Product Lift-off methodology to kickoff projects
On Wednesday 2nd of March 2020 Casavo’s office has hosted a new format of project kickoff for the company, named “lift-off”. The lift-off is a practice which has 3 main objectives:
- To give shape to the project and clearly define its purpose;
- To create alignment between the people involved in the project;
- To clarify the wider context in which the project fits and possible constraints.
Usually, this practice is a workshop that is carried out at the beginning of a project (or product development).
The term lift-off is a metaphor for the project start-up. Differently from the better-known project “kick-off”, the term lift-off emphasizes the concept that the start of the project is a collegial, not an individual phase and that it is essential to create alignment between all participants.
The meeting lasted 3 hours and we have used a format made of 6 different steps:
- Scope definition
- Elevator Pitch
- PR release
- Neighbors identification
- Features to keep/drop/add
- Sharing of priorities
What is needed to perform a lift-off?
- Sticky Notes
- Markers
- Posters on which the team can write and attach the notes
- Food and drinks!
Who participates to the lift-off?
It is essential to have a diverse composition: the business owner, the team, product managers, business analysts, in general, the project community, and — if possible — the clients themselves.
To wrap it up, anyone who will be a stakeholder of the product. In our case we had people from Design, Product, Strategy, Tech, Investments, and so on.
I. Scope
As a first step, we asked ourselves “WHY?” and used sticky notes to give every possible answer each one of us had. We gathered then the answers in clusters, in this case, we came up with 6 main “WHY”.
II. Elevator pitch
An elevator pitch is defined as a short but effective explanation that is intended to persuade someone to buy a product or accept an idea. In imagining an elevator pitch of the product, each member of the team completed, with a sticky note for each empty space, a sentence structured as follow: “This is _____ who ____. [Name of Product] is a _____ that ____. Unlike ____ our product _____”
The synthesis of the many standpoints we expressed is:
“This is a product for brokers and business partners, who want to manage and advertise high-end properties; Doris is a user-friendly platform that enables them to create, manage and follow up their listed properties through a series of innovative and efficient services available. Unlike traditional solutions, our product is data-driven and free, with the best customer experience on the market.”
III. Press Release
We drafted than a Press Release of the product, imagining how it would be announced to the market.
To do so each one of us wrote down on a sticky note a:
- PR Headline
- PR Subtitle
- The PR Content
- A customer Quote
IV. Neighbors
The “Neighbors identification” is a step that allows to identify all the stakeholders which will relate to the product, directly or indirectly, and what kind of relation there will be.
In our case, we found that, besides all the product- and tech-related tasks, investment teams and brokers are the ones with a major interest stake in the product: investment teams are seen has having sourcing, analysis and transaction-management interests; brokers will “feed” the platform, while we will be providing it and promoting it to them.
Another interesting founding is that competitors will be stakeholders because they will be interested in discovering, reacting, and imitating our platform, and our goal is to differentiate from them. Finally, furniture companies and partners will have an interest in being included in the platform too.
V. Features
We listed the features of the product, already existing and not, to then categorize them in 3 main buckets: Keep, Drop, Add. In the Add cluster we found 2 sub-clusters: Add with high priority, Add later.
This is pretty useful to have an eye of “Where we are” and “where we want to be”, to understand all the features which will make the product successful.
IV. Priorities
Finally, we used a specific matrix to understand which are the most important topics for us, regarding the product.
To do so we developed a 4x4 matrix. We put in the horizontal line a number from 4 to 1, and on the vertical one “Scope”, “Quality”, Budget”, “Time”. Every number could be chosen only one time so that we could understand what matters most in the development of the product and what could be less prioritized.
