not sure who your actual stakeholders are,
note the ones you think are most likely, and
you can use the Stakeholder Development
Tracker to validate your hypothesis.
Systematically test your
plan and start gathering
data
Having identified your key risks and
assumptions, and who you think are your
key stakeholders, you’re ready to start
gathering qualitative and quantitative
data. Learn Start-up talks about building
a validated learning loop, called Build-
Measure-Learn, to do this, which I won’t
go into detail here What I will say is that
you need to do two things:
1. Get out of the building: This now
famous Steve Blank phrase sums up
what product managers are trained to do
anyway: go talk to customers! The purpose
is to validate your understanding of their
problems, whether they perceive your
solution as valuable, and identify an early
adopter - i.e., a paying customer.
2. Walk the building: Yes, you should
absolutely go talk to customers. But let’s
not discount the fact that you likely have
valuable information inside the building
as well. Set up conversations with your
Key Stakeholders and Key Partners to
start getting feedback, identify risks you
may not have thought of, and uncover
gaps in your strategy. For example, a brief
conversation with your Legal department
may uncover a critical regulatory risk
that has the potential to kill your product
before a line of code is even written.
One of the tools I’m using to track my tests
and learnings is the Validated Learning
Board, which applies a convenient and
easy-to-use kanban style approach to
hypothesis testing.
Figure out Opportunity/
Company Fit
The importance of assessing how your
product sits with (or departs from) your
company’s current business model and
strategy, and any risks associated with that
positioning cannot be overstated.
For example, could the product
significantly impact the way the company
traditionally charges customers? That’s an
important consideration under Revenue/
84 MAL33/19 ISSUE
It is essential to validate your target cus-
tomer and their problems, especially early
adopters. After all, if no one is going to buy
your idea in the first place, what’s the use of
development estimates?
Business Value. Could it impact the
company’s brand value? That could impact
the UVP and Channel strategy in terms of
how the product is positioned, marketed,
sold and supported.
Develop a mini business
case
As soon as is practicable, it’s a good
idea to do a quick assessment on the
business potential of your idea - a “back
of the envelope” calculation, if you will,
to determine whether the idea is worth
pursuing from a financial perspective. This
is particularly relevant if your organisation,
as part of its corporate strategy, has set
minimum financial criteria on the types
of business opportunities it’s willing to
fund, and at what level it considers an
investment a capital expenditure vs. an
operational expense.
This makes sense to do once you have some
preliminary data on your target customer,
specifically, the addressable market size
and share you think you can capture;
the viability of your pricing strategy and
revenue model; and at least high-level cost
estimates. The numbers may be estimates,
but they should be grounded enough to
not be just guesses. Your data gathering
activities from earlier should serve to
inform this analysis.
In my experience, this type of analysis
is especially useful in early discussions
with CFOs, the finance department, and
business line executives. It can also help
with strategic prioritization discussions,
and may be useful if your organization
follows Stage-Gate like processes
involving “t-shirt sizing” of projects.
Track and communicate
progress
Just like you need “early evangelists,”
as Steve Blank calls them, outside the
building, you just as critically need
early evangelists inside the building.
It’s important to keep folks in the loop
on your progress. It helps generate
momentum, makes them feel a part of
your process, and builds ongoing support
for your initiative. Building a “coalition of
the willing”, empowering others to sell on
your behalf, and getting great mentors and
advisors will go a long way toward gaining
and keeping buy-in for your product.
Here again is where I’ve found the
Product Canvas useful. As you validate
your assumptions and de-risk elements of
your strategy, you can easily and quickly
update your Product Canvas, and use that
to communicate the latest progress on the
product vision. It sure beats wasting hours
preparing a lengthy Powerpoint update!
Now, go ahead and write
that formal business case
presentation
As you continue to re-new your strategy
through the activities above, you will be
in a position to start writing a “proper”
business case, if such a formal document
is really needed in your organisation. The
difference now is that you will have not
only validated learnings via data to ground
your business case (like your financial
projections), but also hopefully garnered
the necessary “pre- support” to make your
pitch more of a formality than a cold call.
Best of luck!
Dr. Clifford J. Ferguson is the
Managing Partner of Rainmakers,
and Chairman of Glad’s House.
You can commune with him on this
or related matters via email at: Cliff.
Ferguson@rainmakers.uk.com, or
visit their website: Rainmakers.
uk.com.