Product
Creating an Environment for Product Evolution: The Hard Factors
2023-5-1
In the previous article, we covered the soft aspects, highlighting the importance of shared goals, user focus, and agility. In this article, we will introduce the hard aspects, including the tools that support the soft aspects.
Hard aspects of the working environment
In order to evolve a product, it is essential for product managers, UX designers, and engineers to collaborate, rather than working independently of each other.
To support this collaboration, it's crucial to first establish an environment where the company’s mission, vision, values, product vision, and OKRs are shared and pursued collectively. Moreover, products only create value when they are utilized by users. Therefore, we must face the users, understand the issues they face, and thoroughly test hypotheses about user value in order to develop a plan. In addition, high agility is required to realize the plan in these days of rapid change.
In this section, we will introduce a set of tools that support these soft aspects from a hardware perspective, dividing them into those essential for organizational operations and those specific to product development.
Minimum Necessary Tools
With the spread of the coronavirus and the assumption of remote work for long periods of time, the introduction of various tools for documentation, communication, etc. has been promoted rapidly.
First, communication tools such as Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams. These tools became especially popular after the Corona Disaster, and are widely used not only for internal meetings but also for meetings with external parties, such as business negotiations. Their uses are diverse, including use in one-to-many formal settings such as study groups.
Next are chat tools such as Slack and Chatwork. Slack, as an example, has been used for a variety of purposes, such as sharing a channel for communication with people outside the company, preparing a workspace for a specific purpose, sharing a space with people inside and outside the company, and exchanging information. The workspace can be prepared according to the purpose, allowing people inside and outside the company to share the space and exchange information.
Slack has become an essential tool for product development due to its flexibility and integration capabilities with engineering systems.
The third is information sharing tools such as Workplace and Qiita. These tools are used to summarize the content of discussions in meetings and chats and share it widely. For example, they are used to disseminate information to members of the same department who did not attend the meeting, or to develop company-wide communications.
Finally, documentation tools such as Google Docs, Spreadsheet and Notion. Typical examples of documentation tasks, such as creating documents, spreadsheets, and presentation materials, can all now be completed online.
Product Development Specific Tools
Product development tools can be categorized into four key areas. In order, they are: needs gathering, discussion and organization regarding planning, prioritization of planning, and effectiveness testing.
- Needs identification
The first point, needs accumulation, involves collecting requests and problems received from existing users and organizing the backlog. Jira and GitHub are the main tools used in this process.
Jira is primarily used for backlog management, while GitHub, traditionally a code management tool, is increasingly used for managing user feedback through its Issues function, and then responses and development are linked and managed centrally.
- Discussion and organization of planning
The second point is discussion and organization related to planning. This is the stage of planning products based on needs, and in many cases, discussions are basically visualized by utilizing document tools such as those introduced in the previous section. At the stage where discussions are still vague and highly abstract, we often utilize more flexible whiteboard applications (such as Miro and FigJam) instead of document tools.
In addition, product managers, UX designers, and engineers often discuss UIUX as a starting point during the planning stage. This is because it is more accurate to convey nuances and other information through mocks and screen images rather than based on documents. Figma is becoming more common for this purpose.
The Digital Agency, launched in September 2021, is developing a design system for consistent design and functionality across websites and applications, using Figma for this purpose.
- Prioritization of planning and sprint planning
The third point is prioritization and sprint planning. Once a plan has been created, it is necessary to put it into a plan to determine which project to proceed with first. In this situation, we often utilize Jira and Trello introduced in the first point.
When the development is finally finished and ready for release, it is common to document the specifications and consolidate them in a document management tool such as Confluence. Failure to do this consolidation will result in either a search on the documentation tool or, if no documentation is found, a direct look at the code to confirm the specifications.
- Effectiveness Verification
The fourth point is effectiveness verification. This is the phase where the developed function is released and its effectiveness is verified. Here, we will check whether users are utilizing the released functions and whether their use is tied to revenue.
There are two types of methods: one is to analyze the user behavior logs and verify the results, and the other is to interview the users directly. Especially for the former, analysis tools such as Tableau and Big Query are often utilized.
Finally, a surprising blind spot is devices. Engineers tend to choose Macs because of their development environment. So, for example, if a product manager is using Windows, there will be cases where applications and tools are not available or difficult to use in the same environment.
As my own example, when I was using Windows at the time and needed to prepare the same analysis environment as the engineers, I asked them to lend me an additional Mac book because it was faster for them to have it than to set up the environment on Windows. Cases like this will come up more or less often, so unless you have a strong commitment, it is a good idea to have the devices available from the beginning.
Order of Introduction
When a relatively young company, such as a start-up, is preparing its product development environment, it tends to use the various tools mentioned above. On the other hand, large companies need to gradually consider and implement the above-mentioned tools from the perspective of security and other factors.
In many cases, communication, chat, and information sharing tools are used without any problems due to the Corona disaster. However, document tools are often scrutinized and forsaken from a security perspective.
In such cases, it may be a good idea to focus on Figma, which is often used in designing UIUX, the starting point of product development, as UIUX designed using Figma is more eloquent than words and directly appeals to the senses, including nuance. This makes it easier to perceive the value of implementation and intuitively explains the need for fewer alternatives.
Starting with UIUX to the cloud, it would be good to expand the introduction of various tools to the collection of needs (Jira and GitHub), prioritization of planning and sprint planning (Jira, Trello, Confluence), and at the same time, to reconsider the cloudization of document tools At the same time, it would be a good idea to reexamine the use of cloud computing for document tools.
Summary
The adoption of various tools to enhance product development is increasingly common among both startups and large enterprises. In the near future, the tools listed above will be recognized as very basic tools, and if at least one tool is not included in each phase, it will be considered strange. Let's proceed with the consideration of tools that are easy to realize the value of implementing, such as UIUX, and from various perspectives, let's go through trial and error to establish the optimal environment for product development.
References
About the Author
Yoshitaka Miyata. After graduating from Kyoto University with a degree in law, he gained experience in a wide range of management consulting roles, including business strategy, marketing strategy, and new business development at Booz & Company (now PwC Strategy&) and Accenture Strategy. At DeNA and SmartNews, he was involved in various B2C content businesses, both through data analysis and as a product manager. Later, at freee, he launched new SaaS products and served as Executive Officer and VP of Product. Currently, he is the founder and CEO of Zen and Company, providing product advisory services from seed stage to enterprise-level. He also serves as a PM Advisor for ALL STAR SAAS FUND and as a Senior Advisor at Sony Corporation, primarily supporting diverse products in new business ventures. Additionally, he has been involved in the founding of the Japan CPO Association and now serves as its Executive Managing Director. He is a U.S. Certified Public Accountant and the author of "ALL for SaaS" (Shoei Publishing).
