Product Roadmap Process : Sublet My Place (Part 1)

4 min readMay 9, 2018

Business Goal

A marketplace for users to sublet their place (either a part or entire place) for a shorter period of time (eg: 3 months during summer internship).

Three sub-business goals

Provide a space for renter to post a listing to sublet their place
Provide an avenue for rentee to view and filter multiple listings
Provide a platform of communication between renter and rentee

Competition

Airbnb : Airbnb is mainly catered to very short-term stay
Craigslist : Not very user-friendly
Facebook marketplace : Mainly renting for longer term and too many irrelevant posts
Apartment List : Renting for longer lease

Target Customers

Students
Interns
People transitioning between jobs

Personas

User Stories

As an apartment renter, I want to sublet my spare room so that I can lessen my rent burden
As as student, I want to sublet my entire apartment for 3 months during my summer trip to so that I will not lose my beautiful place when I return
As an intern, I want to rent a room for 3 months during my summer internship so that I do not need to lease entire apartment
As a student, I want to rent a room within 1 mile from the university so that I can save time going to classes
As a city-lover, I want to rent a furnished place in the city so that I can have friends come over
As a father of 2 kids, I want to temporarily sublet a place of 3 bedrooms before transitioning into the new job in the city so that I can search for a cheaper rented place in long term
As a mother of 1 infant, I want laundry on site so that I can save time
As a pet lover, I want to rent where cats are allowed so that I can bring in my cat
I want a private bath so that I do not waste time in sharing a common bathroom
As a father of 2, I want parking facility such as attached garage or carport so that I can park my car

Feature List

Ability to filter by listing type : Entire space/private room
Ability to filter by duration of stay : 1 month, 3 months, 6 months
Show price tag on the picture
Search feature on title and description
Ability to upload multiple photos
Ability to upload video
Ability to filter by number of bedrooms: 1 bedroom, 2 bedrooms, 3 bedrooms
Ability to filter by location: geographical region, city
Radius to certain Location
Ability to select furnished or not
Ability to select private bath
Ability to filter out if pets are allowed: dogs ok, cats ok
Ability to filter by housing type: apartment, condo, house, in-law, manufactured, townhouse
Ability to post laundry information: laundry in unit, laundry on site, no laundry on site
Ability to post parking information: attached garage, off-street parking, carport, no parking
Search feature on options
Ability to sort by price
Ability to sort on bedrooms
Ability to sort on radius from location

Prioritization Matrix (aka Stack Rank method)

Value: 1–10, where 1 indicates the feature has minimum contribution towards achieving Value and 10 where there is high positive impact on achieving Value.

Effort: 1–10, opposite ranking. 1 is most effort 10 is least effort.

**Prioritization Matrix (Stack Rank Method)**

MoSCoW Method of Prioritization

Rank features by classifying them as MUST, SHOULD, COULD, or WON’T, with respect to whether they should be included in an upcoming product release.