A product consultant's toolkit

In our September Let’s Talk Product meetup, we explored techniques and frameworks that are must-haves in every product consultant’s toolkit. Check out our summary of the talks here.

Don’t forget about your stakeholder – Ilona Konitz

To shape a successful product, stakeholder involvement is vital. The challenge that most product managers face is identifying and engaging with the right stakeholders. They are crucial to clarify requirements and user needs, to understand project constraints, and to consult for prioritisation decisions.

Tips to identify key stakeholders:

• Brainstorm or workshop to pool in the team’s knowledge on project stakeholders
• Draw up ‘As is process’ map to understand different users and external parties involved
• Consult the org-chart of your company or client
• Review existing documentation or reach out to other team members

Once all stakeholders have been identified, the frameworks below can help with analysing each stakeholder’s influence in the project outcomes.

• Engagement grid that places stakeholders on a scale of influence and engagement
• RACI matrix that identifies the importance of each stakeholder in relation to an activity
• Personas, usually used for understanding end users of a product

Equipped with this knowledge, you can plan your engagement approach and involve the stakeholders effectively throughout the project.

The briefing document technique – Joao Ferreria

Ever come out of a meeting feeling that you didn’t get what you wanted out it? When you have different stakeholders in a room, it can be challenging to encourage everyone to participate - especially when there is an important decision to make or solutions to be explored.  

Using the briefing document technique to increase participation levels in a meeting is a potential solution to this. The central idea is to present the problem in a structured way as a briefing document. It should highlight

• the problem statement,
• undesired impact on the project if not addressed,
• positive impact if issue is addressed,
• the proposed solution(s) and how it mitigates any risk
• ask/action from the audience (decision or a steer)

At the meeting, a hard copy of this document gets distributed at the start and the attendees are asked to read and reflect on the document first before delving into the meeting agenda. This technique works well when the attendees are not particularly focussed or when tangible progress hasn’t been achieved. It’s a great tool to achieve focus, alignment and progress in your meetings!

Facing your fears …. technically – Andrew Blackburn

Our final talk focussed on bringing balance to your product backlog by representing technical debt on par with other product feature enhancements.

To ensure that non-functional requirements are equally represented, we need to start by increasing your awareness about them by listening to your technical peers, and considering the non-functional aspects of your product, like volume, scale, etc.

Next is to increase their visibility with other important stakeholders and advocate why they are important. Represent these technical items in your backlog and include them in your future prioritisation. When it comes to prioritisation, it is important to use a value scoring exercise that factors in reputational, policy and legal impact alongside with user impact so that they are equally represented along with feature development.

More to follow in Let's Talk Product

We will be bringing more amazing talks in our new virtual form soon. If you’d like to use this platform to share your experiences with our product community or if you’d like to be a part of the next event, feel free to reach us at LetsTalkProduct@kainos.com.

Watch the event recording here