Product mismanagement is more common than you know.
Nowadays many companies are providing product management (PM), supporting their clients’ products along multiple domains rather than just coding and launch. With concepts like agile and design thinking being adopted widely, one expects to see an increasing number of amazing products. However, did you know one in every five products being delivered fail to meet customer needs?
We found that 49% companies are not using a standard PM process leading to poorly executed products that lose focus along the way. Creating successful products is an art which took Synavos years to master before we came up with a process we loved. Our approach was to look at the process as a series of touch-points for the product, each one being a developmental step that will groom and hone it.
We identified the following critical touch-points:
Here are some of the ways we gave life to different touch-points in our PM process:
Discover the product
The biggest change we made was in our first touch-point of product discovery. A common mistake is building features and scope of the product based on the consumer’s requirements. It might sound strange but many time customers don’t know what they want. Unable to imagine the possibilities they might not even know what can be achieved or be unable to articulate their ideas well. This is why products meeting all ‘documented’ requirements still fail to satisfy the user. We embark on a journey to actually discover what the product we aim to develop will be like. This has made astounding improvements for us, giving us the ability to differentiate between what customers actually want and what they say (or think) they want.
A plan is only amazing
With every touch-point, the product becomes more refined and tangible. After an exciting discovery, we chalk out a plan on how to reveal it to the world. With the design team taking the lead here, we focus on the psychology of the users and what they consider must have vs luxury. This is where all the observation and research are put to use, brain-storming innovative features through heated yet productive sessions.
Think launch-term
We look at the product beyond design and technology. Studying client needs opened us up to possibilities at another level. We help our clients give their product an identity to prevent that lag between launch and market introduction. Having worked closely with users and the product itself, we found ourselves at a huge advantage in this area and extended it to our clients. Through branding, marketing and creative content we build our phase of launching in to an incredibly valuable touch-point.
Here is how we look at products: https://bit.ly/2zZgW4V
Rapport through support
Most IT houses feel their work is over once the product has been launched. However, at the clients’ end this is when their need for more services is ever high. We cater to that with an operations and support team that deals with issues and queries 24/7. You will often hear us say that ‘trust is support deep’ and we feel it pays off as our corporate relations turn in to long-term partnerships.
Liaison is key
While our product management team was creating these touch-points, we kept a strong focus on excellent liaison between all concerned departments. To support that we made use of a good mix of collaborative tools. You might find some of them useful for yourself as well. You can read about them at https://goo.gl/kDwc7y.
