How to Speed Up Product Launch with Scoping Session
You have a great product idea. Turn it into a business. Minimize the cost and get the most business value as soon as possible.
From Idea to Product Development
You have a great idea for a product. It’s been in your head for quite a while now and it still makes sense. After looking at it from several different angles your inventor mind says This idea will become a product.
What to do next? Turning an idea into a product may look dead easy or neuroscience, depending on who you ask and what you google. Before taking the idea to development, you should build a solid foundation. You should know and understand who will use the product, what problem it will solve, how much time and money the development will cost, how to make it cost less, and the list goes on…
Scoping session is a good starting point.
What is a Scoping Session?
Scoping Session is a process in which a group of experts breaks your idea down into parts and provides crucial insights on how to build it. Its goal is to minimize the cost and get the most business value as soon as possible. Scoping Session helps you bring your product to life faster and more cost-effectively.
So, how does a Scoping Session look like? At EL Passion we split the process into three parts:
- Collecting the materials
- Backlog building session
- Time and cost estimation
Scoping Session — How to Prepare
To start things off, you’re asked to send the scoping team all the project materials that you already have, like mockups or specifications. It gives us a better understanding of the product. The more information you give, the better the team prepares. Don’t worry if you don’t have a lot — all the information we need may be gathered later on.
At this point we also decide, depending on your needs, who will be included in the process: backend, frontend or mobile developers, UI designers. One person that we always include in the scoping team is a UX designer. He or she needs to make sure that potential users will want to use the product. That way you have access to all the necessary skills and insights that are important for your product’s success.
Scoping Session — What to Expect
The most intense part of the process takes place during the backlog building session. It’s a full-day meeting with the developers, UI/UX designer(s) and a business person. You can meet the team in person and learn about the way they work.
Defining the MVP
At the beginning we get to know each other and talk about your vision of the product. At the same time you get to know our transparent development process and we get to know your expectations towards it.
After this short introduction we build the product backlog by defining user stories. It is a common and business-friendly way to describe software functionalities.
Our goal is to define the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) — the minimum amount of features that will deliver the value to the users and has a potential to monetize. That way you can validate your idea very early on, get feedback for future development and maximize the Return On Investment (ROI).
How does it look in practice? We ask lots and lots of questions. Even if your idea seems fairly simple at first, we dig deep to uncover all the scenarios and edge cases. It helps to prepare for technical challenges and limitations that we may encounter later on. It also allows us to provide you with the best recommendations and identify all the possible risks.
When the MVP is defined, all parties involved in the process share a deep level of understanding of the product.
T-Shirt Estimation
After the backlog is ready, we get to the T-shirt estimation. During this part developers estimate the size of each user story. They are classified between extra-small, small, medium, large and extra-large ones.
That way the team is able to evaluate the effort involved in each user story in a more abstract way. We do this to be able to easily compare the relative cost of functionalities and help you to decide which of them to include in the MVP.
You’re Ready to Start the Development
The backlog building session is over. The next day the scoping team prepares a careful time and cost estimation. It includes different variants and team sizes, so you can choose the one that suits you best.
At the end you get:
- Backlog
- Time and cost estimation
- List of potential risks and possible ways to manage them
- Understanding of how to build a MVP and turn it into profit.
If you want to bring your idea to life and you wonder what is the best next step, the answer is easy — the Scoping Session is the way to go! It’ll help you turn your product into a great success story. We invite you to share it with one of our scoping teams at EL Passion.
