Introducing the Bain Public SOAP™ Product Leadership Framework. A Practical Definition.
Most companies don’t have a clear picture of their roadmap. This is the reason why many businesses fail, so the question to many business owners out there is this: are you confident that your engineering team is building the right features? Bain Public’s SOAP™ methodology and tool offers a full picture of your product strategy, tactics, metrics and roadmap all in one place. So there’s no more guessing, no lack of focus or direction. Bain Public companies grow faster because everyone is aligned, motivated, inspired, and ready to innovate.
But first, what is SOAP™?
SOAP™ is a methodology that Bain Public created for product planning and roadmap prioritization based on principles of Product Strategy, Lean Startup, User-centered design, Data Science and more.
It breaks product innovation in 3 steps — Product Mission, Product Blueprint and Roadmap Pillars. This 12-week process covers the tactics, strategies and mindsets that underpin these 3 steps thinking. It’s an approach designed to help organizations create knowledge and build product strategies. When employed, it will help create new value, respect stakeholder opinion while getting buy-in, and optimize product delivery through iterative releases while validating and eliminating waste.
The SOAP™ Methodology is designed and targeted to executives who are driving real results at the world’s fastest-growing product companies. These are the directors, VPs, and C-level leaders who have the mandate of delivering digital product solutions for years to come. Using a combination of expert advice, coaching and online software, Bain Public guides product leaders to establish a sustainable, repeatable planning and prioritization framework and create the environment that gets the most value out of a company’s resources.
With SOAP™’s organizational models, operational tactics and online tools, you will shape harmonious collaborations, accentuate connections and ease information sharing.
A deep-dive into the SOAP™ Methodology
In a picture, SOAP™ guides you, step by step, to play to your strengths and passions while simultaneously leading your company from the “idea parking lot” stage of product strategy through the “development” and “go-to-market” stages of strategic product execution as shown in the picture below:
SOAP™ helps you to drive your business up the “drunken walk” stages into a zone of growing revenues and profits. Then, from this position of strength, we guide your organization to structure and prioritize the launch and development of new products that will, in turn, go through their own lifecycle stages for sustained, profitable performance over time.
The SOAP™ methodology encourages organizations to evaluate their high-level strategic baseline against the product mission, its strategies and tactics regularly. This can result in increased investment in some places and, from time to time, redeployment in others. These decisions are the result of the SOAP™ methodology being applied quarter after quarter.
Let’s look at the different parts of the system up close. The SOAP™ 12-module approach covers the tactics, strategies and mindsets that underpin the 3 steps thinking.
- Step 1: Your Product Mission
- Step 2: Your Product Blueprint
- Step 3: Your Roadmap Pillars
The SOAP™ 12-Module Process:
Week 1: Audit & Analyze Business Model
- BHAG
- Define the problem
- Define the solution
- Revisit company value proposition
- Assemble your value proposition
Week 2: Create a Business Model Canvas for your Product
- Do you have a product/market fit?
- Revisit product mission, strategy, tactics
- Deep dive customer segment
- Deep dive value proposition
- Deep dive channels
- Deep dive customer relationships
- Deep dive cost structure
- Deep dive revenue stream
Week 3: Product Mission, Strategy, & Tactics
- Establish the product mission
- Define the product strategies
- Define the product tactics
- Complete your one-pager
Week 4: Personas & Competitors
- Establish the personas
- Define the competitors
Week 5: Decision-making Framework
- Being a “dumb” product manager
- Feature parking lot
- Decision framework
Week 6: Blueprint & 666 Roadmap
- Product blueprint
- Data portrait
- The 666
Week 7: Pillar Documents, Strategic Value & OKRs
- Product roadmap
- Pillar documents
- Product strategy
- OKRs
- Decision-making criteria
Week 8: Pillar Documents & Technical Scope
- Project triangle approach
- Scope
- RAID
- Defining DONE
Week 9: Prioritize with engineers
- Pillars
- Prioritization
- WTP vs perceived value
- Strategic scoreboard
- MosCoW
Week 10: Prioritize with stakeholders
- Prioritization
- Business impact
- Pillar documents
- OKRs
- Communication
- PLC management
Week 11: Go-to-market Sales & Marketing
- Launch plan
- Strategies
- Customer communication
Week 12: First 30 Days
- Wrap up
- Product leadership
- Roadmap
Done right, SOAP™ keeps the team, management, and stakeholders aligned on the why (goals), what (ideas) and how (steps and tasks), where every task is connected to a business goal.
Curious to know more? The SOAP™ process comes bundled with our SOAP™ digital platform. If you’re unsure of where you are in your product leadership journey and are looking for the perfect setup, we offer workshops to implement SOAP™ within the structure of your organisation.
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Bain Public is a product leadership firm that helps companies make informed decisions and deliver superior quality products that appeal to customers and achieve business goals. We offer a variety of blog posts, e-books and approaches designed to help you understand your digital strategies and establish elements of the product roadmap in the fabric of your business. A lack of strategy in planning your products is accompanied by a lack of focus and direction, which means things can quickly get out of hand. We step in to assess, clean up, and eliminate friction between people and processes to stimulate the organisation and maintain focus on creating quality products. For more information, visit bainpublic.com or call 514–442–8487.
