5 Ways to Realize Product Initiatives

Clear goals or objectives from the process of making or developing products/features are indeed important. However, creating goal-based product initiatives is sometimes not as easy as it seems.

A strong product vision can keep your product team focused on business goals or product development objectives. But without strategic goals and product initiatives, you will find it difficult to realize the vision you have set.

Basically, product strategy rests on three core components:

• Product vision: the essence of what will be built and the vision of the future role or function of the product.
• Product goals: measurable goals that can be achieved within a fixed time frame and plan steps that will help you achieve the product vision.
• Goal-based product initiatives: Efforts and work with detailed plans that you will complete to achieve each goal.

By establishing goal-based product initiatives, you can keep your product team on track and more easily convince stakeholders of the product's business potential. In addition, this is also useful in guaranteeing products or features that will be released to meet user needs.

What is a goal-based product initiative?

Product initiatives are the major, or focused, investment stages required to achieve your product goals. Generally, general product goals are set first, then they are linked to goal-based product initiatives. This stage can be continued by grouping the features or plan stages under each product initiative. That way, you can prioritize work that is deemed capable of providing the greatest value to users and contributing to the business. Organizing strategic interests like this can reduce work that is not aligned with the product vision and keep plans in line with what has been set.

Timeframes for goal-based product initiatives will vary depending on scope, team capacity, and other factors. Aligning the timeline of initiatives with the strategic planning period can be reduced to semi-annual or quarterly objectives. Each product initiative typically includes multiple releases or sprints and experiences or suggestions from users.

Ways to create goal-based product initiatives

The first step to turning your product plan into reality is setting the right goals. In more detail, here are five ways to create goal-based product initiatives.

1. Start with a company and product vision

Reconnect the product vision with the organizational vision to understand how the product to be developed can help the company achieve business goals. Make the product vision a bridge between business needs and answering user needs.

Use company and product vision statements to reflect which goals will meet user needs, while achieving business goals.

2. Get as much input as possible

The second way to create goal-based product initiatives is to collect as much and as diverse input as possible about the product to be released. Setting product goals should not be determined without the intervention of other relevant stakeholders. The more you collaborate cross-functionally with different team members, the more holistic the goals of the product to be developed will be.

Get stakeholder input to ensure your goals align with key business goals and metrics. In addition, also consider the various views of your product team to ensure product development stays on the strategic plan.

It is also important that you take advantage of user input in setting goals based on data information. Software capable of recording product experiences allows you to see an overview of how users interact with the product. Through this data, you can conduct further research, such as with interviews or user suggestion surveys.

3. Be objective and specific

Creating goal-based product initiatives using the SMART (Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, and Time-Bound) method may sound cliché. However, this method often has a high percentage of success.

Include specific metrics in the development of goal-based product initiatives. That way, the progress and success of the plans that have been executed can be measured and defined. Specific also means setting clear deadlines in the work to be performed by the product team.

4. Find a midpoint between ambition and reality

Finding the midpoint between ambition and reality is one way of creating purpose-driven product initiatives that is important to consider. It is true that product initiatives must be ambitious enough to address customer satisfaction and achieve business targets. However, the targets to be achieved must be quite realistic. Setting product development goals that are too ambitious, then failing and not achieving the target can have a negative impact on a business. For example, this condition can demotivate the team, erode the trust of other stakeholders, and even disappoint users to the point of decreasing productivity.

Input from the Product Engineers team, marketing and sales team can help you balance ambition with reality when setting product goals. That way, the implementation of plans and targets can be realized more easily.

5. Prioritize user needs

Diverse user needs, ideally able to drive goal-based product initiatives. Do ongoing research to continue to deepen data about interactions between users and your product. Take note of what they like, don't like, and want or expect. You must continuously listen to customer feedback to ensure product and business objectives remain relevant to their product experience and needs.

The process and how to create goal-based product initiatives is not an instant process. Open communication and cross-functional cooperation need to be continuously encouraged so that the product implementation strategy is always sustainable. The five tips for creating goal-based product initiatives described above are only a big picture of the details of real strategic work. By implementing these five steps, you can increase the success of realizing product goals and business targets that are aligned with customer satisfaction.