Strategic Assessment
Context
My client had a popular product that was not returning expected revenue at the current stage in its lifecycle. After a flawed launch two years prior, a second year of production problems and internal frustration pushed leaders to assess the value of the product. With their internal staff already in the midst of a third year of issues, leadership identified a need for an independent, third party analysis in order to determine the future of the product.
Team personas generated during contextual interviews. Click image to enlarge.
Services Provided
User Research
- Contextual inquiry (user interviews)
- Systems mapping
- Data analysis & synthesis
- Technical solutions research
Strategy
- Feature analysis & prioritization
- Personas
- Competitive analysis
- Technical & communication flow diagrams
Presentations
- Executive findings
- Executive recommendations
Process
Early Alignment to Anticipate Expected Output
I first met with a small group of leaders to align on the purpose and desired outcome of our engagement. I’ve learned that the most important objective of a client kick-off is to identify stakeholder roles (outside of their organizational titles) and to check their enthusiasm for the engagement as well as their bias and assumptions. Especially when working with internal tools and teams, I think it is important to understand tone and key vocabulary from the start. This enables me to study relationships and systems without causing too much disruption.
For this engagement, I knew that I would need to create clear charts of people and the flow of information to ensure that I understood the connections between tools, teams, and leaders in order to analyze the gap in expectations to reality.
Flexible Format for Deeper Learning
This engagement required interviews with various departments, roles, and responsibilities. While we had an initial list of interview subjects provided, I’ve found this type of contextual inquiry can require flexibility and improvisation in order to really dig into the problem space. I had formed a hypothesis from the kick-off meeting and used that to create some high level categories for questions.
For each interview session, I created a template with buckets for questions and an overall goal for each interview based on role and area of expertise. This flexible layout also ensured that my colleague and I knew which questions we would like to ask in advance as well as a space to add questions that we could both see on the fly.
Where Technology Fails, People Compensate
After 15 interviews, it was clear that the product had multiple hidden costs that were impacting net revenue. Single points of failure created bottlenecks which were compounded with inadequate communication channels. While this was supposed to be a turnkey product, the product was developed for entirely different markets and levels of sales maturity. This resulted in unexpected (and often untracked) effort from internal teams.
An analysis into alternative products revealed that similar products in this space were costly to maintain and support. The only alternative that could include the ideal feature set would be a custom build. I condensed these findings into an executive presentation for their leaders and outlined several paths forward.
Impact
A Clear Perspective to Guide Decisions
My client relied on me to gather and synthesize technical and human insights into the product so that they could make an informed decision without falling down the rabbit hole of internal politics or overly technical reports. I captured the initial purpose of the product from a business and user perspective, the reality of the current product, and potential impact of alternatives. I presented data backed evidence needed to determine whether to keep the product, improve it, or replace it.
In an ideal world, there is a solution that meets audience, user, and business needs. While I was unable to find an alternative solution in this product space that would increase ROI, I was able to provide my client with a holistic and unbiased perspective.
- Reduces larger friction points in process
- Enables clearer line of sight into goals and status
- Increases immediate reliability of data
- Doesn't address slow down
- Cost, reliance, restrictions
- Revenue Impact: [Redacted]
- Update Cost: [Redacted]
- Maintenance Cost: [Redacted]
- Reduces fees
- Streamlines products and process
- Full control over brand experience and product features
- Additional staffing & operations
- Training, execution, maintenance
- Revenue Impact: [Redacted]
- Update Cost: [Redacted]
- Maintenance Cost: [Redacted]
- Enables sales and program team to focus on other projects that fit existing strategy and brand
- Loss of popular product
- Opens gap for competitors
- Revenue Impact: [Redacted]
- Update Cost: [Redacted]
- Maintenance Cost: [Redacted]
