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Continuation of Product Prioritization: Diving Into Story Mapping

I’ve been diving into different product management – importance of roadmap and product prioritization and then a RICE framework for prioritization. Today, wanted to jump back in but look at story mapping. I haven’t done a story map before, but I’ll share what I’ve found reading up on several sites including Aha!, MANIFESTO, Agile Velocity, ThoughtWorks, and others.

The benefit of story mapping is its effectiveness as a visual tool to organize the development tasks and activities with goals – the stories a product/ service user traverses. It prioritizes for value and aligns the team on value and goals.
How to think of story mapping – my preferred route:
  • There are two axes – from left to right, the goals a user accomplishes to achieve a greater goal (e.g. make a purchase, stream a video, other). From top to bottom, the prioritization of stories (activities/ tasks) organized into a release schedule.
  • At the top level, you have the intermittent goals a user achieves. All tasks and activities that help accomplish this goal fall under. For streaming a movie on Netflix, for example, the top-level goals, these can be: “Find movie”, “Assess movie (details)”, “Select movie”. 

  • Under each goal would be the activities to accomplish the goal – the stories a user undergoes. For example, under “Assess Movie”: “View movie trailer”, “View movie description”, “View critics rating”, “View user rating”.
  • Take an iterative approach to the story map where developers, product managers, and customers review the stories for gaps… adding missing stories and removing redundant stories.
  • Evaluate which stories are critical for the first release – this may create the “MVP”. You could prioritize stories by “MUST”, “SHOULD”, and “COULD”. Assessing the stories, you could draw a line that demarcates the stories into the releases (or MUST, SHOULD, COULD).

  • Utilizing Post-It notes is a fantastic way to create these maps offering flexibility and color-coded stories, goals, etc.
  • Keep story maps focused on achieving specific outcomes and performing specific tasks for a target persona. Then, create other story maps as needed.

These are the highlights of utilizing story mapping in the realm of product management. It’s an effective route to hash out the activities to accomplish a user goal.


What are other methods for managing product development?
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A Framework for Product Prioritization: RICE

Back to talking about product! Last week, I talked about the importance of product prioritization and the product roadmap. I’ve also shared takeaways from Des Traynor of Intercom talk on product development. Specifically, how to drive adoption and engagement. Today, here’s a framework for product prioritization – RICE.
  • Reach – How many customers or prospects would a feature/ development engage?
  • Impact – What is the outcome/ results of a build? Would this drive engagement – feature/ user adoption? Drive revenue?
  • Confidence – How likely would development have the effect on reach and impact?
  • Effort – How many total man-hours/ weeks/ months would this development take? Remember to include hours for each resource across functions (i.e. product, front-end, back-end).

Intercom suggests teams add bands of scores to quantify each factor as best as possible. For example, to understand the factor of Impact, scoring can follow: “3 for ‘massive impact’, 2 for ‘high’, 1 for ‘medium’, 0.5 for ‘low’, and finally 0.25 for ‘minimal’”.

Combine each of the scores for:

The idea of RICE is to measure each potential development (feature, build) objectively to drive the most value – benefit vs. resources.

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Build the Bridge to Tomorrow On Today

A startup debate that has been weighing on me recently is building a solution for today vs. an idea for tomorrow. David Cummings recently wrote a post touching on this – “Funding Today’s Business or Tomorrow’s Idea”. We could be talking evolutionary vs. revolutionary. This could involve a high-degree of market education and long sales cycles.
I remember early on with Body Boss this very issue. My co-founder Darren Pottinger really started the company off an idea to bring heuristics and predictive modeling to exercise. The idea employed regression forecasting to recommend the weight an exerciser should do next.
Body Boss was originally intended for the Consumer market. However, we pivoted towards the B2B crowd of professional strength coaches – institutional teams and training programs. Where coaches thought the algorithms and forecasting were interesting, they wanted full control of what athletes should be doing. For example, they wanted the ability to prescribe the percentage of an athlete’s one-repetition maximum weight. Body Boss would just calculate the weight to be done from the percentage and the one-rep max via a “test assessment”.
As a startup with no real expertise in professional strength and conditioning or other exercise research, we did not have the credibility to recommend our algorithm vs. the coaches’ traditional methods. Though there was real potential in our algorithm – the Idea of Tomorrow – coaches wouldn’t buy Body Boss without the ability to build percentage-based workouts – the Business of Today. The opportunity of Body Boss, then, was the ability to collect and organize workouts and their results.
We saw prospects who were hesitant to buy early on convert to paid-customers once we implemented the percentage schemes.
Entrepreneurs will likely have their visions of grandeur for tomorrow. However, tomorrow may never come. Instead, build a base off of today’s business. Then, run research behind the scenes to validate the ideas of tomorrow. This isn’t much different from traditional research and development teams in large corporations today. But they all start from a position of a stable base.
Build the bridge to tomorrow on today. When you have the credibility and resources, you can influence tomorrow.
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A Great Product Through Customer Reviews

CNBC reported a few days ago how Robert Wang, founder and CEO of the company behind Instant Pot, still reads all (more likely most) of customer reviews on Amazon (article link). That totals almost 39,000 reviews of the invention he launched almost 7 years ago modernizing the original Crock-Pot.
Wang looks to customer reviews as sources of inspiration and quality assurance. For example, Wang cites reviews for the inspiration to build the Bluetooth-connected iteration of the beloved Instant Pot.
Instant Pot’s Amazon-first sales channel has enabled Wang to spend little on advertising and focus almost strictly on product. This strategy has helped the Instant Pot to sell over 215,000 units on Amazon’s Prime Day recently. Yes, that’s in hundreds ofthousands. Impressive.
Wang is not a business man by trade (or entrepreneur); though, Wang did cofound a messaging company prior to Instant Pot (before being forced out.) Instead, Wang is an engineer. He and his cofounders focused on the product. They made the product great with smart marketing tactics (leveraging social media).
Make a great product. Delight customers. Be opportunistic.
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Understanding Lasting Effects to Measure Success

A good way to discern if a product or service is a need to have is to see what happens if it breaks or is no longer available. Would customers come kicking and screaming? Or, would the day pass by with little to no utterance? (No, not advocating you deliberately break your product.)
Of course, there’s another effect that can be much harder to realize – how effective was the product or service the first time that additional sales were not necessary. Or, there’s a much longer time between sales that effect can be harder to discern outside of problems.
You can count companies with fantastic quality such as Toyota, a great mattress company, Terminex (or other pest extermination companies), etc. In these cases, referrals and customer satisfaction records may hint at the lasting effects of products and services. Feedback is paramount to the growth of these companies.
Lasting effects is a big deal. They require quality. They require an emotional tie-in to be remembered. They require empathy for the customer to know what is needed. Products, services, and even relationships – personal and professional – require a strict focus on lasting effects.
Consider the lasting effects of the product or service as a measure of success. Consider succession.
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Before Any Startup Planning, Answer This One Question

I’ve had a couple wantrepreneurs ask me recently what administrative tools to use – email, website, CRM, etc. to which I’m happy to help with. However, those are all moot points compared to the most important question of all – How can you build a business around the product or service?
Of course, I’m speaking broadly when I say “how can you”, “build a business”, “around the product or service”. I break up the question this way to capture the most important facets of starting a company –
  • “How can you…” – the entrepreneur (or team) referred here. This includes experience, skills, network, and emotional capacities of the entrepreneur or the co-founding team. The “how” touches, too, on the execution.
  • “…build a business…” – is there is a sizeable market? Is there a trajectory for success? Are there competitors? Are there other pieces required to build and sustain a business?
  • “…around the product or service” – this one is pretty self-explanatory – do you have a product, or are you still building it? Do you have an MVP? This also includes patentable/ defensible facets. Let me point out the word “around,” too, because it’s likely the product/ service will pivot. The core of any product/ service is critical here with flexibility on how that core delivers value.
  • “How can you build a business around the product or service?” – Successful ventures require the ability to bring it all together –execution (“how”). Each facet is powerful on its own, but rarely enough to build something meaningful and sustaining.
In the words of Metallica, “Nothing Else Matters”. There are plenty of general administrative tools that if you’re successful, can be changed and employed. It all starts with the simple question.
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Starting with A Small Plastic Piece, The Effect of One Ever-lasting Brand

Recently, I played with my 3-year-old niece with a toy that I even had growing up, and it’s as great as it’s ever been. I remember when I started playing with the toy when I was closer to 8 or 10 years old. So to watch my niece play with it at such a young age was fascinating. This toy has been around for ages. It’s got a strong following with collectors, movie goers, theme park visitors, and more. That toy? Legos.
I want to take a moment and appreciate Legos. The company, The Lego Group, started manufacturing the plastic toys back in 1949. The company and its original form as wooden toys started in 1932 by Ole Kirk Christiansen. Per Brand Finance, Legos is the most powerful brand in the world today.
These simple interconnecting blocks and mini-figurines captivated my niece. I, in turn, was captivated watching her play with them. Here’s what I noticed:
  • Builds observant and analytical skills. My niece studied a flash card of a model dog to assemble. Perhaps I’m not giving her or young kids enough credit. But yet, it was amazing to watch her study the picture and search for the right pieces. She observed the shape, color, how they fit together, etc.
  • Cultivates creativity. My niece also assembled several ice cream cones stacked with various “flavors” and toppings. She was experimenting with different color schemes while role-playing an ice cream vendor. It was fun.
  • Motivated persistence. I wasn’t sure how my niece would react when the pieces didn’t quite fit together the first time. In fact, I was ready to jump in when they didn’t fit together immediately. I didn’t. Instead, she would pull the pieces away, observe the alignment, then try again. She would fidget with the pieces till they lined up perfectly and fit together.
  • Encourages bigger, more fascinating dreams. Lego pieces are, for the most part, simple and small. My niece knows she can assemble these small pieces and build something fascinating.

Few brands come to mind with such a powerful, meaningful effect on people from an early age. It’s amazing to see how Legos continue to evolve. They not only stay relevant, but they stay at the top of today’s culture.

That’s the dream, right? To build something so great and so influencing that impacts so many for so long…
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Valuation of Evolutionary vs. Revolutionary Startups

I was talking to a very successful entrepreneur recently about valuations of startups as they grow. Specifically, valuation multiples for an evolutionary startup with great revenues vs. a revolutionary startup with good revenues, especially when both are still in early-stage. 

In an evolutionary startup, the product offering is just that – evolutionary. That is, the industry has been moving in this direction for years. The valuation of this startup can be good due to traction, but as an evolutionary company in an established market, competitors will follow and then the evolutionary product becomes substitutable. Its multiple is likely less than 4X.

In a revolutionary startup, the product offering is defining a new space. Getting traction can be hugely difficult like pushing a boulder up a mountain. But once momentum hits, the valuation multiple can be significantly higher due to the meta knowledge and technology surrounding the startup. Yes, a startup doing well in this new revolution will create second-movers. However, proprietary technology and knowledge can be hard to emulate, and with capital, the company can continue to outpace new challengers and drive significant value. 

Being a second-mover has its advantages; namely, requiring less capital to go to market as the first-mover because the first-mover is spending more effort educating the market. However, a well-capitalized, experienced team at the helm of a first-mover can outpace second-movers, and drive up the valuation against second-movers — and evolutionary markets/ companies. For revolutionary products, expect multiples in excess of 6 or 8X revenues.

Consider your next startup idea/ product – is it evolutionary or revolutionary? How will you defend your position and drive up the value of your company and your offering?
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The Miss Universe Card Failed in One Glaring Design Principle – Being Understandable

The other night’s Miss Universe beauty pageant highlighted another example of how poor design can lead to awkward, high profile consequences. If you haven’t seen or heard, Steve Harvey mistakenly proclaims Miss Colombia as Miss Universe. Steve had to apologize and backtrack and name the real winner, Miss Philippines. As you’d expect, the internet exploded with internet memes and Twitter posts poking fun at Steve.

But really, Steve is a scapegoat for a poor card design. Take a look at what Steve was looking at:

I harp on UI and UX a fair bit already, and this just highlights the importance of clean, directed design. You can understand the need for the card to be easily editable so winners can be printed after votes. However, their design is not good, and did nothing to help Steve.
Let’s look at Dieter Rams’ Ten Principles for Good Design, and see where the Miss Universe card fell short:
The biggest principles the card failed was being understandable and thorough down to the details. I don’t know if the pageant also reviewed what the card looked like with Steve beforehand, but a little training upfront could have helped. However, great design should allow anyone to understand a product with or without training.
Here’s something that may be a little more fitting:

Okay, so I’m still not a designer. However, this took five minutes in PowerPoint, and it’s got a clearer message as to who won. The eyes follow a logical and natural progression from top to bottom with who won.
Point is, UI and UX extend beyond technology of websites and applications. They’re crucial, too, in physical collateral whether that be brochures, business cards, and even pageant winner cards. See this bathroom door as another example.
How would you design the card for Miss Universe? Any other poor designs you’ve seen, and you think you could design something better?
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