STRATIFY

Product Experience

Problem Space

Team collaboration and productivity/alignment.

Problem Statement  

Product Managers find it difficult to rapidly align their team on a shared objective because of poor collaboration practices, and risk wasting resources or missing opportunities. This makes them feel frustrated, overwhelmed, and ill-equipped.

Problem Background  

In the dynamic landscape of the business world, the ability to swiftly align various stakeholders, make critical decisions and identify significant challenges, both internally and for product users, is indispensable. 

This capability is fundamental for maintaining cross-functional team alignment and ensuring the consistent delivery of a company's vision and mission to its customers. Nevertheless, the size or stage of an organisation doesn't guarantee effective collaboration without the right protocols in place. Teamwork can often become chaotic, frustrating, and stress-inducing for everyone involved, particularly for decision-makers like Product Managers who bear the responsibility of efficiently managing resources and ensuring on-time product deliveries.

Research Insights

Recent domain research shed light on the alarming impact of ineffective collaboration and decision-making:

• Globally, organizations collectively lose approximately $1 million every 20 seconds due to the ineffective implementation of business strategies (Source: PMI, 2018).
• A substantial 71% of senior managers find meetings unproductive and inefficient (Source: Harvard Business Review, 2017).
• An additional 65% of senior managers state that meetings impede their own work (Source: Harvard Business Review, 2017).
• 80% of decision-makers emphasize the necessity of improving collaboration between departments. (Source: Forrester Research, 2021).

Additionally, user research conducted among 5 Senior Product Managers and 2 Product Design Directors indicates:

• Poor team alignment significantly affects their ability to deliver products on time, according to 100% of survey respondents.
• 85% of survey respondents noted poorly executed collaboration practices as having a substantial impact on internal resource management.
• 71% of survey respondents stated they feel collaborative team sessions are generally productive but could be improved.

Notable comments from user interviews:

• Regarding poor collaboration practices impacting resource management: 

“It puts PMs in a hard place where you now have to adjust timelines, resources, etc. to match a decision that was made that you had minimal buy-in for.” 

- Edson, Principal PM @ Oracle

• Regarding the state of collaboration within cross-functional teams: 

“PMs and PDs are complementary functions that can sometimes feel like their goals are at odds.” 

- Han, Director of PD @ Telus

• Regarding poor team alignment impacting their ability to ship without delay: 

“Feels like you have to coordinate many, many people to gather a single point of alignment/decision.”

- Han, Director of PD @ Telus

These findings underscore the urgency for a solution that streamlines team alignment and improves the decision-making process; tackling inherent inefficiencies and challenges with collaboration in today's corporate environment.

Landing on the Solution

Based on my target users’ pain points, I created user stories and then made scenarios which led to a list of features for the critical path. This followed into me creating a rapid prototype to visualise what the solution could potentially look like.

Proposed Solution

My proposed solution is a digital app that serves as a virtual card deck which when any given card is selected, its primary functions are to: 

1. Guide users to facilitate a series of proven agile workshop exercises that lead to actionable and replicable results when followed precisely. Workshops will be designed broadly, to be applicable to many different contexts (Strategy, Product, Design, Engineering etc.). [ref. to an existing solution -  Workshop Tactics | Card Decks for Product Teams]
2. Provide standardized practices that reduce friction when rapidly making difficult decisions. This includes anonymized note-taking and voting exercises to gain unbiased input, promote lateral decision-making, and reduce circular discussions. It is important to make this a delightful experience for users so that they can begin to remove negative associations with making tough decisions collaboratively. [ref. to an existing solution - The Design Sprint - Jake Knapp]
3. Boost team engagement through gamifying workshop exercises. E.g. time-boxed exercises that result in an incentive or positive reward/feedback if completed within allotted time [ref. to an existing solution - Forest App]

User Stories

As a Project Manager, I want to streamline resource allocation, so that we can efficiently divide resources between various high-priority projects with tight deadlines.

As a Product Owner, I want to optimise stakeholder communication, so that I can address and effectively communicate conflicting feedback from different stakeholders regarding a critical product feature. 

As a Scrum Master, I want to facilitate effective team retrospectives, so that my team and I can quickly gain a shared understanding of key drivers and barriers on a recent project. 

As a Startup CEO, I want to rapidly develop and assess OKRs regularly, so that I can ensure that our startup remains agile and responsive to market changes while still pursuing well-defined objectives. 

As a Product Manager, I want to make informed market research decisions, so that we can decide whether to invest in comprehensive market research or proceed based on existing knowledge.

Scenarios

User Scenario for Project Manager:

• Situation: You're a Project Manager juggling high-priority projects with tight deadlines.

• Scenario: Using the platform’s native tools, confidently allocate resources to meet project goals on time.

User Scenario for Product Owner:

• Situation: As a Product Owner, you're dealing with conflicting stakeholder feedback on a critical product feature.

• Scenario: Utilize the platform's communication tools to address and communicate decisions effectively across departments.

User Scenario for Scrum Master:

• Situation: You've completed a project and want to gather valuable insights from your team.

• Scenario: Use the platform's retrospective feature to facilitate a productive team retrospective and gain a shared understanding of project drivers and barriers.

User Scenario for Startup CEO:

• Situation: You're a Startup CEO focused on maintaining agility and responsiveness to market changes.

• Scenario: Regularly use the platform to develop and assess OKRs, ensuring the startup's ability to adapt while pursuing well-defined objectives.

User Scenario for Product Manager:

• Situation: As a Product Manager, you face a critical decision about whether or not to invest in market research.

• Scenario: Leverage the platform's rapid decision making tools to make informed choices regarding market research investment.

User Flows/Mockups 

For the critical path I created I focused on the Product Manager persona. These screens visualise what I imagine the MVP for my solution potentially looking like.

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Future Steps

I would like to perform user testing with my user flow/critical path to verify or refute any assumptions I have surrounding user behaviours and get an idea of how easily users feel it is to navigate the interface as well as gain insight into how easily they feel it is to understand the concept being conveyed. ‍

Images 

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