HOW TO CREATE A PRODUCT

Several years back I was approached by a division within a large well established Healthcare organization, and was asked to submit a plan for creating a product for a Healthcare provider in the Dallas area. It’s more of a business plan based on my experience in product development as well as business analysis. The plan included

The steps I’d take from start to finish.
The details of how I’d put a team together.
The time it would take to hit all milestones.
An explanation of why, how and what I based my decisions on.

It is a bit unusual because if a company wants to launch a new product at the very least, they’d provide:

A budget.
Timeframe.
An idea of why, what direction they are leaning to.
Competitor that put the idea in their minds.
Do they want it developed on site, remotely, sub out, hire full time?
Have they done this before?
Have they done any market research?

Well the issue is they didn’t want to provide me with an idea as to what the product is/will be until I kept asking questions. That in itself raised so many red flags I was reluctant to even respond. They either thought they were inventing sliced bread and didn’t want the cat out of the bag or had no clue as to what they were doing.

I mean how big of a bread box are we talking about here?
Do you want me to create a new MRI machine, a donut maker, a mobile heart rate monitor, an emergency….. My questions were broad because I didn’t want to give away my thoughts not knowing how serious they are.
Another thought that crossed my mind, companies usually do this to pick your brain for free.

I ignored them, till they came back a few weeks later and insisted. At that time I explained to them my concerns, and so they disclosed their idea, little did they know I had already seen that product in CA at several health organizations. So I figured I’d lay down the general idea of what it MIGHT take since I’ve done this multiple times. Then again not knowing so many important variables I decided to be more process oriented. So, I spent 30 minutes into it and emailed them back what follows (which blew their minds):

Background Summary

Here is a list of what I’m good at and have done for over 10 years

Assemble teams and create product development departments

Engage executive members, understand their business needs and create a business strategy

Establish an innovation pipeline that transforms visions into creative results

Set Ideation Processes and Procedures

Analyze, test and seep through ideas scattered all over the spectrum

Monitor and analyze metrics to assess product performance, revenue generated, market share capture, profitability, user traction and satisfaction

Analyze data or help my team collect and analyze data on competitive apps

Empathize with the user and have a passion for building exceptional products centered around the “voice of the customer”

Interact with customers, stakeholders and establish company wide buy-in

Been a programmer, Product Owner, Product Manager, Sr Product Manager, Director of Product and Director of Product Management

Over a decade in Healthcare

I’m pretty sure I know what the job entails

Your job description stated

“… 5+ years of experience in building and implementing a product development cycle within an organization…..Oversee the growth of product management function, including building out a high quality product management team and establishing and communicating product management best practices throughout the organization”

Am I interested in the position?

I’m asked to create a department from scratch, just as I have for 15+ years many times over. The idea you presented is great, but still undefined and far from being ready to push through into development. We have to

Reverse-engineer whatever steps you have taken to get to this point
Try to understand the collective train of thought that got us to this point
Take ideas presented and assess all risks
Go through problem scenarios just as we would when defining user stories, constantly retesting and editing our process
Every idea is a great one, but as a team it’s our job to think of DESIRABILITY and the consequences the products would bring to society and to our business model.
Regardless of the ideas, we ALWAYS go through our own process. We have to make sure we start off with the correct, precise foundation or the chances of success will diminish.
Track the evolution of a new idea – from conception to elimination or production. It is imperative that every thought process is documented so we can review the paths taken for evaluation, education and improvement.
The innovation process should be completely connected and documented.

Didn’t avoid the question

It isn’t that I avoided your question when you asked me: “How would you go about and what would you do next to produce this product?”, but it’s hard to produce a product when the concept lack structure, direction, and definition. A great idea but needs to go through the RINGER, for instance;

Starting with Personas: the product you suggested would create many possible scenarios which contradict each other. It isn’t a one size fit all and that has to be addressed before we proceed.
The problem the product is trying to solve is not defined which would cause time wasted and money spent in vain if we were to proceed as is.

I provided a few points to consider during our conversation which would change the direction of the entire concept, and therefore change the way we would proceed with development. I’d be more than happy to sit down with the team that produced the original idea, listen to the reasoning, discussions and train of thoughts as they evaluate the idea and what vision they have.

The points I’m about to outline are some of the steps I would take to arrive at an idea worth pursuing, the order chosen is dynamic and have excluded a few steps to keep this document at a reasonable length.

If I was to accept the position I would pivot back, verify, rethink all the hypotheses you presented and present stakeholders with all the possibilities my team and I can assemble that would make the product successful.

IDEATION CYCLE & CONCEPTS

DATA

It is imperative that we have access to data if our goal is to create products that target the existing customer base or even a national audience.

INNOVATION FUNNEL

A product director is responsible for discovering opportunities, understanding user needs, and managing these insights in the form of requirements documents and aligning these with the organization’s business model. The product management process begins with an open-minded exploration of potential commercial opportunities that might be suitable for further investigation by the organization. Out of this “fuzzy front-end” of ideation emerge hypotheses (plausible product concepts).

Idea generation can be thought of as a funnel with ideas entering the funnel(input) and products exiting it, so the job would be to fill the funnel with ideas and keep pushing them through the funnel.

Here is a typical stage-gate process if you’re familiar with the process, it summarizes the complete development cycle ( if you wish to apply the Stage-Gate philosophy)

But since I was not part of the initial process and you presented me with an idea (output) already I can’t help but question, or reverse-engineer the process that made you arrive at that decision.

I deal with hypothetical scenarios just like the one you presented to me on a daily basis, when companies approach us with a vision, wanting to launch a product. We always follow the same process as I will describe to you here, so please don’t take offense to some of the points I might raise since I have no idea who and why and how much time was invested in the idea you presented to me.

Regardless of why and how an idea was chosen I will still go back and validate everything I am about to present to you here.

If I am to direct the development of a product from scratch I have to make sure the foundation has been laid correctly since it will greatly change the success rate of the product, aside from my neck being on the line.

BUSINESS MODEL

On many occasions the model is defined after we are presented with an idea to pursue. At times the model is already preset by the client.

BUSINESS & PRODUCT STRATEGY

I require all stakeholders to define the business and product strategy for the department. Of course these strategies are dynamic but with most strategies, they serve as a vision for the product development team and entire collection of cross-functional teams as well; marketing, sales, engineering, customer support…

What are we trying to accomplish
Why are we going in that direction
What is the ultimate goal for all our portfolio of products
Are we looking to be acquired, sell out or launch an IPO

RESTRICTIONS & LIMITATIONS

Restrictions and limitations that are currently in place and might possibly be placed upon the department in the future. These are dynamic as well and could be of many forms, here are a few:

Religious
Political
Monetary
Time
Control
Market

Since I am aware that HEALTHCARE is the direction we’re pursuing, I would gather my team and go through the process of creating ideas and filling the input side of the funnel, while we focus on the following points:

WHAT’S THE PROBLEM

Are we reducing the time doctors take to give physicals?
Are we trying to give people an alternative to going to a doctor’s office?
Are we eliminating the need to set an appointment months in advance?
Are we eliminating the hours we spend waiting every time we visit a doctor?
>>>>Are we looking to decrease the revenue for doctors and hospitals generated by physical exams?
>>>>Do we believe that physical exams improve our early detection of major health issues?
>>>>Do customers believe that as well?
>>>>If the previous two points are partially true, do we want to educate customers to the benefits of physical exams as well?
….

The last fours points are very important and we can get into that at a later time.

What are we trying to solve? It is extremely important that we define the problem, if we can’t define the problem in one sentence then we need to focus and iterate until we can. If we still can’t put a finger on it and we are actually introducing a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist, then we need to make a hypothesis and proceed based on that assumption and not on validated propositions.
One thing to keep in mind, however much we believe we are solving a problem it is still a HYPOTHESIS.

ARE WE CREATING A NEW PROBLEM

Many times we get so carried away with our own ideas that we think the customer will like it. BUILD IT AND THEY WILL USE IT mentality.

Many times by trying to solve one problem we create another one.

Not all physical exams are created equal….

WHO IS OUR CUSTOMER – PERSONAS

This is part of the product lifecycle as well and will happen there if we were given an idea that has already gone through the ideation process. But when we are starting from scratch, I prefer to create the PERSONAS for each product here. A general Persona that will need to be further defined later if the idea makes it through the funnel. I don’t dwell into too much details here, and save the time for the later stage, but I create a general definition of our customers.

In the scenario presented to me during the conference call the Persona of the customer makes a HUGE difference and will actually impact the outcome of the product.I could write a whole new post about how each Persona for this product will determine the success of the product but will save it for a later discussion.Suffice to say, pay attention to your Personas.

WHAT’S THE CUSTOMER DOING NOW

What’s the alternative
Is the customer happy with it
What would the customer like to see happen
There are companies that offer remote diagnosis. How successful are they? What can we learn from them? What should we avoid?

WHAT’S OUR SOLUTION

What are we proposing…
WHY WOULD THE CUSTOMER USE OUR PRODUCT
Would our product eliminate an actual physical exam
Would it expedite a physical
Would it eliminate the personalized attention and experience of talking to our care provider
Would it save them time
Would it make them healthier
Hey, another App on our device isn’t going to kill anyone. They’ll use it
…..

A successful product is at the intersection of Desirability, Feasibility and Viability. Desirability is the Independent variable, without it you don’t have to worry about the other two. So until you have validated propositions and went through the two stages of idea generation and concept testing you can’t continue with production.

Some of these later steps could be shuffled around and the order rearranged based on stakeholder demands.

CREATE A POSITIONING STATEMENT

Next step, I’d create a positioning statement. An image, a short sentence that any passerby would read and understand what we are trying to do. A statement that any stakeholder would clearly follow. This is what you would’ve presented to me during the conference call. Remember this is a Hypothesis:

Who needs our product
What is the product
What does it do
What’s the alternative
Why would anyone use it

PROTOTYPE

Not much to be said here, create a prototype and adjust if need be once we get to PIVOT or PERSEVERE below.

Prototype could be created earlier on as well. I am a visual person and usually see the product as a prototype while we are still conceiving ideas and long before we’ve tested any of them. As soon as an idea is suggested I can already envision what the prototype would look like.

Horrible at drawing though, go figure!

MARKET SIZE

One of the first, and most persistent, questions likely from investors, executives/management, and team members is, “How big is the market?” Answering this question requires the PM team understand and work through common terms such as ‘total addressable market’ (TAM), ‘serviceable addressable market’ (SAM), and ‘service obtainable market’ (SOM).

Don’t waste too much time thinking about a product unless you know the potential target market, competitors and their pricing (if it’s going to be a commercial product).

EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN – MVP

Now that we might have real evidence from any customer that the product is compelling, what is our value hypothesis?

What are its key assumptions?

How do I definitely prove or disprove the assumptions with a minimum of time and effort?

EXPERIMENTATION

PIVOT or PERSEVERE

If my experiments disprove the hypothesis I need to PIVOT back and start from IDEATION

If my experiments prove the hypothesis I will PERSEVERE and MOVE ON to the PRODUCTION CYCLE which is not technically writing code but the start of the Next Cycle.

Many consider the next cycle as PRODUCTION but I tend to include the processes listed here as part of PRODUCTION, because I have never worked on one product at a time, and have always had an ideation funnel process and several products working in parallel.

PRODUCT ROADMAP

An effective roadmap is a carefully designed document that communicates the product vision and the areas of focus that’ll be tackled to get there. Its purpose is to show the development, sales, marketing, and other internal teams in the company the vision for the future of a specific product or product line. It will set broad goals and provide the steps necessary to achieve them.

I tend to prefer charts, diagrams, anything visual actually, I guess my background in data analysis and visualization is evident here. A simple roadmap chart for everyone to follow. Once again, this will not be a detailed, dated projection of each step in the process but a general, dynamic overview of the product cycle.

Even though a product roadmap has already been created in my mind, way back then at Personas, I tend to leave it till the end. There is no need to waste the time to write it down till the end due to many changes that might occur while testing.

In many cases I create a roadmap much earlier in the process to present to stakeholders and as we move through the process I create new ones instead of editing the original one. This way we have a track record of how our idea evolved throughout the ideation process, and gives us a visual recap of what we’ve tried and what we’ve edited while traversing our way through the process. Just because I placed it here at the end, it is advantageous to create one way back when we create a Positioning Statement.

PERSONAS-USE CASES & PROBLEM SCENARIOS-USER STORIES

Next we start with what many in the outside world consider as PRODUCTION or DEVELOPMENT, but it is a continuation of the process for us. And yes you do see Personas once again, Personas and User Stories are dynamic and will change with progress and testing, Personas not so much but user stories most likely.

I will stop here because the next phases are based on a solid hypothesis, so we need to pivot back and redefine the existing proposition.

CONCLUSION

The innovation funnel is a continuous process that every company should invest about 10% of its resources if the ultimate goal is to be the leader in its space.

Here are my questions and points I’d go back and validate:

Shipping packages is an added expense, an additional department and direction that is not related to software production. It will involve sourcing, supply chain logistics, increase production expense, safety and
Liability. The fact that we’ll possibly be shipping health related testing equipment could raise a liability issue and need to be addressed as the ideation is being materialized
Customer relations department needs to be established ASAP if not setup already. This will be the heart and soul of the “voice of customer”. This department will take all incoming requests, complaints and suggestions. We need to know what every customer calls and complains about. We need to know what every care provider in the network calls and complains about, doctors will most likely not call in and complain, so we have to seek every one of them and look for their input.
From my experience, after interviewing thousands of doctors, emergency care providers, first-response units and patients, the creativity of their feedback is amazing. You’d think you know the problem, think twice and talk to your customers
Part 3 above needs to be coded directly into a database to allow for data analysis, therefore input fields have to be standardized if we go in that direction
There are many ways to allow a customer to administer some of the tests performed at a physical, without the need of visiting a doctor, waiting hours for lab tests and still achieve the same results without having to ship products to them
I would provide more insight if am able to sit down with the team that came up with the idea you presented, I’d be curious to read the documentation created while detailing the idea as well as the thought process the team went through

BE CAREFUL OF WHAT YOU WISH FOR

Make sure you don’t eliminate customers from taking physicals. Physical exams are a great source of income for the medical profession, or are they?

Why do you think auto repair shops offer FREE CHECKUPS, FREE AC CHECK, BRAKE CHECK…..

What’s better for a repair shop than for a human to drive up to the shop and ask, HEY JOE SEE WHAT’S WRONG WITH MY CAR. What are the odds of that driver walking out without paying for some service JOE thought was needed?

Now let that driver be your mother and the odds are the car will be diagnosed with a failing transmission, worn out brakes, horrible steering and your mom ends up taking a cab home.

TEAM

1- When you mentioned FUNDING it raised a flag for me. There are multiple stages in the development process that will allow us to seek funding.

2- I would be in a better position to address the stages at which we can seek funding if I had a Business and Product Strategy Document, or if I know the Restrictions & Limitations as I outlined earlier.

3- Since it was brought up without any explanations, I would build the team based on lean methods I’ve practiced. With that being said, EVERYONE WILL WEAR multiple hats as if we were launching a startup strapped for cash.

The outline below is based on a team working to produce a digital product not a physical product to be shipped. If a non-digital product is to be produced, I would need to adjust the size and makeup of the teams to handle other duties.

Ideally

Department Leadership

Director/Lead/Senior… whatever the title might be

Tech Department

Enterprise Architect (might not be needed based on type of product)
Solution Architect

Programming

PM/PO – 1 for every 7
Engineers 5-6 per team
UX Designer or Engineer with an extensive UX background 1-2 per team

Customer Relations

1 per team initially. After initial launch: as needed based on the type of product

Marketing

1-3 for initial team. After initial launch: as needed based on the type of product

Data Analysis

1-3 Analysts for initial team. After initial launch: as needed based on the type of product
2-3 Data Scientists at the very least for any type of predictive analysis and/or introductory AI products

Here is an estimate for a team that would be capable of producing a digital product that doesn’t involve exhaustive AI or predictive analysis use:

First 90-120 days

1- Product Director – Needs to get onboard ASAP along with either the Data Analyst or the Customer relations team member listed below. If we don’t have access to data yet, then the Customer Relations Analyst would be the one needed. There are countless things that need to be done before the rest of the team is assembled and there is no need to be fully staffed and carrying the high expenses for a full 30 days before they are needed.

2- Solutions Architect – 6-8 years experience in micro services oriented designs in multiple IT areas, healthcare would be helpful. On contract for 90 days until we know what the business strategy is (salary 120-150K)

3- Product Manager/Owner – Healthcare experience (HL7 and FHIR) would be ideal but not necessary. About 3-5 years experience (salary 120-150K)

4- 2 Engineers – Very experienced and familiar with Cloud design, testing and deployment. Healthcare experience (HL7 and FHIR) would be ideal (salary per – about 175-190K. High because we seek very experienced and capable of multi-thinking while being in a startup frame of mind)

5- 1 Data Analyst/scientist – (70-100K). I would start with a data analyst not a scientist due to the cost and simplicity of the initial tasks I would place on them. As we grow we’ll add Data Scientists if we decide to pursue AI guided remote diagnosis

6- 1 Customer relations & Marketing analyst – (50-80K)

Once we get the clearance to proceed with the first product

1- 3 additional engineers will be added to expedite the production, iteration, testing and launch. Healthcare experience (HL7 and FHIR) would be ideal (salary per 90-120K)

2- 1 UX designer or (Engineer with a heavy concentration on UX design) (70-120K)

3- This period will be short depending on the complexity of the product and the projected time we will need( from previous experience 30-180 days time frame before launch).

4- Innovation Funnel – If the product is income producing then additional products will be moved through the tunnel after launch

Ideally you’d want to start the project with the entire team in place, that makes for easier communication and a continuous transition from ideation to launch, but we are hardly ever dealing with ideal budgets and the freedom to start a project without restrictions.

I hope my short brief summary clarifies some of the steps I would take in order to filter down some of the ideas that my team and I would work on. The lifecycle of the product development process is a dynamic process involving testing and validation. I will not outline that process here because it depends on the product we are producing. The product introduced to me during the interview is not ready to proceed into development yet, it needs to be redefined.

We can go through hypothetical steps I would take to develop the product based on the idea you presented, with the next step being prioritizing Features and creating User Stories, and that’s were we go back to catch22 and not being able to proceed not having a defined product.

It isn’t that I’m questioning your decisions or choices, but you are hiring me to lead a department, and my job is to question every thought and test all hypotheses before I seek stakeholders buy-in and put my reputation on the line. I hope you understand.

Let me do the job that I’m very good at.

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