Insights management, intelligently feeding your roadmap.
Prioritisation can be complex. How can managing and understanding insights well really help? I share how I approached this issue and how I implemented it with the team.
To ensure an optimal user experience that truly meets their needs, it’s essential to establish well-thought-out processes and approaches. In this article, and the ones that follow, I am going to detail the effective implementation of these elements with my team to focus on the most relevant topics.
Today, we’ll focus on “Insight Management.”
What Is an Insight?
In simple terms, an insight is information gathered either directly or indirectly that provides an understanding of user problems and needs. This makes it a valuable resource for anticipating market changes and understanding user behavioural motivations.
Think of Netflix adjusting its algorithm based on insights into your viewing habits. Or Spotify fine-tuning its recommendations by understanding your musical preferences. These tangible examples demonstrate how insight management and utilisation are critical areas that should not be overlooked.
However, relying solely on insights for decision-making is a mistake. They form part of the bigger picture. As a product team member, your goal is to positively impact users, with testing, learning, and adapting as key factors.
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Gathering Insights
There are several ways to gather insights. Here's a non-exhaustive list:
User Research: Aimed at understanding user needs, behaviours, and motivations through interviews, user tests, play tests, and surveys, collecting both qualitative and quantitative data.
User Feedback: This occurs when users share feedback directly with your team. This could be via support channels, social media, community forums, in-app forms, or customer care emails.
Data Analysis: Analytics, of course, is a crucial source of insights, uncovering trends, behaviour patterns, and opportunities for improvement.
A/B Testing: By comparing different versions of hypotheses, you can understand how users respond and identify which ones deliver better performance or higher satisfaction.
Social Listening: Not all users share their needs or problems directly. It’s also important to analyse what’s happening online and in app stores to understand user discussions and sentiments towards the product.
Fieldwork: Teams can conduct observations in the field, going to locations where users interact with the product to gather contextual insights.
Cross-Team Collaboration: Often underestimated, regular exchanges between teams can facilitate the discovery of insights. Additionally, auto-filling an insights table via a Notion form makes this process simpler at any time.
Ensure you diversify your sources of insights and adopt an agile approach to make the most of real-time user feedback.
There are other methods, but with this list, you’re well-equipped to work on the topic. Now, let’s explore how Alessandro’s team implemented the initial processes.
Practical Implementation
First, it's important to know that every request arrives in a dedicated Notion table.
Automatically, from a Typeform (or manually entered when coming from the Product Team):
Since the implementation of the process, our Product Marketing Manager now has a daily responsibility: to be the first line for new insights. Each week, they analyse, categorise, and inform the Product Managers of the associated outcomes (and/or related product).
Validating an Insight
Product Managers and Product Marketing Managers determine if a new initiative could lead to an opportunity, using the insights and other discovery elements. They then create this initiative in a dedicated Notion table.
This table feeds into the Product Roadmap, but only if it is validated by the CPTO during an initiative assessment meeting.
Insights are a key resource for strategic and tactical analysis. While they aren't the only factor influencing future decisions, they play an important role in the overall reflection.
Insight Card Composition
The values displayed on the card should help us easily understand the stakes, the impact, and the "why." Of course, it should also be easy to contact the person who raised the information to dig deeper and gain better understanding.
Insight Management
Qualification
Insights are managed by the PMM (Product Marketing Manager) and PM (Product Manager) teams.
Since the implementation of this process, our Product Marketing Manager has taken on a new daily task: being the first filter for new insights. Every week, they analyse, categorise, and inform the Product Managers of the associated outcomes (and/or the relevant product).
How do we identify duplicates? Regular reviews conducted by the same individuals help minimise this risk.
A bi-weekly meeting is also scheduled with the PM team to ensure alignment and avoid missing any valuable insights (yes, they’re all important, but you get the point).
Validating an Insight
The PM and PMM determine if there is a new initiative that could lead to an opportunity, using the insights and other discovery elements. They then create this initiative in a dedicated Notion table.
This table is then used to feed the Product Roadmap, but only if it is approved by the CPTO during an initiative assessment meeting.
It is also mandatory to fill in the insight card with a range of values and a scoring framework to demonstrate the potential impact of the subject and facilitate further discussion.
If the review process invalidates the insight, it becomes "out of scope" and will not be prioritised.
However, if the insight is validated, it is selected and prioritised into one of the following four categories:
Now: Tasks to be completed as soon as possible to meet the identified outcomes.
Next: Tasks to address once all "Now" items are finished.
Later: Tasks that will impact your strategy but aren't "game changers" in the short term, to be tackled in the next 9+ months.
Backlog: Tasks that will impact your strategy but are lacking details, or are part of a longer-term strategy.
Candidate: Opportunities still lacking information but showing strategic and tactical potential, needing further investigation.
Communicating Insights
A dedicated Slack channel allows near real-time visibility of every new insight added and any changes made to existing ones. Here’s a screenshot of an insight test added by Alessandro for today’s article:
Additionally, regular exchanges with stakeholders ensure alignment.
The management and use of insights are key areas that should not be neglected. Relying solely on insights for decision-making is a mistake; they are part of the bigger picture.
The Tools We Use for Insight Management
Notion,
Typeform.
Share Your Approach
Have you implemented your own process for managing insights?
How have you overcome the challenges related to insight management?
What have you put in place?
Share in comment your processes, tools, and the impact they’ve had on you, your team, and your product.
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