TU-E5040 - Product Management D, Lecture, 4.9.2023-12.10.2023

THE TASK

Plan a short-term roadmap to validate the key assumptions of the feature (A1) and the development slices (A2). The plan should address the four risks of the product; value risk,usability risk, viability risk, and feasibility risk. Present the plan as a timeline. Assume your audience to be a fellow PM.

THE OBJECTIVE

This assignment concludes the set of three associated tasks: identification of user need and a feature, its development path, and a roadmap for validating the key assumptions.

As one of the variations of a popular saying goes: no plan survives the first contact with reality. All plans are built on assumptions, and once tested in practice, they will turn out to be right, wrong, irrelevant or incomplete. In the world of product, this exposes all product decisions and development to varying types of risks: 

1. Value Risk: The risk that the product fails to deliver real value to its intended users and customers. Failing to address this risk can result in building a product that nobody wants or finds valuable. Thorough user research, user testing and prioritizing features based on customer feedback mitigate value risk. Usually main role for PM.
   
2. Usability Risk: Usability risk concerns the user experience and whether the product is intuitive and easy to use. A product may offer value, but if it's difficult to navigate or understand, it won't be successful. Can be mitigated e.g. with user interface & experience design & usability testing. Usually role of a designer.
   
3. Feasibility Risk: Feasibility risk pertains to whether the product can be built with the available technology, resources, and within the allocated time frame. Overly ambitious or complex product ideas and features can lead to feasibility challenges that delay development or exceed budget constraints. Usually, it’s the role of engineering lead to mitigate this risk with feasibility studies, capability assessment, and ensuring alignment with the team's skill set.
   
4. Viability Risk: Viability risk relates to the product's sustainability from a business perspective. Building a product that doesn't generate enough revenue or that doesn't align with the company's strategic goals can lead to failure. To mitigate viability risk, product teams should conduct market analysis, consider pricing and monetization strategies, and ensure alignment with the organization's overall business objectives.This is the task of PM (depending on context, supported by product marketing manager).
   

One of the key roles of the product management as an organizational function is to mitigate these risks. The purpose of product management is to build the right product, which means a product that has highest value with lowest costs. Mitigation of these risks keeps from wasting resources to build useless products.

THE TASK IN STEPS

1. Identify, categorize, and rank assumptions. Identify the key assumptions of the feature (A1) and its initial development slices (A2). Categorizes them to the four risk categories, and within each category, prioritize the assumptions, starting from the ones with the highest risk to success and value of the feature.
   
2. Form testable hypotheses. Translate the assumptions into hypotheses that you could test with appropriate validation methods. Plan tests and data sources that could support or refute the assumptions.
   
3. Form a timeline. Organize the tests into a logical and practical order on a timeline. If there are multiple assumptions and risks in each category, prune them down by…
   
   • focusing on the most important ones, and / or…
     
   • focusing on the ones that make most sense to validate first (which are not necessarily the most important ones). 
     
4. Form a roadmap. Iterate between different validation paths and the timeline as you are forming the final roadmap. Note that the later plans are contingent upon the results of first validations. For this, use two or three separate time horizons (e.g. "now", "then", "later") with decreasing level of detail as the time moves forward. 
   
5. Present the results visually. Finalize the timeline and form a presentation of the roadmap. 
   The end results should present a roadmap with timeline, risk categories, assumptions, and associated validation methods. Also include basics of the feature and the case in general. Assume that the audience for the roadmap has not seen any of your prior works.
6. Return as a single pdf-file:  Report the above on 1-2 pages. The roadmap must fit on a single page, but if needed, the second page (well, the first page in that case) can be used to provide a background for the roadmap.