Project NTB2B —Designing In-House Video Collaboration Tool
For Brands, Creatives, and Publishers
Published in
11 min readJan 31, 2017
** This post is to practice my PM skills.
Product Requirement Doc
Intro & Goal
Our goal is to make NTB2B a CMS collaboration tool for brands and agencies to work with our in-house production team more effectively. Other SaaS platforms in this space focus on the review and feedback aspect. NTB2B integrates with our organization’s private design assets, client communication logs, locked social media channels, compliance issues, version control, and piping data from our internal databases.
Who’s it for?
- Brands — they hire out agencies and production companies to have video content to be created (could be the buyer)
- Digital Agencies— are the middle men, always interacting and selling brands on creating video content (should be the buyer)
- Production Companies — they could be part of the publisher but could also be just the creators (would be the buyer)
- Publishers — they could have the production company or they could just act as a channel to distribute the video on top of (would be the buyer)
Why build it?
- In-house versioning.
- Privacy needed.
- Connection to other internal databases.
- Sync with private company accounts.
- Leverage more in-house knowledge to build a smoother process.
- We don’t want to be locked into a contract with a SaaS tool.
Questions
- How do they login?
- What are we using for email notifications?
- How much resource will we be investing in creating this in-house tool?
- Who evaluates which additional product feature we would need in the future?
- Do every project require a brand?
- Can this be use in our sister-company production team?
- How can we use this coupled with our Writing and Publishing CMS?
What we are not doing
- Duplicating existing SaaS video collaboration tool
- Adopting clients’ new workflow if it doesn’t suit our internal production team
- Integration with other tools we are not authorized with or have partnership with
- Open sourcing our tool
Strategy Kernel Canvas
A strategy kernel canvas provides a framework for strategic discussion. This provides us with a basis of Why we want to design an in-house video collaboration tool and what bets we are taking to see this succeed.
History (How did we get here?)
Based on how in-house collaboration tool is designed. Companies that built internal tools are NowThis, Buzzfeed, Times Inc, and Quartz.
Diagnosis (An explanation of the nature of the challenge)
Creatives and clients are unable to use public video collaboration tools effectively because it lacks internal data and pipelines, and tailored processing to make complex branded video production easy.
Guiding Policy (What is your secret? How do you create/ exploit an advantage?)
Working with creatives, we can adjust our process quickly to produce a larger volume of high-quality video content. We will use technology and the aspect of collaboration to streamline the content production. This will ultimately lead to faster testing and experimentation as well as faster learning feedback loop comparison to an open source tool.
Bet 1, 2, 3, 4
- Aligning to in-house processes will increase production speed and would decrease overall cost.
- We can build product hooks that support closer connection with clients, and increase the level of expectations for video production.
- Investment in engineering talent will pay off in the long run as we become a more technically driven editorial team.
- We can design faster templates and formats to meet duplicate content to fit all channels and formats.
Actions / Processes (Specific actions, behaviors, and mindsets that help achieve these policies.)
- Create easy templates
- Duplicate to fit different channel formats
- Streamline approval processes
- Versioning Control
- Customize Email Notifications
- Distribution
- Analytics review to continue content format experimentation
Success / Survival (KPIs and other criteria that you think to mean success.)
- Repeat partnerships with brands
- Increase views and engagement in video content
- Better video content through analytics
Jobs-to-be-Done Stories
PROCESS FROM THE CREATIVE SIDE
New Client in System
- When I receive a new client, I want to open a new client portfolio in our system, so I can record their needs.
- When I open a new client portfolio, I want to record the point person and all the stakeholders and their contact info, so I can reach out to them later.
- When I open a new client portfolio, I want to capture the deadline, so I can meet their video creation deadline.
- When I receive a new client, I want to interview them, so I can capture what they want to do.
- When I want to capture what they want to do, I want to open a high-level goal template in our system, so I can record their needs.
Interviewing Client
- When I interview my client, I want to record their goals and story idea, so I can develop a draft of a storyboard.
- When I interview my client, I want to know what their goals are, so I can meet their goal with our service.
- When I interview my client, I want to know what their story is about or what they want the story to be about, so I can create a script for their story.
Client Upload Assets
- When I understand what problems our client want to create a video about, I want to get access to the assets from my client, so I can prep what materials I can use.
- When I ask my client for assets, I want to create a section in our system so they can sync their assets into, so I can get a copy of it.
- When I receive my client’s assets, I want to tag and write notes for each asset, so I can easily find them later.
- When I get all the customer assets, I want to be able to find the right combination of assets, so I utilize some of their assets to tell the story.
Write Script
- When I write my story script, I want to communicate and review with my client, so I can create a script that all stakeholders agree on.
- When I write my story script, I want a system for my colleagues to write feedback, so they improve our deliverable to the client.
- When I write my story script, I want a system for our clients to write feedback, so they get tell us which part does not resonate with them.
- When I want to get an agreement on a story script, I want to create a check-off/approval system, so I can get final authorization from the client to move forward to refining.
Review Script
- When I get my agreed on story script, I want to check off all the compliance needs, so I meet my clients’ guidelines.
- When I get my agreed on story script, I want to condense the script into shorter sentences, so I can fit the refine script to the video.
- When I get my refined story script, I want to send and review with my client, so I can finally check off to produce the video.
Access to Public Informations
- When the client’s assets are not enough for the story script, I want to access other public assets, so I can create a consistent video.
- When the client wants more statistics they don’t have, I want to access other public information, so I can create a good story script.
Creation
- When I am storyboarding, I want to upload my mockups, so I have artifacts for my team to review and create on top of.
- When I am storyboarding, I want to pull in my colleagues, so we can take notes together.
- When I am taking notes and reviewing the story, I want to do real-time chat, so I can store all conversation and brainstorming in the system.
- When I am creating the 1st version of the video, I want to preview easily and fast, so I don’t have to wait to be creative.
Versioning
- When I create the 1st version of the video, I want to review it with my client, so I can review where we can improve.
- When I review with my client about our video, I want to create a second by second review and feedback, so we can review what slide works or does not.
- When I create the 2nd version of the video, I want to create a new video upload in the client project, so we can keep the file versioning independent.
Distribution
- When the client and I finalized on our video, we want to add the video to our social media queue, so I can send it out.
- When the video is in our queue, we want to be able to cancel the distribution, so we can further improve it or change when we can schedule the launch.
Analysis
- When the video is distributed, we want to capture all the analytics around the video, so we can show our success to our client.
- When I receive the analytics, we want to create a report for the clients, so we can compare if we meet the client’s goals.
- When it is the year-end, I want to create an aggregated accomplishment of metrics, so we can analyze as a company what we can improve on.
PROCESS FROM THE BRAND SIDE
Pitch
- When its time to invest in video content marketing, I want to hire a digital agency or publisher, so I can get a high-quality content produce.
- When I hire a digital agency or publisher, I want to explain our brand and what our customers find important, so we can get our video to resonate.
- When I hire a digital agency or publisher, I want to have a video that reaches viral growth, so we can build more audience and get more customers.
- When I hire a digital agency or publisher, I want them to be successful, so I allow them to get access to our repositories of information and media assets.
- When I am pitching my company story, I want to pull in my colleagues, so I don’t miss anything and they can help me fill in.
Review
- When my company talks about what we want, I want to provide the agency with a set of guidelines that adhere to our brand and company, so they won’t deliver work that doesn’t match our need.
- When the agency delivers the 1st version, I want to review it and give feedback, so they can improve on our notes.
- When the agency delivers the 2nd version, I want to review it and give feedback, so they can improve on our notes.
- When I am reviewing my video prototype, I want to pull in my colleagues, so I can extra pair of eyes for feedback and review.
- When the agency is working on our video, I want to make sure I get a progress report, so I know we spent our investment wisely.
Cross Distribute
- When the agency decides to distribute, I want to them give us the original, so we can archive it and do as wish with PR, marketing, etc.
Post-Distribution
- When the agency launches the video, I want a real-time sentiment and progress report on how the video is doing, so we can react if anything goes wrong.
- When the agency launches the video, I want to capture all areas its being distributed and watched, so we can pull unwanted advertising.
Product Team OKRs
Source: https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-write-an-OKR
Q1
Ideate and co-create CMS foundation
- Interview 30 video producers about their video production process
- Talk with 10 brand managers how they are working with their digital agency currently
- Develop 4 use cases to be addressed
Write scope and requirements
- Identify top 10 common features and their benefits for video producers
- Identify top 10 common features and their benefits for brand managers
- Refine both list to top 5 features
- Include 5 must-haves to get MVP out the door
Create wireframes
- Work with designers to highlight top 5 features
- Smooth out user experience
Create a roadmap and scheduling timeline
- Coordinate with engineers to break down MVP into 4 sub sections
- Prioritize top 5 items per each sprint
Q2
Create a high fidelity prototype of the MVP
- Review with video producers if flow matches, and get feedback on where to improve
- Use wizard of oz experiments to test if users passes through 70% confidence level
- Create templates from written reports
Launch an awesome CMS MVP
- Work closely with 5 video producers in the beta testing phase
- Invite 5 brand managers to test the collaboration beta
Conduct Refactoring Exercise with Product Team
- Set up 5 user interviews to uncover user flow problems
- Identify top 10 bugs and incorporate into next sprint backlog
- Layout technical refactoring strategy for Q3 execution
Q3
Increase weekly engagement
- Test 4 methods of notifications
- Identify power users and document their behavior
- Modify 7 day retention flow and increase weekly usage by 15%
Implement Technology Refactoring
- Incorporate new activation flow based on user data and behavior to increase time spent on CMS
- Test and retire 5 unused features
- Rollout new tech infrastructure with updated data structure
Improve Product and Renew Brand Contracts for Q1 of next year
- Relay top 5 challenges for brand managers in the upcoming year
- Design proposal to lock brand contracts with 10 new features
- Work with product team to roadmap the 10 new features by order of solving buyer’s challenge and easing users’ process
Trello Product Road Map
Screenshots of Trello board
Source: https://foldingburritos.com/articles/2015/10/20/a-trello-template-for-your-product-backlog/
Source: https://community.uservoice.com/blog/trello-google-docs-product-management/
Gary-Yau Chan is a SaaS entrepreneur and currently lives in Brooklyn NY. You can also message him on Twitter @garyyauchan. Or catch him at The Startup Chat Facebook Group.
