Why do products fail? Because users need ‘X’, but the organisation builds ‘Y’.

For those curious by the title of the article, there you go, that’s the answer – have a wonderful day! If we dig deeper however, the more interesting topic is the underlying reason why the above happens and how we can follow 3 simple steps to avoid product failure.

Why do we build the wrong products?

To answer that question, we need to step back and look at the components that make up a product.

What is the goal of each component?

• Users – what do they need, what problems do we need to solve?
• Business – what should be built, which solutions will make the largest impact?
• Technology – the bridge that connects, how will the solution help the user?

“People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill, they want to buy a quarter-inch hole”

Good product management comes down to understanding and exploring the problem space first in detail, before identifying the features that will best solve these problems in the solution space.

So what is stopping an organisation focusing on the problem space?

A. Poorly executed Discovery

Going straight to solutions? Not devoting enough time to a proper discovery phase? Not embedding discovery into your regular sprint cadence?

There are numerous indicators that a discovery is ineffective (many times there isn’t one at all…), so it is important to take stock and recognise this in your own organisation.

B. Little understanding of end user problems and needs

Who are your users? What does the data tell you about them and their habits? Is there a regular feedback loop in place?

It’s very easy to think “I’m a user” and come up with brilliant ideas on your own, but ultimately Product Management is a data-driven game, you need real user feedback and insights to drive everything you build.

C. A lack of capacity and business resources to focus on what is important

Tight deadlines getting in the way of discovery? Other metrics more important than end user satisfaction scores? No time available to step back and look at the whole problem?

‘Business as usual’ should include strategy and thinking time too. The need to pause, reflect, test and learn is essential in any good agile (lowercase ‘a’) iterative process.

How can we fix these problems?

We believe there are 3 steps that you can take to immediately improve your Product org.

1. Build discovery into your BAU

Product Discovery can be boiled down to ‘deeply understanding real user problems and finding the best way to solve them’, it shouldn’t therefore be a surprise that not dedicating the proper time and resource to do this can lead to poor products and features.

Here at UIC Digital we follow a simple approach to discovery, though not prescriptive, it provides a good guideline to the key actions necessary to properly understand and diagnose user problems to build the best solutions.

Whether a dedicated 6 week ‘discovery phase’ or a regular partitioning of discovery activities throughout a sprint – it is essential to good product design. Get a view of your users’ largest problems and try to solve them as simply as possible, and you’ll be on the right track for success.

2. Make user research and validation a priority

Many organisations either don’t speak to their end users at all (typical of B2B2C and not unheard of in B2C) or they do attempt to get feedback from users, but it isn’t regular or effective.

There are two crucial points when this feedback loop is important
i. When understanding which problems to tackle (user journey mapping, user empathy interviews)
ii. When validating if the proposed solution is the right one to solve the users’ problems (prototyping sessions, focus groups)

Set up the right online or in-person sessions with real users, be empathetic and listen – there is no better way to design effective products.

3. Embed user metrics into the heart of your organisation

Some organisations use quarterly OKRs, some have a vague grasp of the right metrics to occasionally look at (hello NPS). Whichever approach you use, the most important thing when considering understanding users and their problems – is embedding the ‘right’ metrics to measure success.

If the goal is to understand our users’ problems much more deeply, then we need to be measuring the right KPIs to tell us if our product is successful in improving the problem. It’s a simple enough thought, which hopefully means it’s instantly actionable: if a users’ problem is buying a product from your e-commerce process takes too long, then we should be razor sharp in benchmarking and measuring lag & lead user metrics e.g. conversion rate at each stage in the conversion funnel (lag), clicks per page (lead), time spent per checkout stage (lead).

The journey doesn’t stop with identifying these metrics, an important step is then making this part of daily conversations: from daily stand-ups to quarterly reviews, to bonus objective discussions – success metrics are a culture and way to manage your whole product organisation to ensure product success.

TL;DR – Users are everything. Get to know them (discovery), empathise (user research & validation) and continue listening (user success metrics) to give yourself the best chance to make your products successful.

Here at UIC Digital, we help clients through these steps to design and deliver winning products every day. What do you think is the most important thing to nail in a successful product organisation?