Eliminate Your Innovation Pains, Part 3

This is the third and final part of my posts where I discuss ways to deal with the top three pain points in the management of product portfolio according to the Third Product Portfolio Management Benchmark Study by Planview (http://www.planview.com/m1/pd/3rd-product-portfolio-management-benchmark-study-hph).

1. Too many projects for available resources,
2. Not being able to drive innovation fast enough,
3. Decisions that go back and forth, get made late or ineffectively.

In this post, I will address the third pain: Decisions that go back and forth, get made late or ineffectively.

In building a new product/service, the whole point is about delivering new value to customers. However, this fundamental goal may be lost when teams are working on the details, typically with little or no connection to customers. Eventually, teams may drift away from truly valuable features that differentiate the product/service being developed.

I recently worked with a business leader, who demanded to see a clear map between the value proposition and the features being developed. While developing the map was challenging at first, it became a valuable tool in making decisions. We used the map in both directions; value proposition to features, and from features to value proposition.

The tool is simple and looks something like the table below.

Building this table helped our team in a number of ways:

1. We could assess the importance of features and their relevance to value proposition. Filter out features that did not have a strong linkage to a value proposition.
2. More specifically articulate the value proposition.
3. Create a clear linkage for the development team between what they do and  what customers are expected to value.

I welcome your comments on my blog. If you have specific questions, please feel free to contact me at ferhan.bulca@intrascope.ca.