Prioritizing Under Pressure
We talked to users and created an amazing product with rave reviews. Unfortunately, a month after release our biggest customer acquired our smaller competitor and cut us out.
User Focused not User Driven
Building a good product requires designers to spend significant time interacting with and talking to users to build empathy. This is critical for uncovering the needs and pain points to focus efforts on the right features to build. It is a rare (yet wonderful) product or industry that operates in the true blue ocean without any competitors.
During conversations with users they will name drop the multitude of other products they use to achieve their goals. Heck, you may even use an analogy “we’re the <latest unicorn> of <untapped market>” to describe your own offering! With enough research the variables of competition becomes clear which directs features to top competitors and circumvent alternatives. High fives all around!
Parallel Universe
But wait… The same competitors and alternatives have amazing teams going through the exact same process as well! They could very well be at their co-working space clinking a beer celebrating YOUR company’s defeat at the hands of their own upcoming killer app. Mature industries that exist in an oligopoly, think consumer packaged goods, live in this constant state of tug-of-war. Often, the world is much more complex.
An effective way to break out of the back-and-forth and gain the upper hand is to place yourself in the mindset of the key players of your industry. If you don’t have a good idea who those players are you can use Business Canvas Modeling or Porter’s Five Forces to identify the landscape. By looking at your own business through multiple lenses you can gain insight into how to frame your roadmap for competitive success in addition to user delight.
Wargaming
One technique for framing the conversation around competitors is wargaming. This approach provides two key benefits: competition and future focus.
First, it can be challenging to separate bias for your own company and think about the benefits of competitors. Making the simulation a competition leverages our human instinct to win! Even the description as a game allows for a creative mindset and safe for failure.
Second, the simulation focuses on steps being taken in the future. It is easy to stay grounded in the present, particularly with the incremental approach of agile development or lean. A war game will stress your long-term roadmap and help you think a few steps ahead.
Play the Game
All it takes is a quick 1-hour workshop to run your own simulation.
Materials: Whiteboards, post-its, multiple conference rooms.
Step 1: Give a quick overview of the industry and key players to make sure everyone is on the same page.
Step 2: Break everyone up into teams and randomly assign everyone a specific company to represent (i.e. you will be Walmart). Drawing cards is a great way to increase the drama!
Step 3: Provide a prompt of the challenge you are tackling and have everyone break up to brainstorm ideas. A prompt can be as simple as, “What big bets will your company make over the next year?”
Step 4: Bring everyone back together to present their company’s strategy. Start with YOUR company first. It is okay for the other teams to adjust after hearing your ideas!
Step 5: Rinse and repeat. Go back in time and have each of the teams brainstorm again now that they know how each of the companies will react. Create a better strategy!
Step 6: Present the new strategies but this time allow your company to go last. If everyone is cheering the you’ve probably discovered a valuable insight about the competition. If the room feels a little cold then it is probably time for management to have a follow-up meeting…
The Future is Now
The final step is to record the results so you can check them against reality in the future. Tactically, this should also prompt a quick backlog review of features to shift priorities based on the insights. If you have a strong design feedback loop don’t expect too much to change. A significant reshuffling may push your product towards a competitor focus and away from users. Hopefully, with the right balance of user research combined with competitive intelligence you will find yourself in the sweet spot of product-market fit.
