Usability testing allows you to determine whether what’s been developed can be effectively used by customers. The test should result in demonstrating the product’s ease of use. Testers should also find the use of the product intuitive. If the product is shown to be less than intuitive and easy to use, it is not ready for the market.

Large companies regularly employ usability evaluations with multiple labs and testing teams. Small companies are often less rigorous in their testing. But, whether a company is large or small, usability testing is key to consistently delivering viable market solutions. If the testing is handled correctly, the company should be able to launch products that not only get, but also keep market share. By consistently evaluating and improving products, your organization can hold on to market share. If the original developer of a product fails to steadily improve it, competitors will jump in, make improvements, and steal market share.

How to Begin a Usability Test

Everything starts with identifying the product’s target audience. You likely have multiple audiences for your product. Its important to evaluate each separately to determine if the product meets the usability requirements of all groups. You need to give those chosen to represent each user group tasks that relate to their specific application. Tasks should represent the most commonly encountered user goals.

To acquire the most useful information from testing, tasks should be well defined and include clear success criteria. You need to decide ahead of time where to begin the task and how to measure task completion.

Four measures for tasks:

• Task completion
• Time it takes to complete
• Ease of learning
• Tester’s satisfaction with outcome

The team member conducting the test should ask each tester to complete a set task, being sure to word the request in the exact same way each time. For example, if evaluating a website’s usability, you might ask: What shipping methods are offered? or How do you connect with tech support?

In some cases, the team member conducting the test may ask the tester to verbally share his or her thought process while completing the task.

Three Ways to Conduct a Usability Test

There are three ways to conduct usability tests, based on where they are conducted. These are:

1 – Usability Lab – This can be an in-house company lab or a lab in an outside facility. Either way, the location is made to appear as much like the target user’s environment as possible. For example, an office setting to test business software, a den to test a TV remote, or a bedroom to test an alarm clock.

2 – Onsite Usability – In this case, the usability testing is done onsite in the actual place where the product will be used. This allows the evaluators to clearly see how the lighting, noise levels, and other factors impact the satisfactory use of the product. It can be nearly impossible to fully control the testing environment in this setting. Another downside can be the cost of travel, scheduling, and interruption to service the testers are able to provide their customers.

3 – Remote Usability – This method is the least costly and most convenient. It is easier to run a test remotely through a web meeting than to man a lab or take on an onsite study. The team member running the testing will turn controls over to the testers and ask them to complete tasks all the while recording interactions. Testers like this method because they can participate in their home or office.

No matter which of these methods is used, at the end of the testing, the usability engineer will compile the data. This is then used to determine the issues that need to be resolved and what are the priorities.

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What Is a Launch Strategy?

Your product launch strategy delineates the approach you plan to take in getting your product to market. You can start ruminating over what to include in your launch strategy as early as the conception phase. However, what you initially plan must evolve as a more details emerge in the later stages of product development.

Ultimately, your strategy needs to cover all assumptions about sales and marketing for the product launch. It should lead to creation of a solid estimate of the scope, resources needed, and budget required to give the product a strong start. When a new product is involved, launch costs can occasionally exceed the cost of product development.

When your strategy is complete, you should have a clear idea of all activities to pursue in launching the product, their costs, and the initial timeline for deployment.

Four Key Points to Include

1 – Who are your top priority audiences for the product?

2 – What are the main ways you will try to reach these priority audiences?

3 – What are the key messages you need to communicate?

4 – What are your objectives? What do you plan to achieve?

What Are the Specifics to Include in Your Launch Strategy?

• Targeted sales channels – Will you use TV, radio, word-of-mouth, demonstrations, Internet or something else?

• Marketing Collateral – What support materials will be needed?

• Sales tools, demos, and training requirements – How will you equip your sales force to clearly communicate your product’s value and uses?

• Advertising and demand generation activities – What will you use to create a desire to buy?

• Sales promotions – What initiatives will you launch to get the word out?

• Public relations, industry, and social media initiatives – What can you do to build buzz through press releases, industry buzz, and social media posts?

You’ll also want to consider tradeshow and event needs; your field testing strategy; your sales forecast by the various channels; your measurable launch objectives; and high-level timeline, milestones, and budget.

The Completed Launch Strategy

Please remember: your initial ideas aren’t cast in stone. Your assumptions and plans will morph through various stages. When you finally get to the point of crafting a solid launch strategy your document should have eight characteristics:

1 – It must identify the audience(s) and competitive targets

2 – Your messaging must be solidly developed

3 – Your launch plans must align with the overall product strategy and development plan

4 – You must prioritize go-to-market activities to focus on the most important

5 – Develop measureable short and long-term criteria for assessing the success of the launch

6 – Earmark any emerging activities or capabilities that must be sourced or developed

7 – Align your plan with your company’s marketing and distributions strengths

8 – Make sure the plan provides for input and support from targeted channels

A lot goes into creating a launch strategy that really delivers. Follow these ideas and you’ll be ready to make a strong start.

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When you begin developing your product roadmap, you start to envision how your product strategy will actually be accomplished. You tangibly define the phases or activities required to reach your aspiration goals. These set of activities will typically cover multiple product development cycles and define high-level deliverables. The form your roadmap takes is largely dependent upon the expectations of your organization. This can range from PowerPoint to more automated tools.

Purpose of the Product Roadmap

So what do you want to accomplish? Are you trying to attain internal and external alignment around a set of envisioned activities? Or are you also attempting to ensure an appropriate allocation of supporting resources so that your team can achieve its goals? Your organization likely has goals of its own. Organizations commonly use roadmap deliverables as a visible measure of how efficient your product team is. Make sure you not only understand what you and your team want to accomplish – but also what the organization’s expectations are. A disconnect between these two sets of expectations can spell trouble.

5 Things Normally Included

Every product roadmap needs to cover these items:

• A timeline aligned with customer purchasing behaviors or business cycles.
• Outline the market drivers that will drive deliverables on the roadmap. For instance, tradeshows, high sales seasons, or expected legislation that could impact the market, etc.
• Define the business objectives or product themes that divide the overarching timeline into phases that align with the overall product strategy and support the long-term product vision.
• Capture the high-level features being targeted for delivery in each phase.
• Optionally, include an aligned technology roadmap that reveals specific technology platforms that will be impacted by each major phase and feature list. This can be a big help in proactively aligning product and technology groups.

Four Characteristics of a Top-Notch Product Roadmap

It should:

• Be crafted in such a way that it can guide each of the planned phases and project priorities.
• Align with your product vision and strategy and provide a plan for delivering on what these documents promise.
• Include a plan around resource requirements that the executive team supports.
• Is not so set in stone that it cannot be updated along the way as market changes occur and progress is made.

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Defining a Product Vision Document

The Product Vision document looks into the future. It presents a 30,000-foot view of what you plan for the product to be in the future and its anticipated value.

The Role of the Product Strategy Document

Your Product Strategy document explains what high-level actions will need to take place in order for your product to live up to the anticipated deliverables in the Product Vision document. Just as important, the Product Strategy document sets boundaries for activities that should not be pursued.

It’s easy to understand why these two vital documents are often presented together.

Three Things Product Vision and Strategy Should Provide

A well conceived Product Vision and Strategy will:

• Present a statement about what you envision the product will be in the future and how it will benefit its market.
• Cover high-level actions that must be taken in order to fulfill the promise presented in your document.
• Outline measurable objectives that include both short and long-term goals as they relate to the product.

Characteristics Specific to a Well Developed Product Vision

• Present a clear view of where you see the product in one year or perhaps many years, depending on the product lifecycle.
• Define your target customers and how the product will help them solve challenges. Clarify the value to be derived from the product.
• Set a high bar that pushes product team innovation.
• Make sure that the level you set is high enough that it won’t change every time there’s a shift in market dynamics.

Characteristics of an Excellent Product Strategy

A well thought out product strategy can set the stage for your product roadmap. Your Product Strategy needs to offer clearly defined phases that lead up to meeting the Product Vision. It should include the key activities your product team will undertake toward meeting the Product Vision. Your Product Vision acts as your north star guiding your decisions. However, your Product Strategy will evolve over time in response to changing market conditions.

Your Product Strategy should also be centered on objective time lines associated to business metrics related to customers, the competition, the market, or financials. You also need to include shorter-term milestones with specific deliverables. Make it clear all along the way what the next steps should be.

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Recently we’ve discussed the SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis. Today, we’re going to consider a tool that drills down to the product feature level and allows the product team to compare competitors’ products to your solution. This tool is the Competitive Analysis Matrix. A Competitive Analysis Matrix is usually presented in a spreadsheet format. However, many such charts include 8 or more features. Complex products can include twice that many feature comparisons.

How the Competitive Analysis Matrix Works

The purpose of the Competitive Analysis Matrix is to identify gaps in your competitors’ offerings. Your matrix should include a row for each feature to be considered. It should also include a column for each competitor with qualitative rankings of each feature in the competitors’ products. This means a ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ ranking won’t cut it. Your team needs to become as familiar with the competitive products as possible so you’ll feel comfortable evaluating each.

Market Importance

The market importance column is particularly significant. It is likely that your competitors have added some features to their products to meet the needs of a particularly important customer. These will not necessarily have overall appeal in the marketplace. By assigning a high, medium, or low ranking to each feature, you will be able to identify those features which you can probably cut from your product. This can help you save valuable resources and money. Every feature adds cost. The Competitive Analysis Matrix will help you hone in on the features that are most important. Once these are covered in your budget, you can start adding on other items that will appeal to the market as resources permit. Features should be added according to their ability to help your customers meet their goals.

Four Things a Basic Competitive Analysis Matrix Will Include:

1 – High-level Feature Sets – Group the features that are related together to simplify the matrix. It is easy for your team to get bogged down if huge individual features are considered separately.

2 – End-to-End Customer View – Don’t get off track by including just characteristics of the physical product. Include attributes that impact the entire user experience. This can cover such things as how the product is purchase, delivered, installed, supported, and maintained. By evaluating these items you may open avenues for product differentiation.

3 – Measure How Well Features Perform – Don’t allow yes or no answers. Remember this is a qualitative comparison.

4 – Measure of the Market’s Importance – Most likely your competitors have included features that are not highly valued by most customers. There is no need to match competitors feature for feature. Build the product the market wants no matter what you see competitors doing.

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Before we drill down into Storyboarding and Flow Diagrams, let’s take a moment to think about the purpose of the problem scenario.

Purpose of the Problem Scenario in Product Concept Investigation

All problem scenarios must illustrate challenges faced by users while attempting to reach a specific goal. This includes exposing the limitations of current solutions in the marketplace.

An effective problem scenario promotes:

• Clear understanding of the situation a user faces in trying to reach a goal
• An accurate definition of the goal the user is seeking to achieve
• A strong understanding of how consumers are currently reaching this goal
• The frustrations felt by customers using current solutions
• A revelation of the opportunity you have to flush out new ideas to reduce or eliminate frustrations with current solutions
• A wide open path for the presentation of bold, fresh ideas that could dramatically improve the customer’s experience

Storyboarding as a Method of Product Concept Investigation

One of the great strengths of Storyboarding is its ability to make an idea instantly understandable to your team. In contrast, the simple story method of product concept investigation requires the audience to read through the whole written description. Only when the reading is complete will the team understand where you are going and what you are suggesting.

Storyboarding combines illustrations (ala comic books or cartoons) with individual written steps to deliver your concept. Your audience can quickly grasp where you are taking them with the storyboarding methodology. The one danger is that you can over simplify your ideas and therefore leave out critical details that would be clear in a fully written out concept (simple story).

Now, let’s consider another approach to the Problem Scenario, Flow Diagramming.

Flow Diagramming

If collaboration between individuals or departments is vital, the Flow Diagram is an excellent tool for sharing your ideas.

The Flow Diagram essentially shows how a solution would flow through your company’s various departments on its way to completion. Each handoff point and step will be clearly shown on the diagram so everyone can see exactly where their department fits into the overall sequence.

Looking Forward

Next week we’ll move away from the Problem Scenario approach to product concept investigation. We will take a close look at the Competitive Analysis Matrix and its uses, advantages, and disadvantages in the product development process.

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What Is a Persona?

A Persona is a representation of a group of customers with similar characteristics. Personas help your team make decisions about the product during development. You gather data to create the Personas through primary research and also through Voice-of-the-Customer activities.

Personas can be minimal or fully blown out, giving an elaborate description of behaviors, activities, and motivations. They vary based on whether they are for a business-to-consumer or a business-to-business product or service.

What’s Included in a Persona?

Personas include information such as:

• A fabricated descriptive name and optional photo or caricature
• Demographic information such as age, gender, marital status, location
• Level of education, work, income
• Lifestyle or work factors and goals
• Experience with the product category
• A quote or slogan that captures personality or personal drivers
• Activities that may influence the use of the product, particularly pain points
• Other related products or solutions currently used
• Values, attitudes, and motivators that influence the decision process
• Other collaborators related to reaching goals
• Frequency of activity toward goals

Buyer Personas

A Buyer Persona hones in on a specific type of buyer targeted by the sales channels. An end user or a purchasing manager is an example. The Buyer Persona informs the development of the components, functionality, and benefits of the value proposition.  They can also impact sales messages.

User Personas

A User Persona represents a specific type of buyer who will have a very specific use for your product or service. A good example is a manager who will set up a computer program for a team. This person is not an end user, but has interests and goals for the product that are different from the end user who is the employee who will actually use the product.

The main goal of developing Personas is to understand typical customers for your product. Personas that achieve the results intended share three characteristics:

1. They provide information that gives insight into the customer’s world including their challenges and goals as related to the new product.
2. They hone in on the primary buyers, something that is accomplished with only a few Personas.
3. Persona development is driven by market research or Voice-of-the-Customer activities. A large enough number of customers are included to be able to spot trends and common tendencies.

Not a License for Creative Writing

It is unfortunately fairly common for a product team to build elaborate Personas out of thin air, with no research to back them up. This is not valid nor is it appropriate for a vital business document. Take the time and make the effort to actually do the background work.

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Questions Your Product Concept Must Answer

There are 11 questions your product concept document must answer:

1. What is the market problem you are addressing?
2. How big is the opportunity?
3. Who are the potential buyers and users? Who needs this product?
4. How does the product benefit the customer? How does it benefit your organization?
5. Do we have evidence that we understand the problem and that the prospect will buy our solution?
6. What is the window of opportunity in the market?
7. Which competitors will our product face?
8. What are the main features of the product and the key success factors?
9. How is our product different from the competition?
10. How would we market our creation?
11. What metrics should be considered in determining the product’s success?

The real objective of developing a product concept is to provide enough information about the market needs to justify pursuing further investigation at a deeper level.

5 Things a Good Product Concept Includes

1. Enough research into the market to document the current situation and actual need for the product
2. An understanding of the competition in the market and why the need for your product exists
3. A conceptual solution that aligns with your company’s capabilities and objectives
4. An explanation of how the new product will be an advancement and added value over what competitors offer
5. An indication of the financial and long-term benefits your company can anticipate from the product

Looking Ahead

In my next post, we’ll take a look at the Idea Prioritization Matrix, a popular tool to use when evaluating different product concepts.

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Regression Analysis Findings

Our regression analysis shows strong correlations with high performance when organizations effectively:

• Prioritize the backlog
•  Have a clear definition of done created within the team
• Don’t over-emphasize development cost when prioritizing requirements

Impact of Respondents’ Perceptions

Respondents’ perceptions of product development methodologies also showed up in our data. Over 90% of survey respondents are actively involved in the product development process. Those who lack an understanding of the method in use clearly are part of organizations that underperform.  Additionally, those who believe using Agile/Scrum leads to high product profitability are more likely to be in organizations that perform well financially. Knowledge clearly makes a difference.

Top Tools and Automation

Lastly, the most highly productive teams believe their effectiveness would increase through the use of better tools and automation. Here, again, knowledge makes a difference. Teams that have implemented effective team processes are looking to expand their uptake of DevOps and Extreme Programming (XP) practices with the latest automated refactoring, test, build, and infrastructure-deployment tools.

Looking Ahead

As of this post, we conclude our exploration of the findings drawn from the latest Global Study of Product Team Performance. Starting next week, we’ll switch gears and begin a discussion of product management tools that can grease the wheel of success within your team and your organization.

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This post discusses the sixth and final key finding gathered from the analysis of the latest Global Study of Product Team Performance.

#6 Key Performance Indicator

Product Teams that Believe Their Effectiveness Would Be Improved by the Use of Product Tools and Automation Are Likely to Be High Performance Teams in Companies that Achieve Their Financial Goals and Objectives.

Just over 50% of our survey respondents are members of technology development teams. For this reason, this finding is particularly meaningful to technology development organizations.

Desire to Improve Tools and Increase Automation

The sixth indicator of high performance is essentially possessing the desire for improved tools and increased automation. Organizations that have implemented effective team processes often seek out ways to further improve efficiency.

This indicator points to the rapid uptake of DevOps and the Extreme Programming (XP) practices that underpin it.

This particularly points to:

• Test automation of every kind starting from the practice of test driven development
• Refactoring (and tools that automate refactoring)
  • Continuous integration, continuous delivery, and continuous deployment (and
  the automated build tools and application release tools that support these
  practices)

The up swell of enthusiasm for test-and-build automation has driven strong tool development and rapid tool advancement. This includes having check-ins kick off build scripts that not only compile binaries, but also generate documentation, tests, and statistics. They also kick off test automation, plus generate and deploy distribution media, website pages, and program logic to servers.

In addition, on the operations side, tooling like continuous configuration automation enables automated rollout of both physical and virtual infrastructure. The result is that teams with effective team processes find themselves continuously looking with longing for the latest – and the latest is rapidly evolving.

Next Post: Wrapping It All Up

For several weeks now we have delved into the responses and analysis of the latest Global Study of Product Team Performance. Next week, we reach the conclusion when I will share a few final thoughts on this interesting survey and its outcomes.

Recap of the Six Key Performance Indicators:

1. High performing teams have a clear definition of “done”.
2. Respondents unable to associate a product development methodology with product profitability are unlikely to be on a high performing team.
3. Respondents who believe using Agile/Scrum leads to high product profitability tend to be in organizations that meet or exceed their financial goals.
4. Teams that consider development cost as a criterion for requirements prioritization are more likely to under-perform (i.e., negatively correlated).
5. There is a strong correlation between an effectively prioritized backlog and high product team performance
6. Product teams that believe their effectiveness would be improved by the use of product tools and automation are likely to be high performance teams in companies that achieve their financial goals and objectives.

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