Managing Ideas & Stakeholder Feedback

Welcome to the Product Bakery Podcast. My name is Christian, I'm Alex and together we present you the ingredients to build the right product. We definitely need to pick up where we left last time, especially to not forget about our backlog items as promised. So why don't you summarize our last conversation just for the ones who are freshly tuning in? Yeah. Hi, everybody. Yeah, last time we talked about backlog management from a product management and design point of view. And we were stumbling upon the topic of an idea backlog. And we just thought today, we didn't want to mix that into the previous episode. So we decided to make an extra episode like this to talk about the general idea of having a backlog management, an idea backlog. And I think, yeah, Alex, I would like to have a real open discussion with you on the pros and cons. Yeah, I would love to pick your mind on the whole idea of having an idea backlog. Yeah, I mean, I can say, we just recently introduced one. So I'm happy to hear the cons, because obviously, by introducing it means that it's something that I find useful. And I can give you the short version, right? I think there's a ton of things that constantly pop up by talking to users, in our case, investors, or by talking to people that interact with users, especially our sales and customer success team, by talking to stakeholders in general. And oftentimes, you have really good ideas, really good thoughts, great opportunities, and things that you should be looking at, at one point, right? Now, I believe that it is important to A, capture these in a transparent way, so that you can then really look at all of them, and force rank them, prioritize them, throw in a way to prioritize it, throw in a framework or something that helps you look at, okay, what is actually the value that we can create by solving a specific thing? And then you have a pretty solid way to actually look at, okay, which of these things should we pick up? And which one should we not pick up? It also gives you more power in organizing new ideas, right? There's usually a ton of stakeholders that come in and have like, hey, why don't we build this? Or please build this? Or it's actually even the CEO that says you need to build this. If you have like a properly set up backlog, idea backlog, you can say, okay, sure, happy to take it in. Let's look at the value that we can create by building it, or that we create by building it. Let's look at the data that we actually have available to prove that. And let's think about like, really ballpark, what is the complexity to build it? And now, you can put it in context, you can put it next to all the other ideas for prioritization, right? So, I mean, I still find the idea of it quite powerful. The transparency that you get out of it, quite powerful. As a stakeholder myself, I love the fact that I have a place where I can put things. I open my website and I'm like, what happened to this navigation? And I'm like, okay, I can select the designer, I can select the PM, or it's something that goes to our idea backlog. And it's being prioritized there. Yeah. So, I mean, again, we're just like introducing it, right? So I can't like really speak about how it works. It obviously also requires some sort of training for everyone to use it properly. But I'm very curious, you look like you have a lot of like, opinions. Yeah, first of all, I would say I rather I have a little bit of experience with the idea backlogs. And it can work and it brings a lot of benefits with it. But before I talk about it, I like to play the bad boy by starting with the cons. So because I just want to pick up on what you said, right? For stakeholders, it's a dream to have a place where you can, to say in nice ways, dump your ideas. But I think it's just introducing another level of another layer of communication, right? So maybe, but let's say we are... Wouldn't you say they dropped them anyway? Yeah, that's exactly what I want to say. So they dropped them anyway, via a support ticket, via email. And now on top of that, an idea backlog. And the thing is, as nice as it is to have an idea backlog in a big organization, you have hundreds, maybe thousands of tickets within that backlog. And as we all know, in development teams, and especially when they do scrum, they can just pick a certain amount of things that are in the roadmap. And if they have capacity left, they can work on other stuff. And the real world is usually stuff never gets picked up, or it just, it is important, but it's not prioritized. And it takes ages until it gets prioritized, which means stakeholders continue spamming you and asking you and getting unhappy because they feel not heard and stuff like that. So this can happen if there are not established processes to manage and maintain an idea backlog. So that's just what I want to say. And I'm not saying it's not working, but usually, I have seen a couple of companies that the idea backlog became like a kind of big, kind of trash can where people were throwing stuff in. But you know, no one was giving love to it, and no one was taking care of it. So that's why I just want to raise some awareness that introducing an idea backlog requires attendance and maintenance and, sorry, attention and maintenance. It's very important. I guess that's where a lot of jokes are coming from, when they say it's like, the product manager put it on the backlog, which is literally just like opening a trash can and like throwing it in. I hear you. Nevertheless, I think the ideas won't get away. Having transparency around them should also help facilitate the conversations with the stakeholders to make them feel heard, or at least give them a motivation why things are not being picked up, which is different to just like landing in your inbox or landing in someone else's inbox and the loudest voice being heard. But where I agree 100% is that it requires a good process. And this is what you said, right? I mean, what I'm always a big fan of, whether it's an idea backlog or like a product issue or a bug backlog for bugs that are coming from the outside, which means from customers, customer support, I think you need to have like a triage process, right? So a person who is maybe dedicated like for one week or for two weeks to take a look at new incoming tickets and replying, answering, moving it further to direct into a backlog or closing it if it's duplicate and all those things, right? So to be able to keep a certain hygiene within that idea backlog, and also to keep people updated on what is coming up next, because if I'm creating an idea as a stakeholder, I would also like to know what the process is. And as you said, it requires training and education and maybe even like a, what's the tool called? Like a page. What's the favorite tool that you always use to create documentation? Not them. Notion. Damn. Notion. Yes. Wow. Why am I missing that name? It's like a Notion page where the process is defined that people know, okay, how are we handling those tickets, which actually requires that you have a process. And I think that's important to have that because otherwise the things are usually dying. And if people are not dedicated to it or taking care of it, then it just annoys people rather than helping them to collect ideas. What is a good process from your point of view? Because like for me, it's like, okay, like at least a billion blocks that we put in places. How does an idea look like if you request it, right? In a form of a template, what are the information that we need to get if you submit something? I think a good process is first of all, having stakeholders involved into the quarterly or into the roadmap planning. Oh, yeah, yeah. And to make sure to have everyone heard, right. And everything which comes on top, yeah, sure. I think like having a certain process, like a template and the place where to put additional ideas in. Yeah. Why not? Yeah. Definitely worth it. I mean, it's also a question of like, what is the size? Like how do you define an idea, right? Okay. So the one template, then what is the definition of an idea? What is the potential size of an idea? And then the process should be the triaging or like the prioritization itself. And then actually like picking these things up. For me, a lot of the times, I don't talk about necessarily roadmap items or like quarterly planning, right? I think it's like a lot of these quick things or bigger questions that come up throughout a quarter, that come up throughout the process that you need to either further investigate or experiment with or to come up with a quick solution, low hanging fruits, as some of our previous employers would have said. I mean, we still use that term also, so it's never going away. You can't get rid of it. But it's like these things that also need to be captured and then validated, like, okay, is it actually something? I think for me, the idea backlog already works if the outcome is, oh shit, this is a really great opportunity that we otherwise would have missed. 100%. 100%. And everything else, it's like, okay, yes, cool. Look at the other ideas. That's why they are more important and higher priority and the things that we're working on. And ideas don't come on a quarterly basis, right? They come throughout the time. And I do want to have something in place that allows me to also react quick. If something really great comes up in terms of opportunities that we might have missed earlier, then having to wait until you talk about the roadmap with all the stakeholders, until you involve 20 different people, 50 different people or a whole company to align on it and to then properly prioritize it within it, right? And for the roadmap planning and for the prioritization, sometimes you also need a little bit more exploration, a little bit more insight. And therefore the idea backlog could also be, and the idea backlog is like ideas slash opportunities slash problems, right? There's a ton of things that like, I would almost like remove the term idea because idea oftentimes implies a solution, which, oh, I had this great idea. Let's build it. But it's really an opportunity and a problem that would land there that you can then also further investigate to put more data on it that then helps you further prioritizing it. Yeah. And I have to say, while you're explaining those things, there's just like this double diamond appearing in front of my eyes. Because I mean, that's like exact that thing, right? So you have the idea or you have the opportunity, I think that's the better wording. And you have to go through the process of validating it before you're going to develop it. And once you realize in the kind of early phase of the evaluation and the research that there is a potential that this idea can bring us money, can reduce, I don't know, churn, bugs, whatever, it moves further into the process. So I think like a step or I see this like a kind of funnel, right? So you have on top this kind of idea backlog and it naturally flows into the normal process of research that you do anyway with everything else that you want to build. No, absolutely. And I mean, the way I... And sometimes the long-hanging fruit are going faster through that process because, you know, they are small and things can just go fast. The process can be long and short and the way I like to also draw it when I have to draw it and we have it in our documentation for... It's actually quite nice because it's not only a design framework and it's actually something that we managed to get adopted by the whole product organization. And it's like our product discovery process. But there is like, there is one backlog at the beginning, which is the idea backlog. And then there is the funnel that does some pre-selection. Then you have traditional double diamonds with problem space at the beginning, solution space at the end, so the two diamonds. And then you have pretty much the scrum backlog, the development backlog. Between that there is again a little bit like of selection and funneling down. So you do also prioritize after that before moving into the backlog. But that kind of creates one stream that at the same time as you're going through the problem and the solution space, and as you're going through the validation of these things, opens up new opportunities that go back into the backlog at the very beginning, right? So I think... It's then where it becomes circular and where from each stage, all the way down to after development, when we go more into foundational research and continuous research, you generate more things that pretty much go into the backlog or then reprioritized and then can go through the whole stage. But as you say, you can go through all the steps in an hour, but it could also take you a whole quarter. Or it can take you just one minute, but the CEO says, we're going to do that. Not if you have the right template and needs to make sure it's value-add and you can show him that you're adding more value by investing time and more time. I mean, it's actually quite funny because like these conversations, I have them since my very first day as a product designer. Never gets old, right? Yeah. So it's actually funny to try and find a good process and a good solution that solves this. Aiming to that, kind of. Aiming to that. Anything you would still add? No, I think you explained it perfectly, right? The moment you went through the process, as you explained, it's nice. And once you have additional ideas that are coming out, it goes back and you have like the circular process and this is how it should work. And in the real world, so maybe to people who are listening, companies are applying these processes. It does work, but it's, yeah, it's not easy to get there, but it's worth it once you're there because that's the moment where you add a kind of steady process, a continuous process that allows you to deliver good products to the world. Yeah. Now we can put a name into that. Amen. Christian, I'm glad we can take this item off our backlog. And well, I guess I'll see you next week again. Exactly. And let's continue on the never-ending backlog. And as usual, don't forget to subscribe, follow and subscribe. It really comes down to your podcasting tool of choice. But we're always happy to see you listening again. With that, have a good day. Bye bye. Bye bye.