I want to expand somewhat on the topics I want to talk about on my blog, as I think I can be very helpful in these areas for other people. In my next posts, I also want to touch on topics that relate to the entire product development cycle. And I’d like to start this series of articles with the first step — forming and filling the backlog.

Filling the backlog with relevant and effective ideas is the most important step where product development begins. It’s the foundation upon which the continued success or failure of your product solution stands. If you approach this process as a formality, filling the backlog only for reporting to the executive, it will incur tremendous losses.

Before turning to specific sources of ideas, I’ll tell you one important rule that I learned from my bitter experience with mistakes:

«When you form a backlog — you should always start from the problem and look for a solution. And it is in this order. Problem -> solution».

This is a rule that is very important to follow, so as not to waste time on useless product solutions.

Now, let’s get to the sources. I will share with you the 7 main sources from which I constantly take a huge number of user problems and ideas to improve our product.

Direct Competitor Analysis.

It’s important to understand that your competitors do the same thing all the time. They’re looking at other products, filling their backlog and solving user problems. You, when you start looking at their product solutions, save a huge amount of time. When you analyze even the most minor new features that came out of their product — pay close attention to them, because there is a huge amount of activity behind that feature: analysis, research, design, development, testing. And believe me, if you see this feature, it means it solves some user problem.

Indirect competitor analysis.

This is probably one of my favorite sources. Analyze products that do the same job as your product. If you don’t know what you’re talking about right away, here’s an example. Netflix is not competing with HBO or any other streaming service. They’re competing with sleep, with video games, with hanging out with friends. Because every time you think about whether to go to bed, meet up with friends, or sit down and watch Netflix — you’re making a choice between competing solutions.

It’s important for you to understand what other products can do the same job as your product. And analyze all of their features, and more importantly, understand why the product team made it, what its purpose was, and what the users’ problem was.

Brainstorm.

I think everyone understands what this method stands for. But not everyone knows how to make it as effective as possible. After 10 failed and unsuccessful brainstorms — I read a formula on the blog, which has completely changed my approach to conducting such processes.

As it was before: not a structured event, where some interrupt each other, and some do not participate in the discussion at all, because he thinks it is a waste of time.

How I did it differently: started breaking people into groups of 3–4 people and introduced the use of the HWM (How we might) + question / problem framework.

An example of a brainstorming exercise: we have 5 main and the most private user problems. The problems are generated in the format HWM + question. We have a brainstorming goal to come up with ideas for solving these 5 most frequent problems. We break into groups of 3–4 people and each group offers 2–3 solutions to each problem.

This has helped us solve several problems at once:

1. The Brainstorms became more structured;
2. Everyone became involved;
3. No one interrupted each other;
4. There was a clear goal of the brainstorm;
5. People started to like the process;

So, the next time you hold a brainstorming session, take note of these tips to make your process better and more effective.

User research.

There’s a lot written about this on my blog, but I’ll say it again. Be sure to do qualitative, quantitative research on your users. Find out from them: what they like about your product, what your competitors like, and so on.

There are 3 crucial user segments you need to talk to to get a huge amount of ideas:

1. New users — find out why they chose your product;
2. Retired users — find out why they left and where exactly they went;
3. Loyal users (who have a big Retention) — find out what they like most about the product;

These 3 segments are the key characters that will allow you a stuctured approach to building your backlog. It all depends on your goals and OKR. If you want to increase Retention — communicate with segment 2 and 3. If you want to reduce CAC (Customer Aqusition Cost), then communicate with all 3 segments. If you want to lower CR (Churn Rate), then communicate with those who have left (segment 2).

This method will not only allow you to form a backlog, but also to structure it.

Building a CJM.

CJM (Customer Journey Map) is a user journey map. In this post I won’t talk about how to build it. If you don’t know, I can devote a separate post to this topic.

You need CJM to look for bottlenecks in your product to optimize and improve them. It’s basically a fully visual map with all the user issues for every step of your product. It’s one of the most effective methods of getting ideas to fill the backlog and generate OKRs.

Here’s an example of such a map:

Communicating with customer service.

Where’s the best source of problems if not technical support, where do users call when they have a problem? Exactly. I could end there, because that’s really a very cool and huge source of data, but no. I want to tell you how you can build a process for getting problems from managers.

To do that, I made a separate working chat room where we added all the support people, the technicians who deal with these problems, the product managers, and the researchers. Every time a user has a problem — a technician writes it into the chat room, and the technician solves it.And every month the researchers write out all the problems that our users have encountered.

Communication with Sales Managers.

How to sell more, how to amplify the offer, how to reduce the cost to the customer — you need to start by talking to sales managers.

We very often incorporate talking to them into our research processes because they know exactly what the product is missing to close the deal.

Do a very simple practice that will definitely change the way you think about your product: make a little questionnaire where you post just 2 questions:

1. What are the main objections you face when selling our product?
2. What needs to be changed in the product so you can sell more.

It’s important to understand that managers are very interested in selling more. Their earnings depend on it. Therefore, they usually answer these questions very fully and honestly.

Conclusions.

You don’t have to use all of these methods to get an effective and complete backlog of ideas. Quality is more important than quantity. But when using these sources, always remember one important rule I mentioned earlier today:

«Problem first, and only then the solution. Only in that order».

You can use all 7 sources and do features for the sake of features, or you can use just one, but solve all the most pressing user problems.