lecture 13: product development

Duke ECE 490L: How to Start New Ventures in Electrical and Computer Engineering

Poornima Vijayashankerpoornima@femgineer.com

Jeff Glass jeff.glass@duke.edu

Akshay Rautar118@duke.edu

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Review

Duke ECE 490L

• Feedback Collection

• Customer Case Study

• Demand Creation Activities

• Exercise

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Idea Summary

Review Session:Wednesday October 23, 2013

DUHatch

Sign up for a session here!

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Agenda

Duke ECE 490L

• Collect Feedback from Customers

• Create Team Alignment

• How to Create Product Roadmap

• How to Pick Features for a MVP

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Customer Discovery Validation Customer CreationBusiness/Company

Formation

Early AdopterPricing Product

Distribution

Mainstream AdoptersMoney for Marketing

Market Research

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Customer Discovery Validation Customer CreationBusiness/Company

Formation

Early AdopterPricing Product

Distribution

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Process.

Customer Discovery

Release.

Build.Measure

Rework Usability TestingProduct Roadmap

Feasibility given resources.

Feedback

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What is an minimum viable product?

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1. Value proposition2. Early adopter

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WireframesUsability TestingCollect Feedback

Create Stories

ProductRoadmap

Align business and product

Minimum Viable Product

Differentiate

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Stages of usability testing.

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Paper Prototyping

Low FidelityQuick IterationsTest Concepts

Wireframes

Low FidelityHigh InteractivityTest Workflows

High FidelityHi Fidelity

Low InteractivityTest Branding

PrototypeHi Fidelity

High InteractivityTest Usage &

Adoption

Sometimes you have to go back!

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WireframesUsability TestingCollect Feedback

Create Stories

ProductRoadmap

Align business and product

Minimum Viable Product

Differentiate

Supplemental Reading: 3 Reasons You Need a Product Roadmap, Blurred Vision is Better than Blindness

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Vision.

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Customers

Team Stakeholders

Clear product value proposition.

ROIMotivated to builda new solution, andpersonally grow.

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Customers

Team Stakeholders

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1. Employees need to have empathy.

Supplemental Reading: Getting Your Startup Team to Understand Your Customer

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Duke ECE 490LSupplemental Reading: Getting Your Startup Team to Understand Your Customer

2. Product priorities.

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SimplicityConsistency

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3. Time to learn.

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Set goals.

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Align Business Goals with Building Product Features

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• Customer Acquisition: get them to sign up!

• Customer Retention: keep them around and interested.

• Monetization: make $ off of them.

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Sept 2011 Oct 2011 Nov 2011 Dec 2011 Jan 2012 Feb 2012

ProductDevelopment

Optimize Attendance

Monthly Email Summary

Payment Gateway Integration

Reporting for Tax time

Integrate with QuickBooks

Customize reminder emails for member retention

Multiple Login Scheduling Integrated with Online Store

Business Benefit

• retention• re-engagement

• new customers• new source of

revenue based on % transaction

• retention• new customers

• retention• new customers

• retention• new customers

• new customers• larger studios• increase 

revenue

1. Infrastructure 2. New Features 3. Customer Requests

Business Goal of Feature

ANATOMY OF A PRODUCT ROADMAP

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Purpose of Product Roadmap

Duke ECE 490L

• Conveys long term vision

• Dig into one feature at a time when brainstorming

• Anticipate delays

• Prepare for accelerators (funding or growth)

• Business goals tie into what you are measuring (metrics)

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Getting buy-in.

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Deal with objections before you build!

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Customers

Team Stakeholders

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Dealing with push back.

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Embrace Pushback

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• Understand where it’s coming from

• Bring it back to the vision

• Postmortems: give people a forum to be heard

• Acknowledge and appreciate: recognize efforts

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Create alignment.

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Embrace Pushback

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• Understand each groups interest• What’s in it for them?

• Change of behavior• Be careful with too much process.

• Small sales• Get buy-in at each stage

• Checkpoints• Consistent Communication

• Conflict resolution

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Designer

Developer Product Manager

Feasibility given time frame and abilities.

Functionality

Wireframes

High Fidelity Mockups

Business Goals

Product Lifecycle

Coordination

Usability

Customer Discovery

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Designer

Developer Product Manager

Creates stories

Hands off wireframes

Creates high fidelity

Hands off high fidelity

Some code

Tests

Builds functionality

Implements high fidelity

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Designer

Developer Product Manager

Needs to understand design for implementation

Held up waiting for design

Creativity needs time

Wants to iterate

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Choose goals carefully for MVP.

Supplemental Reading: The Best Startups Minimize Their Dimensions of Innovation

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Establish a loose process initially.

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Designer

Developer Product Manager

Begin implementing functionality that is de-coupled from design.

Receive feedback before iterate.

Orchestrate small hand-offs

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Process.

Customer Discovery

Release.

Build.Measure

Rework Usability TestingProduct Roadmap

Feasibility given resources.

Feedback

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Keep the process in check with a postmortem.

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Postmortem

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• Monthly or quarterly meetings• Give people a forum to be heard • Take turns on who runs• Broken down into 2 meetings one for voicing feedback and second for coming

up with solutions

• Not the time to be sensitive• Freedom to list pros and cons of current process• Don’t blame people blame the process and goals

• Compile list• Pick a couple things to focus on• Revisit list each postmortem and check progress of changes

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Team will need to iterate.

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Both the process and product.

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WireframesUsability TestingCollect Feedback

Create Stories

ProductRoadmap

Align business and product

Minimum Viable Product

Differentiate

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Phase 1Set expectations for early adopters

Track usageMechanism for collecting feedback

Phase 1Phase 2Address feedback

Validate MVP featuresContinue to communicate

Phase 3Segment feedback:

Blockers v. improvementsIterate

Before shipping

After shipping

Before next iteration

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Go back to initial interviews.

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Solve the problem the competitor

causes.

Differentiate.

Give them something they didn’t know they needed.

Displace current solution that isn’t

competitor.

Onboarding process

Minimum VALUE product

Think about customer service.

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Needs exposed in initial interview +

Feedback from paper prototyping

Feedback from interactive wireframes+

Minimum Viable Product

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Picking Features

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• Should know your early adopter by now!• Differentiate based acute needs of early adopter.• You might not be able to build the exact MVP you want.

• resource constraints (time, budget, talent) or the complexity involved

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Can’t Build What You Want

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• Still address a pressing need for early adopters.• Identify a value proposition.• Differentiate from competition.

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Prioritizing Stories

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• Building the basics.• Breaking down stories into basic components.• Handling scope creep.• Re-prioritizing stories.• Test (internally) + Ship + Test (early adopters)

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KEY OBJECTIVE(S) AGENDA

RESOURCESDELIVERABLE

EXERCISE

Design roadmap for your product.

10 minutes

1.High level features2.List key benefits of the features3.Proposed timeline

Working product roadmap.

Template for roadmap.

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Review

Duke ECE 490L

• Feedback Collection

• Customer Case Study

• Demand Creation Activities

• Exercise

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