Problem Solving and Art of Critical Thinking in Product Management
“A problem well put is half solved.” ― John Dewey
An abstract problem can be viewed from two spaces:
- Problem Space -The space in which the hypothesis or the need resides. This deals with Why part of the problem. A Product Manager spends maximum amount of time in this space. It consists of pain points, desires of user, jobs to be done or user stories.
Example- Need of upskilling for people working in Technical domain. Here, problem space consists of need of structured reading materials, desire to have mentor, lack of motivation, etc.
2. Solution Space- The space in which the solution to the problem resides, it involves working on the mechanism to address the needs of the problem space in an effective and affordable way. It includes any product or representation of a product that is used by or intended for use by customer.
Example -Website consisting of reading materials, online courses led by instructors, Offline classes with Hands on training etc.
Most of the times, customers aren’t able to pin point their needs in the problem space. Even if they do, it is vague and inaccurate in terms of relative importance and abstract benefits.
To solve this issue, we can leverage the solution space itself to understand the needs of problem space better. Contextual Inquiry or Customer Discovery is one such technique, where we can interview customers and observe them using existing products.
Customers are much better at giving feedback in the solution space instead of problem space. If we show them a new product or design, they can tell us, what they like and don’t like. They can compare it to the other available solutions and identify pros and cons.
Example- If a person asks a customer: “What are the needs of an ideal car for a middle class family” — The general response would be Mileage, Affordability, boot space, on-road performance. But if we twist the question and ask “What do you not like in a Maruti car”-The response would change to Safety, Built and interiors, Design.
We can define Target Customers by capturing all of the relevant customer attributes that identify someone as being in our target market. These attributes are Demographics, interests, needs, or location.
Identification of product ideas to solve problems:
First step in the journey of finding the right product ideas to a problem is Building a Hypothesis statement. Example- “Helping users file tax returns easily”. To go deeper into the solution, we need to Identify user benefits. Example-File tax returns quickly, reduce audit risk, minimize tax deductions.
A Product Manager needs to conduct customer interviews and ask open ended questions with minimal interruption to understand these benefits from user perspective. This will lead to identify product ideas to solve problems. These product ideas can then be categorized into “must haves”, “performance benefits” and “delighters” using Kano model to identify the impact and satisfaction level on customers.
Features Creation and Prioritization for MVP:
Once product ideas are finalized, next step is to break down each idea into features. Example- Idea: Generating house rent slips can be broken down into features like- Uploading digital signature, converting receipts into pdf, option to change receipt templates.
An MVP consists of features just enough for the product to add decent value to the customers. One of the ways to prioritize these features is by calculating ROI i.e. Return on Investment. It can be calculated by dividing Customer Value by Development Efforts for specific feature.
Example- An product idea has 3 features A, B, C. A creates 8 units of customer value and requires 4 weeks of development effort. Similarly B has 6 units value, 3 weeks effort and C has 6 units value and 4 weeks effort. ROI for these feature will be A=2, B=2, C=1.5. Thus, A and B will have more priority over C.
A golden rule for prioritizing between two features having same ROI is to prioritize the one with less development efforts because it can be completed early with an equal ROI.
Hence, features will be prioritized as A=P2, B=P1, C=P3.
Learnings from Breaking into Product Management course by shravan tickoo
