Introduction
As a product manager, nearly anything you do starts from a singular concept: ideation. Every product, feature, or initiative always starts from an idea — and every idea you encounter will influence your product’s strategy and/or vision in one way or another. In today’s post, we’ll look into what it takes to generate and iterate upon whatever ideas you may have for a product.
And, before we get into it, know that ideation is not a skill unique to product management. Professionals in UX/UI, data science, business development and strategy, etc. all need to have a solid foundation in ideation in order to succeed long-term in what they do.
Get into the Right Mindset
Before settling in and brainstorming for ideas, I strongly recommend you prime yourself and get into the right state of mind. Ideas are built in your mind, which is 100% influenced by not only your physical health, but your mental state as well.
You can achieve this in a number of ways. For me, I find taking 10-15 minute walk outside to meditate a good way to start. Others may prefer to warm up with a group of people, or to listen to their favorite music, etc. Whatever works for you to help reset your mind and get you focused, consciously make an effort to do it before you settle in and start thinking up ideas with a clear, open mind.
Set the Boundaries
Frame the opportunity or problem you are ideating for. It is important to both understand the context of what you’re trying to achieve and what the boundaries are — else you may find yourself going down an endless rabbit hole and not achieving anything in the end. A well-defined opportunity or problem is the halfway point to a resolution.
Write out your opportunity or problem statements. Formulate a series of how-might-we-do-X questions to help sharpen your focus and ensure you’re addressing the right issues.
Explore the Issue
Once you’ve gotten into a productive state-of-mind and set the playing field, you’ll now want to explore the issue’s context and any relevant insights. What this means is to understand the market, the users, the technology, etc. What factors will influence the issue’s outcome and value to your product? A common starting ground is to ask who, what, where, when, and why.
Market research, conducting user interviews, and analyzing trends are all great ways to collect and evaluate insights.
Brainstorming
You’re in the zone, you’ve set the rules of the game, and you’ve defined the playing field. Now it’s time to brainstorm and come up with as many ideas as you can. Encourage wild ideas, challenge them from different perspectives, consider potential alternatives. The more ideas you generate, the more raw material you have to work with.
Considering using tools like mind mapping and SCAMPER (Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to another use, Eliminate, and Reverse) to help get the brain juices flowing.
Push your Ideas Further and Refine Them
Once you have your list of ideas, your “plays” if you will, ask yourself if any particular idea(s) excite or surprise you. If they don’t, strength your ideas further. Focus on how other perspectives may influence your idea (but don’t lose sight of your objective and what really matters).
I personally like to ask “so what” 2 or 3 times to really drill down.
- My idea is to make a tool that users can automate actions in my application.
- So what?
- So that they eliminate a number of repetitive tasks from their day-to-day.
- So what?
- So that they have more time in the day to do other, higher value tasks.
- So what?
- So that users can increase their teams’ generated value.
And then imagining “how” at each level.
- How does it eliminate repetitive tasks?
- How would users then be drawn to higher value tasks?
- How would this benefit users long-term?
Add depth and layers to your ideas. Consider their user journey, the business model, and the feasibility of your idea becoming reality. This step often involves creating basic sketches/mockups, storyboards, and/or outlines to flesh out the idea(s).
Review and Prioritize
At this point, now’s the time to review your fleshed out ideas not only with your immediate team, but with other stakeholders (especially solution architects, developers, engineers, QA, etc.) for their input. Making an effort to understand and document the idea and its impact across teams goes a long way in helping you to prioritize and ultimately pencil ideas into your product’s roadmap.
Some popular prioritization models include: MoSCoW, RICE, and the Eisenhower matrix.
Proof of Concept and Iteration
Depending on the nature of the idea, it may prove necessary and/or useful to pull together a prototype or proof of concept to help gather useful feedback. It could be as simple as a paper mockup or as complex as a working digital prototype (I personally like to leverage diagramming tools like Lucidchart and no/low-code tools like Bubble.io to whip up prototypes).
By prototyping or building a proof of concept, you can generate an even deeper level of feedback from stakeholders to further iterate, refine, and improve your idea before you commit designer and developer resources to build the idea into reality. Sometimes, this stage may even lead you to pivot or even abandon the idea for a better one — fear not, it’s all part of the process.
Conclusion
Ideation is both an art and a science. It’s a process of exploration, creativity, and refinement. As a product manager, mastering this process is key to your success in developing products and features that bring value to your users and positively impact the market. Even though ideation is only one phase of the product lifecycle, it is arguably the most important phase as without opportunities or problems, there are no ideas, and without ideas, there is nothing to build, and with nothing to build, there is no product.