Can a Product Manager create a Perfect Product in first go and keep it running forever- Dream or Reality?

 Every product manager dreams that he/she can create a product which perfectly fits the needs of its customers right from get go and no iterative refinements are required. The product serves all the needs of its stakeholders and it is a HIT at the launch itself. This indeed is very difficult and mostly remains a dream. There are several pieces of the puzzle that should fall in place to create a successful product. Understanding of customer needs is primary piece, however understanding needs of other stakeholders like manufacturing, logistics, communication, pricing/profits is equally important to create a successful product. Product Manager has to balance all these needs while creating product. Any mismatch can create imbalance and will not create the impact in terms of customer interest or revenue.

I am going to discuss a technique in this article which will help product manager understand the stated and unstated needs of their customers/stakeholders, which when incorporated in the product process, increases the probability of successful product many times. This technique is called as “Differentiated Needs Pyramid”, which guides product managers in identifying customer needs, segregate them in to multiple levels and assess the impact of satisfying as well as not satisfying the needs. This impact assessment enables product manager in prioritizing one need over other in terms of inclusion in the features and investment that will be required to build the product.

Let us look at typical process of Product Management and where & how the Differentiated Needs Pyramid technique can guide. Product Management comprises 7 key steps, i.e. Idea Management, Finalizing Specifications, Roadmapping, Prioritization/ Sequencing, Development/Delivery, Analytics, Feedback & Iterations.

1.      Idea Management

This is the first step when a spark / thought in the mind of product manager starts getting well rounded to become a product idea. This is the step where the product manager and team try to understand what customer is looking for. They connect with target customers individually or in a forum or through survey to understand needs as well as bounce back ideas. They also undertake secondary market research / social media analysis to corroborate the needs. They review competing product to identify any needs which were not identified by other method. These needs are then prioritized for inclusion in the product and a unique product idea is born.

This is one of the critical steps in the process, which decides acceptance of the product by customer. To ensure that we have considered all the right needs of customer, we should create a Differentiated Needs Pyramid for the customer. One pyramid for every segment of customers serviced by the product. Product manager should segregate the needs in to 5 levels as defined in the pyramid. Analyse the segregation to see if we have needs in all levels? Do needs crowd in one or two levels and other levels are empty with no needs or a very few needs? The needs should be balanced in the pyramid. Any lopsidedness denotes that product is addressing only a portion of overall needs and chances of failure to meet customer expectations are high. Product manager should do further research to identify needs at the levels which do not have sufficient needs and refine the pyramid. Once the pyramid is finalized, map these needs against specifications / features considered in the product. This mapping will provide, which customer needs are getting addressed by the product and which are missing. This mapping will throw light on what customer is going to like and what they will miss in the product. The process for finalizing the specifications begin.     

2.      Finalizing Specifications

In this step, the product team finalizes the specification of the product, the features that will be included in the first release. The team also decides the customer segment it wants to target as well as identify the competition that needs to be handled. The team also defines what outcome they are expecting after launch, what impact they want to achieve in the market, what behavior change they would expect from the customers etc. The specs decided in this step will go on floor for build.

The product team revisits the high-level specification created in the previous step and goes through each feature to check its need and impact in terms of customer attractiveness. The Differentiated Needs Pyramid created in the first step acts as a mirror and helps team to identify impact of each feature on the customer. The product team can select needs which can create higher impact on customer and select features which can satisfy these needs.

There are multiple iterations made to refine this list by comparing the features with competitor products or ideally create a category of its own so that there is no competition in the market at the time of launch. Few more rounds of iteration take place by considering other factors like “Cost/Profitability”, “Time to Market requirement”, “Logistical requirements”, etc.

Every iteration will throw a bundle of features which can be tracked using Differentiated Needs Pyramid and feature set is finalized. Product managers would have clear understanding of customer segment they are targeting, the USP of product which will attract its customers and budgetary idea regarding costing, marketing plan etc. Once these specs are agreed and approved, team is now ready to get detailed plan for development build a roadmap with milestones and other stuff.    

The next three steps deal with actual building of product.

3.      Road mapping

Product team will create a road map i.e. High-level plan with milestones, dates, ownerships etc. The plan typically follows the business strategy and collaborates with other stakeholders who are going to be party to the building process. They could be internal departments or external vendors or agencies. Once everyone is aligned, this plan goes in to planning tool and made available to different entities to detail out for actual feature building.  

4.      Prioritization / Sequencing

This step deals with sequencing of features for building considering aspects like criticality, time required to build, dependency, build capacity etc. Once this prioritization is completed, teams are formed as per requirement and development is initiated.

5.      Development / Delivery

This is where the product is actually built, feature by feature. Every feature is built, tested and demonstrated to internal customers (sometimes to selected loyal customers). Features are integrated with each other as per plan and tested. It is best practice to follow an iterative method so that any changes that need to be made can be made early in the game as well as product team can also witness customer reaction. Another important activity is to validate the feedback / reaction against Differentiated Needs Pyramid; check the matching between the expected and actual reaction. The results will tell the product managers if they have understood their customers correctly, and have they considered their needs correctly. If there is a mismatch, which means understanding of customer needs have to be refined and features tweaked if necessary. This comparison with Differentiated Needs Pyramid gives early indication on how the product will be received by customers. Product team can do the necessary tweaks to the product features if required early in the game and saves a lot of work in making the product successful.   The build is tracked with respect to plan and necessary actions are undertaken to keep the build process moving smoothly.

Once the product is developed and tested, it is launched and customers get view of complete product.

The next two steps are predominantly assessment of product performance, gauging reactions of customer, understanding positive and negative criticism and identify modifications for next iteration    

6.      Analytics

Here the product team collects data using various metrics appropriate to the product and assess how it is performing. All the aspects including technical performance like access, availability, speed and feature functionality as well as Outcome performance like usage, revenue improvement, social media buzz etc. are measured. Graphs plotted over a period of time depicts how the product has been received by customers as well as predict revenue impact on long term basis.  

7.      Feedback & Iterations.

It is critical to seek feedback from the customers once the product is launched. The feedback can be direct as well as indirect. In the direct feedback, product team gets views from customers through survey, interviews, forum discussions etc. This clearly establishes featured liked by customer, features disliked by customer as well as features that did not create any impact on customers.

The indirect feedback is obtained through the outcomes observed by the company, it could be additional inquiries, it could be additional usage, it could be additional revenue, it could be likes or complaints or trolls. This feedback also could be assessed using the latest tools available to figure out which features are liked by customer, which features are disliked and which features did not form part of any reactions i.e. did not create any impact.

Once the first set of feedback is received, the product team goes back to the drawing board and compares it with what they started with, what kind of reactions they were expecting from customers and what outcomes they were expecting. If they are matching, team is a winner - the product is successful. If they are not matching, then they can use their Differentiated Needs Pyramid again to create a new baseline for locking in refined customer needs, refined levels for the needs. Re do the feature mapping and identify the gaps that need to be addressed in the second version of the product. This process of collecting feedback, mapping with Differentiated Needs Pyramid and adjusting the features of the product in next release will keep the product up to date with customer needs and continue to enjoy customer loyalty.

Differentiated Needs Pyramid shows mirror to Product managers where they can check if the visualization of the product is equal to the real product that is getting built and it is very important to stay on right track as well as course correct, if necessary, at the earliest in the product cycle.  

Following figure provides a little glimpse of how the Differentiated Needs Pyramid will look, it needs to be filled in for specific product. 

Detailed description and examples are available in my book “Customer Experience Decoded” which is available of Amazon in Print and Kindle version. https://www.amazon.com/Customer-Experience-measure-customer-experience/dp/8195052657/ref=sr_1_1?crid=BYSYS0LUA9MU&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.o0TM6MXfetSBFqEu278Tr7FraAc1DliWb3WRoDDrX4koE_lQ9QWpQIF44kUR4vNKd-qope-v1E63q8fHlLl9Ng.2bmJpjyxDqKPLAFACSzEEnzC5wFFTr0B0txwYYfg94c&dib_tag=se&keywords=customer+experience+decoded&qid=1761412362&sprefix=customer+experience+decoded%2Caps%2C149&sr=8-1

I would be glad to help anyone who would like to learn how to build a Differentiated Needs Pyramid for their product. Please contact me through e-mail and we can take deeper dive in to your specific case.