Project Execution Blueprint

Benefits

This framework brings structure and definition to your Product Management organization. It helps product managers to understand and define the problem space and seamlessly transition the narrative into the solution space, assisting the engineering to understand what exactly needs to be built. This framework enables great communication and understanding, resulting in full alignment between business, product, and engineering.

Content

The program contains 6 steps. The "Ignition" and "Research" steps are related to product discovery, followed by the "Definition" step for the ideation process and the "Prototyping" step as validation activity with your client. The "Roadmap" step is dedicated to setting expectations and outcomes. Finally, the "Execution" is intended to facilitate and communicate the progress.

Ignition

This is the first step in the product discovery phase. The purpose of this step is to align on the problem that we're trying to solve, formulate a basic question to be resolved, provide some context, identify decision-makers and stakeholders, agree on the criteria of success, the scope of the solution space, constraints of the product and key resources of insight.

This should be put in a document and should be signed off by both parties involved. This leads to shared accountability, and every change in the future should be negotiated as a scope change (and price change). One huge benefit of this step is aligning on assumptions, and saying them out loud. This leaves no room for misinterpretation and gives a healthy start to a project.

Research

This part of the guide will help you structure your interviews and knowledge transfer process. Essentially, this will help you to "download" everything your client knows and provide you with valuable context about the domain and the problem space.

You will be able to understand user needs and define happy paths, but also corner cases for each scenario. Again, structured information will spark the conversation with your client and any missing pieces will be easily detected. By doing this step well, you will set yourself up for success, since you know exactly what you're supposed to solve and what is the scope of your work (and also what is not part of the scope).

Definition

This is the fun part, the part where you come up with innovative solutions. With the help of the previous two steps, you've accumulated enough insights and you have a strong foundation to build on top of. Even though innovation is a creative process, it still needs some sort of structure, and that's what this step is all about - how to streamline your creativity and use previously generated insights.

This step will help you identify target users and their affinities. Based on user journeys you will be able to come up with tailored solutions. Also, user story mapping technique will help you prepare your backlog and release cadence. The benefits from this step are the detailed scope of work, that will further involve your client in the process of idea validation and will ultimately help you in estimating the time required to build it.

Prototyping

This one is straightforward. Use the insights from the Definition steps, and create a prototype. Use the prototype to present it to your client, and ask for feedback. At this point you still haven't started with the development, so every change is more than welcome. Visual representation of your idea is more palpable for the clients, so the effort invested in creating a prototype is time well spent.

This step will guide you through the process of creating Information Architecture that will firmly pave the path for your product development. Based on the information architecture, it's easy to create a great user flow and user experience, covering the main user flow as well as corner cases.

Roadmap

With everything planned out, roadmap is a document that will encapsulate your plan. You will use this document as a communication tool that will help you manage client expectations and communicate the progress and outcomes.

This step will help you to formulate outcomes for each product release, so that your client understands what will you deliver after each iteration. This will set clear expectations, with no room for misalignment.

Execution

This step will make sure you follow the plan and deliver value with each iteration. Execution will pace you throughout the project and will make you hit your targets and milestones, leaving you with an initially projected profit margin.

Good iteration planning and reviews will make everyone informed and aligned. Your clients will know what are they getting, and your team will know what needs to be built.