I think, this article concerns any entrepreneur or lead who often does not see light at the end of the tunnel when they have great ideas. Having great ideas is not enough to make it a reality. You need tools for it and I am here to share you some from my past experience.

Let’s start with my favorite sentence coming from a book that I loved to read
(“Manager son équipe avec succès” de Les références Harvard Business Review France, each reference from this book is a translation from French to English).

“a goal only makes sense if it is associated with a concrete action plan.”

For starting a product, you need a roadmap. You need to know where are you going in several quarters : Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4. Once you know where you are going, you will have a much better understanding about what you need to accomplish. Here is bullet points that I brought from Harvard Business Review France what was really useful for me on how to define goals.

Define Goals

• Recognized by all as important

• Clear and easy to understand

• Write in specific terms

• Measurable and time-bound

• In line with the company’s strategy

• Achievable but ambitious

• Validated by appropriate bonuses (nice to have)

As product owner, or lead, you may want to use agile methodology as Scrum with short iteration and flexibility for your product. This methodology began in tech products however it has spread out to other industries for years. Here is some tips on how to process next with Scrum.

Once you have your goals, you can convert your goals as epics. If the time-bound is too big, try to split this goal in smaller goals, maybe it was too ambitious. Having reachable goals in a short time keeps your troops motivated because they have accomplishments that you can celebrate and you can see light at the end of the tunnel. In any businesses, products, the time to market is really important and should be fast.

So now, you have created your several epics, you will need to split these epics in stories what we can call features. A story is result-based and should not lead in any technical solution. Here are the bullet points that help me to define a story.

Define Stories

• Stories divide your goal into specific features by clearly specifying your expectations

• No story should lead to solution

• Illustrate as you can by diagrams or mockups (a image can be much more efficient than thousand words)

• Context (optional) + Acceptance Criteria (required)

• Involve QA in order to support you in Acceptance Criteria (optional)

Good Acceptance Criteria helps your team to make sure they reach your expectation in terms of result. Sometimes it omits however you should not. Otherwise you may be responsible for having your team going to the wrong direction. Wrong or non-existant Acceptance Criteria can have a cost in time, frustration and product debt, therefore money. I have seen so much work throwing in trash because of missed Acceptance Criteria.

Context is optional depending on the relationship that you have with your team however providing a good context can be really useful for the team to anticipate potential needs.

Prioritization is crucial as well and there is great content from Alfonso Rocha talking about it and I recommend you to have a look, I share the link below.

https://medium.com/@alfonso.rocha.alonso/prioritization-techniques-april-2020-webinar-4782e18dd151

Define Acceptance Criteria

As far as I know, I use to see two different techniques depending on the needs.

I share below two formula:

“As <a persona> I want to <expectation / result> [So I can <reason>].”

“Given <precondition> When <action taken> Then <expect result>.”

Conclusion

Scrum has a lot to offer but only once you have define what goals you would like to reach, accomplish. So, first, sit down, define vision, goals, roadmap, epics, stories then your partners, mates, coworkers will make your product live.

To finish this short episode, I would like to share an important point concerning Scrum in my opinion.

“Scrum is just a methodology, customize as it should be to suit your environment, your personality”

Thank you for reading my article, I would cover a new topic soon!

Cheers 🍻

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