is you have a high bounce rate on the check out page, and your goal or OKR is to reduce bounce rate by 10%. Now there are several solutions for this, you can find a solution to support customers on key decisions such as chat, you can improve payment options so customers can pay through apple pay for example, you can help customers make the right decision by sorting and surfacing relevant content or you can make the booking journey seamless by reducing clicks and customer input for example.
- Take example number one, support customers on key decisions. You have potential solutions for these, but you need to build what I like to call a mini business case. This includes stating your solution, what your dependencies are (each additional dependencies automatically increases the cost and time period of the project and you have your anticipated impact (which may be more than just conversion, it could impact other KPIs) and finally your value (this may end up being a rough estimate depending on how much data you have and what other similar projects you have). So once you have put all this information together, the next step is to quantify these. Now there is no right or wrong in how to make this decision and there are so many mechanisms out there and you can choose another one that works best for you or your team.
- So now you score each of these criteria (each variable can have a different weighting depending on what is most important to your business) What is the benefit (and this is usually simply how much additional revenue this will generate or how it will reduce your company cost) Complexity (this can be done with your dev team where you tshirt size an issue (S/M/L). The higher the complexity usually the longer it takes to see your ROI and finally priority this is how urgent the feature is for your company. The way I like to see it is if you do not roll out a feature within the next year, will it have a severe impact to the business or not? Is the feature a nice to have or is it solving an important business problem. Now this score will help you understand from an opportunity and cost perspective what is the best feature to prioritise. However, if it ended there, PMS would be out of a job, cause we could automate the whole prioritisation decision making process. And this is where the art and the science aspect of being a PM comes in. If you work in tech or if you work in big organisation priority level may vary
- However it there needs be a balance between the quant and qual data to decide what to build next, this is the art and science of building a roadmap.
- Make a list Ratings feedack, Well similarly when you are planning your holidays when you have your end destination in mind, you look at qual data to help form a decision. You look at reviews of hotels and restaurants on tripadvisor and other travel sites, you browse on social media or other online platforms to understand what is trending, what are people talking about, and of course get feedback from your friends or relatives who have traveled to the same destination. The second part is looking at the quant information, you know where you are going, but how will you get there and how will you plan all the necessary parts to make this trip happen. You look at facts, prices, distances from the hotel you would like to stay in and the distance to the places you want to stay in. You plan the logistics, what is feasible and what is not, the cost of the trip and ensure it is inline with your budget.
- Now you have you qual and qaunt data, you are ready to take the relevant items to your planning sesion.
- So based on the company vision, structure and short/long term opportunity, we have come to a decision of the next best thing on our roadmap.
- So based on the company vision, structure and short/long term opportunity, we have come to a decision of the next best thing on our roadmap. This is your pipeline of innovation. And this strategy can be broken down into user research, prototype and design before any dev work begins.
- If only it ended there!
- Delivering on your plan is probably another 30 minute talk, and I would like to focus on one thing, to continue the theme of ...
- Agile has given many companies the freedom to remain innovative and plan differently. But continuous development can be dangerous and lead to the dilution of the end goal. We live in a world where data is a double edged sword as while the level of transparency your company has may help with planning and executing it also means your focus can frequently shift. There is a fine line behind agile and constant iteration and as a PM it is important you manage these forces and make sure there is always a focus.
- An outcome is change in humun behaviour that drives buisnes results and
- Agile. This is a huge buzz word and I want to clarify two things, agile is the journey not the destination and agile is not suitable for all companies. If you work in a company or own a company where you have a very predictive environment, where customer requirements are not going to change you can use traditional innovation methods.
- Agile has given many companies the freedom to remain innovative and plan differently. But continuous development can be dangerous and lead to the dilution of the end goal. We live in a world where data is a double edged sword as while the level of transparency your company has may help with planning and executing it also means your focus can frequently shift. There is a fine line behind agile and constant iteration and as a PM it is important you manage these forces and make sure there is always a focus.
- You need to balance your rerlase plan with your long term stratergy
- Flow chart- freedom slide (problem, goal, decision, path, block x, not ebeveything worls to plan, as you all know. Dicuss what can go wrong as long as you know where you are going and you figure out how you will get there, that is fine. Themes are what give you these flexibilities. Lets go back to our trip example. While you have planned to go to Greece and you know you want to go to the acropolis, put there is bad weather or delays on the road, things that are telling your to change your plans. That is ok, but as long as you know what you are achieving. Your goal in our example above is to build a suggested for you feature to improve customer conversion rate. Now while you are building, you realise that the designs are not getting the conversion you want, you go back to the drawing board and find a solution to the problem and keep going.
- Flow chart- freedom slide (problem, goal, decision, path, block x, not ebeveything worls to plan, as you all know. Dicuss what can go wrong as long as you know where you are going and you figure out how you will get there, that is fine. Lets go back to our trip example. While you have planned to go to Greece and you know you want to go to the acropolis, put there is bad weather or delays on the road, things that are telling your to change your plans. That is ok, but as long as you know what you are achieving. Your goal in our example above is to build a suggested for you feature to improve customer conversion rate. Now while you are building, you realise that the designs are not getting the conversion you want, you go back to the drawing board and find a solution to the problem and keep going.
- Useful notes Podcasts Lean analytics book- The Art of Building a Roadmap - Atlassian Summit 2016