The Apple Pay case

Fast context switching from a strategic goal to a unique business opportunity

In early May we were asked to become an Apple Pay launch partner in the Netherlands by our payment service provider. Being one of the first Dutch companies to incorporate Apple Pay would be a great opportunity for marketing exposure and to bring added value to our users. The catch: the timeline for getting the work done was just a few days. Moreover, the project involved effort from multiple stakeholders: our mobile team, our web frontend team and our backend team and our Marketing & Communications department. In order to hit this target, we had to divert all of our attention from our ongoing strategic and team goals.
Since it was a challenging project for us, I want to share from a Product Management perceptive some lessons we’ve learned along the way.

What went well and what should you consider doing?

This list isn’t in order of any priority, but could be a good checklist to follow when having to assess the urgency of a new goal with a strict deadline.

• Make a clear business case for the shift in focus so team leads understand the priority. Departments should coordinate their efforts towards the new goal and reprioritise strategic work.
• Start a Slack channel to align all communications. Sounds like a no-brainer but do it! Even if you don’t use Slack, there’s probably a way to create a group chat in the communication tool your organisation is using. The risk here is to have just 1-on-1 communication. Especially in a tight deadline and a shift in priority, it’s very easy that confusion and misalignment prevail. By having one central place to communicate about the subject everybody from Product to Marketing is always up-to-date.
• Create a battle plan to have a clear overview of goal status. A good battle plan helps team members, stakeholders and externals have a clear idea of what’s the progress of the project and the approach. It defines the focus, the scope and prevents unforeseen problems. Write things down and order them by priority as much as possible.

• Do a daily stand-up (DSU) on the project you’re trying to achieve. In order to guarantee efficiency, don’t mix this DSU with your regular DSU and only include team members working on the new priority.
• Be transparent to stakeholders about progress and do your best to manage expectations. This falls in the hands of the Product Manager (PM) and should be the golden rule on any project; transparency leads to alignment and alignment leads to efficiency.

What could have gone better?

Even though we launched on time, various aspects of the projects could have gone better. It’s always good to reflect on improvement points, even when you’ve hit your goal!

• Increase alignment by doing a cross-team/department kick-off. Product was aligned but stakeholders in the Marketing department were not included at the very beginning. Sitting all together in a room to start this project would have ensured people from all departments were more onboard and involved.
• Use the whiteboard more! We had to do 1 or 2 additional UX meetings because flows were not precisely mapped out the first time. Using the whiteboard, similar to the battle plan, helps in visualising elements and triggers the team to ask questions.
• We noticed that the stress level of the dev team working on the project was quite high during implementation. There’s tips in the learning section below!

• Ask more questions when getting the first inquiry. Our payment service provider wanted to work with us, we felt honored and highly motivated but we forgot to ask some questions. It’s important to understand the why, when, what and how; the cornerstone of Product Management. We fell into a “Hurry Up And Wait” pattern with our payment service provider and took some time to established a communication checking rhythm with them.

So what have we learned?

Now that we have weighed the positives and the improvements, what can we learn from it? What are the take-aways and what should a good PM do when confronted to a similar situation?

• There were a lot of dependencies from external partners (payment provider, Apple). You can fall into the trap of feeling they are not responsive enough and are blocking your progress which could lead to frustration. But this is out of your control, you should only focus on what’s in your control.
• Switching context for a business goal with a harsh deadline can be stressful for everybody. To make it a success you need to have clear communication, healthy stakeholder expectation management and protect the dev team as much as possible.
• Giving the full context to devs shouldn’t be overlooked. Devs are so often ignored when it comes to understanding business value. As smart and important contributors, they should be trusted with information like the business rationale behind switching focus away from our strategic goals.
• Be very strict about having more information before going into coding-mode. Coding will go 10x faster if the stories we’re trying to achieve are clearly defined.

One more thing…

Don’t forget to celebrate! In the end everything worked out well and TicketSwap managed to be launching partner of Apple Pay in The Netherlands.

Taking the time to consecrate milestones is key to keep the team motivated and give indication to all employees that the company is moving forward. And since we were launching Apple Pay, of course we decided to celebrate with apple pies and apple juice 🍎