Stage 1: Business Research

Kick-off meeting & Stakeholder interviews

Events that will help the team start the project as efficiently as possible (come to the same vision and understanding of the project).

Photo by Jason Goodman on Unsplash

A kick-off meeting is a stage when the team gathers all interested persons and stakeholders in one place where they discuss: high-level goals and questions about the processes on the project, etc.

Stakeholder interviews are meetings where the team can ask and get answers (possibly insights) about a product, service, or other aspects of the business.

Stakeholders are business representatives, business analysts, or key people from the development team who have deep knowledge of the product, have been working on it for a long time, or are simply experts in the industry.

The purpose of the kick-off meeting

To determine the vision and goals of the project. For instance, what problems your team will solve, what people will be involved in the project, etc.

The purpose of the stakeholder interviews

To answer 4 main questions that will guide the project in the right direction. So you need to find out:

• What. This is a try to understand what kind of product the team makes, its vision, and its value proposition. It is also an attempt to formulate requirements or prioritize functions.
• Why. This is an attempt to understand “for whom (for users)” and “for what (business aspect, what benefits the product should bring)” we make this product.
• How. This is an attempt to understand “how we will do this project” and “how our work on it will be organized (for example, what methodology will we work with).
• Who. This is an attempt to understand who the stakeholders are.

It is very good when stakeholders are involved in such processes because in the future it will be easier for them to make decisions and approve the design. After all, they will feel involved in the decision that you will present.

Value for the team

Allows the team to get to know the business, ask and receive answers to questions, learn important things about the project, users, and business, as well as plan meetings and other organizational issues that affect the successful launch of the product.

Value for business

It will help the team understand what goals the business sets, what it wants to get, how it wants to make a profit, what value the product can bring to our users, etc.

Duration:

• Preparation: up to 4 hours for a kick-off meeting and from 2 to 4 hours for stakeholder interviews
• Main activity: from 1 to 3 hours for a kick-off meeting and from 1 to 2 hours for stakeholder interviews

The process of preparation for the kick-off meeting:

It is necessary to organize a meeting for all the stakeholders and interested parties so that everyone is involved in the process.

You do not need to go into details about the project. The main task is to understand the high-level requirements and to determine the goals with which the team will move to achieve success. It is better to prepare well for the meeting, as this is probably the only time you will be able to talk to the business and show yourself as a highly qualified professional.

Step 1. Gathering information

This is a very important stage, which directly affects the efficiency and outcome of the meeting. To prepare for this stage, you can use the method of “Preparatory & Secondary research (Desk research)”, which I described in the previous article. Also, it will be very good if you find out if there are any restrictions in this area, and also try to discuss the development process (frameworks: Scrum, Waterfall or Kanban, etc.).

Step 2. Create and send a meeting schedule to all participants

This is necessary so that everyone understands what will happen (what questions you will ask and what you expect to achieve), in what sequence, and what needs to be prepared for it.

Step 3. During the meeting:

• Introduction. It is necessary to quickly, but at the same time present yourself as a specialist: who you are, what is your experience, what position you hold, what you will do in this project, what you are responsible for, and what questions can be addressed to you.
• Business review. Ask the stakeholders to tell the team about the business and its strategy. It is very important and vital for you to understand how businesses want to make money, what are the specifics of their industry, and what are the limitations and risks that can lead to failure, etc.
• Project review. First of all, you need to understand what problems the team will solve on this project, as well as what will be the purpose of your product or service, and what value the project will have for users. Ask stakeholders how they concluded that these problems exist and that they can be solved with this future product. Also, it would be nice of us if we identify the metrics of project success. Thus, the team will know whether the project is successful or not, whether we have solved user problems, and whether the business is satisfied. Also, ask if the stakeholders have UX research already done that they can share with you.
• Talk about the target audience (based on a subjective vision from the business side). It is necessary to determine the goals of users, what are their pains and needs, and how the product will solve them. Perhaps there are well-known products that users are using now. Ask if there will be an opportunity to explore and talk to users, and if an interactive wireframe is made, then conduct usability testing.
• Competitive analysis. What are the direct and subsidiary competitors of the product? Perhaps the stakeholders are aware of the strategies of competitors or other insights.
• Team definition. It is necessary to determine who will be responsible for what, and what role he or she will play in the project. Also, you need to find out who will provide content to the project, who you can contact with questions about the business, etc. For such things, you can use the RACI matrix (responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed).
• Deadline. Find out about the deadlines for project submission, and the intermediate dates for the presentation of project status.
• Discuss the design approval process. The design approval process needs to be discussed and the final decision should be made by 1 person. The same applies to the changes in the project. Also, it is necessary to discuss the process of changing the requirements (for example, the team has done some work, it was approved, but the client wants to change something).

Step 4. Meeting follow-up (MFU) / Meeting minutes

This document contains all the notes that were discussed at the meeting. The last step is to write a letter to the stakeholders. The responsible person will describe everything that happened at this event (what was discussed, what was agreed, what was promised, what the stakeholders should provide, etc.), and when the next meeting was scheduled.

Stakeholder interviews

After you have successfully held a Kick-off meeting and scheduled the next meetings for interviews with stakeholders, you need to return to the artifact from the previous stage of “Preparatory & Secondary research (Desk research)”. This document should contain all your questions, conclusions, and hypotheses that you need to ask at the interview and get quality answers.

Stakeholder interviews are almost the same as user interviews. This is the same principle of constructing questions based on hypotheses. Read more in the article “User interviews (based on proto-persona) & Hypothesis”.