Deliver on Your Digital Product Vision
Build a product vision your organization can take from strategy through execution.
Member Challenge
- Product organizations are under pressure to align the value they provide to the organization’s goals and overall company vision.
- You need to clearly convey your direction, strategy, and tactics to gain alignment, support, and funding from your organization.
- Products require continuous additions and enhancements to sustain their value. This requires detailed, yet simple communication to a variety of stakeholders.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
- A vision without tactics is an unsubstantiated dream, while tactics without a vision is working without a purpose. You need to have a handle on both to achieve outcomes that are aligned with the needs of your organization.
Impact and Result
- Recognize that a vision is only as good as the data that backs it up – lay out a comprehensive backlog with quality built-in that can be effectively communicated and understood through roadmaps.
- Your intent is only a dream if it cannot be implemented – define what goes into a release plan via the release canvas.
- Define a communication approach that lets everyone know where you are heading.
Research & Tools
Start here – read the Executive Brief
Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should build a digital product vision that you can stand behind. Review Info-Tech’s methodology and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.
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Deliver on Your Digital Product Vision – Executive Brief
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Deliver on Your Digital Product Vision – Phases 1-5
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1. Define a digital product vision
Define a digital product vision that takes into account your objectives, business value, stakeholders, customers, and metrics.
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Deliver on Your Digital Product Vision – Phase 1: Define a Digital Product Vision
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Digital Product Strategy Template
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Digital Product Strategy Supporting Workbook
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2. Build a better backlog
Build a structure for your backlog that supports your product vision.
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Product Backlog Item Prioritization Tool
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Deliver on Your Digital Product Vision – Phase 2: Build a Better Backlog
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3. Build a product roadmap
Define standards, ownership for your backlog to effectively communicate your strategy in support of your digital product vision.
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Product Roadmap Tool
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Deliver on Your Digital Product Vision – Phase 3: Build a Product Roadmap
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4. Release and deliver value
Understand what to consider when planning your next release.
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Deliver on Your Digital Product Vision – Phase 4: Release and Deliver Value
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5. Communicate the strategy – make it happen
Build a plan for communicating and updating your strategy and where to go next.
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Deliver on Your Digital Product Vision – Phase 5: Communicate the Strategy – Make It Happen!
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Onsite Workshop: Deliver on Your Digital Product Vision
Onsite workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost onsite delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.
Do-It-Yourself Implementation
The slides in this Best Practice Blueprint will walk you step-by-step through every phase of your project with supporting tools and templates ready for you to use.
Project Accelerator Workshop
You can also use this Best Practice Blueprint to facilitate your own project accelerator workshop within your organization using the workshop slides and facilitation instructions provided in the Appendix.
Module 1: Define a Digital Product Vision
The Purpose
Understand the elements of a good product vision and the pieces that back it up.
Key Benefits Achieved
Provide a great foundation for an actionable vision and goals people can align to.
| Activities | Outputs |
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| 1.1 Build out the elements of an effective digital product vision |
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Module 2: Build a Better Backlog
The Purpose
Define the standards and approaches to populate your product backlog that support your vision and overall strategy.
Key Benefits Achieved
A prioritized backlog with quality throughout that enables alignment and the operationalization of the overall strategy.
| Activities | Outputs |
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| 2.1 Introduction to key activities required to support your digital product vision |
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| 2.2 What do we mean by a quality backlog? |
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| 2.3 Explore backlog structure and standards |
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| 2.4 Define backlog data, content, and quality filters |
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Module 3: Build a Product Roadmap
The Purpose
Define standards and procedures for creating and updating your roadmap.
Key Benefits Achieved
Enable your team to create a product roadmap to communicate your product strategy in support of your digital product vision.
| Activities | Outputs |
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| 3.1 Disambiguating backlogs vs. roadmaps |
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| 3.2 Defining audiences, accountability, and roadmap communications |
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| 3.3 Exploring roadmap visualizations |
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Module 4: Define Your Release, Communication, and Next Steps
The Purpose
- Build a release plan aligned to your roadmap.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Understand what goes into defining a release via the release canvas.
- Considerations in communication of your strategy.
- Understand how to frame your vision to enable the communication of your strategy (via an executive summary).
| Activities | Outputs |
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| 4.1 Lay out your release plan |
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| 4.2 How to introduce your product vision |
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| 4.3 Communicate changes to your strategy |
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| 4.4 Where do we get started? |
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Member Testimonials
After each Info-Tech experience, we ask our members to quantify the real-time savings, monetary impact, and project improvements our research helped them achieve. See our top member experiences for this blueprint and what our clients have to say.
- Overall Impact
- 9.0/10
- Average $ Saved
- $241,854
- Average Days Saved
- 30
| Client | Experience | Impact | $ Saved | Days Saved | Testimonial |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Community Living Toronto | Workshop | 9/10 | N/A | 5 | Great session, very engaging! |
| Lewis Silkin LLP | Guided Implementation | 7/10 | $21,274 | 6 | |
| Member Organization | Workshop | 10/10 | $136K | 50 |
In addition to the shared tools, it is always valuable to have a broad view of how we can improve our processes and understand that there is no single truth.
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| Member Organization | Guided Implementation | 10/10 | $1M | 120 |
This put into perspective how to define business value and how each release needs to include measurable business value and that drives priorities. This principle will help us define and communicate value to our stakeholders. This will be immeasurable to how we will be able to communicate the value of our products.
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| Member Organization | Workshop | 8/10 | $50,000 | 10 | The engagement and discussions were very valuable. |
| Member Organization | Workshop | 9/10 | N/A | 20 | Bringing disparate resources together to share a common understanding and develop some action items going forward. |
| Member Organization | Guided Implementation | 10/10 | N/A | N/A |
This was my first experience with Info-Tech. I'm super impressed with the level of service and quality of tools I received. As a rookie in the product management space, this was just the right type of content needed to help me understand what I had to do, and where I needed to work on system level processes. Thank you so much!
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| Member Organization | Guided Implementation | 9/10 | $2,000 | 2 | |
| Member Organization | Guided Implementation | 10/10 | $130K | 20 |
We are still early in the process of determining our approach to product going forward. This session really highlighted the need for us to think about product in a new way. We will likely do a workshop on digital product vision soon.
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| Member Organization | Workshop | 8/10 | $274K | 20 |
Suneel's style of delivery to the team was excellent, it was very well received and the recommendations were spot on. The worst part was the delay of the final presentation, but this was due to multiple factors including our availability. Overall, this was an excellent way to baseline the whole team and to have concrete next steps we can work on.
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| Member Organization | Guided Implementation | 8/10 | $10,000 | 10 | Very good consultant with relevant experience and advice |
| Member Organization | Workshop | 10/10 | N/A | 60 |
Doug is a brilliant facilitator. very engaging and great listener and made everyone very comfortable with new concepts. the flow of the topics, the exercises and the diversity of views and allowing everyone to reflect and take the time to unpack the concepts of product development and what they could mean for their own area of work, was a great factor of success. thank you Doug
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| Member Organization | Guided Implementation | 10/10 | $32,499 | 20 | Great insights, in-depth expertise and very valuable support! |
| Member Organization | Guided Implementation | 8/10 | $3,420 | 2 | |
| Member Organization | Guided Implementation | 8/10 | $2,000 | 5 | |
| Member Organization | Workshop | 8/10 | $28,599 | 20 | |
| Member Organization | Workshop | 9/10 | $25,000 | 50 |
Probably the worst part is I had prior commitments and couldn't attend all of the sessions. My team's feedback has been great and has given us the confidence that we're on the right track in our efforts to transition to a product delivery focused team. Kieran's practical experience also added credibility to the material and I appreciated the stories intermingled within the core content.
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| Member Organization | Workshop | 10/10 | $129K | 20 | |
| Member Organization | Workshop | 10/10 | $800K | 120 |
Kieran was awesome. He knows the material super well, and he was able to present the material in a way broke through for everyone. He answered every question that the team had. He put us on a path that led to overwhelming success with our Agile transformation. On top of all that, Kieran found us great content around facilitation that wasn't even directly related to the workshop.
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| Member Organization | Guided Implementation | 8/10 | N/A | 20 |
Analyst was very well informed and able to pivot to answer specific questions posed during the initial call. Ari was able to provide insight on some areas we should consider going forward and to offer guidance on future engagements to further develop our capacity in this area
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| Member Organization | Guided Implementation | 10/10 | $125K | 20 | Working with Ari is great. He's able to adapt to my needs and help me to get the most value out of our time together. |
| Member Organization | Guided Implementation | 10/10 | N/A | N/A | It was great information as we get started on our journey with CICD |
| Member Organization | Guided Implementation | 7/10 | N/A | 2 | |
| Member Organization | Guided Implementation | 10/10 | N/A | 20 | Fantastic facilitation and expert insight to the subject area. Very much a positive and valuable engagement. |
| Member Organization | Guided Implementation | 10/10 | $75,000 | 6 | |
| Member Organization | Guided Implementation | 10/10 | $125K | 20 | Ari is great. Very flexible to work with me and help me learn what I need to succeed in Product Portfolio Management. |
| Member Organization | Guided Implementation | 10/10 | N/A | 10 | Ari is an expert in his field and truly drives us to our own best thoughts based on his experience and guidance grounded in the research. |
| Member Organization | Guided Implementation | 10/10 | $31,499 | 10 | |
| Member Organization | Workshop | 9/10 | N/A | 50 |
Overall, it was a very good experience for most of the participants. I heard that for the Product Managers they got a lot out of the roadmap exercise. Also defining the product families and learning about that is seen as valuable. We got too far in the weeds on the RACI, or rather people were getting too detailed. I think Ari did an excellent job of moving the workshop along, especially after day 1 when it was clear that people needed to be called on more. Clearly the all day for 3 days versus 1/2 days for two days (February's Day 1 workshop) had a different engagement level. I think we got solid steps to move ahead with.
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| Member Organization | Guided Implementation | 9/10 | N/A | N/A | Best: Industry expertise on agile and great discussion Worst: Wish there was more visual slides Overall: great experience !! |