While a business requirement document may seem like a logical step to kicking off a project, it's often bloated, missing requirements, loaded with bias and assumptions, and challenging for the working team to absorb. Instead, we prefer a user-centric methodology to define just-enough product requirements to get started. We continue to build using a build-measure-learn loop, which guarantees feature priorities are informed using real user data.
Interactive workshops are efficient at extracting requirements and aligning stakeholders.
The design and requirements of the product are refined by both stakeholders and the experts who will build the software.
The largest obstacle for the enterprise is to get started. A workshop defines just-enough requirements to ship working software.
Our lean workshop guarantees we build the right product, for the right reasons, and use real user feedback along the way to validate the investment. The Lean Requirements workshop will create alignment between stakeholders and define immediate product roadmap using Agile best practices of just-in-time requirements.
We recognize the investment and political capital you must leverage to have senior stakeholders in a workshop with us for a whole day. The rapid alignment is worth it.
Start by getting a cross-functional product team and business stakeholders together. We use low fidelity tools that encourage the flow of conversation and visualization. Collective understanding and objectives are refined.
A clearly defined vision and set of success metrics help ensure we're creating the right product and producing the right results.
We identify any users that might engage with the solution and explore their goals and needs by asking about their motivations and pain points. The goal here is to create empathy for our users by leveraging user-centered design practices to create products users love.
With our users in mind, we start brainstorming solutions and feature ideas. This is a time for divergent, free-flow thinking. Once all ideas have been shared, we organize them into an affinity map, and then we rearrange the epics, features, and stories into a story map.
Throughout the process, we will identify, document, and explore potential risks, impediments, or assumptions that impact our ability to ship working software quickly.
As part of the review, we evaluate the story map through the lens of existing and required technology. From data and integrations to technology preferences or requirements, we unearth hidden requirements and all information needed to begin architecture diagrams.
We use our shared understanding to focus the release goals on solving the business problems identified at the beginning of the workshop.
Chief Product Officer, Grainger
As a result of a workshop, we will clearly define the requirements of the product, the sequence in which we should take the product to market, the investment strategy, the time needed for the initial release, as well as the composition of the pilot product team.
We will send you a proposal within two business weeks, clarifying our approach, the risks and the opportunities we’ve identified, and more.
A charter acts as the North Star for the product with success metrics, vision, risks, and other relevant topics identified. The team leverages the charter at key milestones.
The estimate sizes up all identified epics, informing our product investment needs and possible release strategies.
The story map identifies key product epics and user stories. Stories are prioritized, and a release strategy is established.
Assumptions are recorded to help the team identify deviation from the plan when in the weeds of delivery, such as expectations for third party vendors.
Risks help the team proactively manage things that could fail like a dependency on an API that is not yet written by a third-party.
We will propose a configuration of the team ideal for each specific product.
A Lean Requirements workshop will lead to quick wins, getting working products in the hands of your users fast. Leverage the momentum to rationalize long term strategic change in people, process, and tooling at the enterprise.
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