Product Ownership Techniques # 3 — Product Market Fit
Here is my next post on the techniques that are prominently used in Product Management (as mentioned in CPOA -IIBA). Refer to my previous post for notes on the Customer Journey Map.
What is Product-Market Fit?
Product Market Fit is the foundational step for building a successful product that addresses who my target customers are, what their needs are and how the product I build aligns with the customer needs.
Let’s Deep Dive…
First of all, a good Product-Market fit happens for two reasons, either the product goes places with the help of customers or there is an excessive demand for your type of product. If we look into the former, it could be due to the fact that the product brings actual value to the customers as well as the business.
Product-Market fit can be achieved when the company’s value proposition, customers and distribution channels coexist in a balanced ecosystem.
What we infer from the above is, in order to have a successful product, the right mix of the mentioned three factors should be taken into account.
So, if you want to study
- Your product positioning
- Features that can possibly excite a customer or
- If your customer and product are always aligned, Product-Market Fit is the best bet!
Determining the product-market fit is essential for any type of organization, be it a start-up or an established enterprise.
For Startups, it is an important aspect to be considered, as the tracking and measuring of the growth are of paramount importance. Snapchat is an emerging messaging platform that kind of targets young users. Addressing the needs of the younger generation becomes important here and has to be constantly measured.
For Established Enterprises, there will be a need to evaluate their new offerings and determine if it fits the customer’s needs. Facebook is a mature social media platform and any new feature that is rolled out from its offerings will be analyzed first if it meets the customer’s needs
To realize good results from the Product-Market Fit exercise,
- It shall be created in the initial phases of the product conceptualization or during any product launch or release to the customer.
- Can be verified at the end of each customer release and feedback will drive the decisions for the backlog in a future release.
Elements of a Product-Market Fit
Following are the different elements of the Product-Market, which brings out the details or questions to be asked to differentiate a product, what it actually solves and how to measure its success.
Problem Statement:
Solution:
Value Proposition:
Customers:
Assumptions and Risks:
Metrics:
From the above, we have identified what are the elements that need to be considered for determining the Product-Market Fit for your product, along with the questions asked in each step and validate how your product actually is going to solve the customer’s needs.
That takes us to the next steps in creating the Product-Market Fit.
There are 9 steps or processes to arrive at the Product Market Fit for your product, which you can see from the below illustration.
Limitations:
We have seen that determining the Product-Market Fit helps us to be creative, innovative when it comes to customer needs and ensure the product aligns with customer needs and the dynamic marketplace. However, it has few limitations on the deck, like,
- The decisions from the Product-Market Fit makes sense when used with other product planning strategies like Business Model Canvas
- The Product Market Fit of a product should be relevant and aligned with the product on a continuous basis.
