Part 1: Collaborative Product Framing

1. Gain a common understanding of the who? what? and why?
2. Establish goals and success measures for the product/product line and map those to corporate initiatives
3. Identify the target market segments and design targets
4. Identify and document market conditions
5. Discuss and document strengths and constraints that will be leveraged or need mitigation plans

Part 2: Market Segment/Design Target Definition

1. Prioritize identified target design targets or market segments
2. Identify design target’s desired goals and outcomes
3. Define how to measure success in meeting the needs of the design targets
4. Develop pragmatic personas for 1-2 design targets

Part 3: Visualize Your Candidate Initiatives (Large and Small)

1. Apply techniques for visualizing our opportunities for solving user problems. It might look like one or more of the following:
   1. Story, opportunity, or value stream mapping
   2. Affinity mapping
   3. Work in progress (WIP) mapping
2. Discuss balance of market needs, buyer needs, user needs, and product needs (e.g. KLO or technical health)

Part 4: Techniques for Grouping and Sequencing Those Ideas – Affinity Mapping & Customer Journeys

1. Discover horizontal paths through the experience or other logical groupings
2. Identify areas with greatest need for minimal viable learning (MVL)
3. Begin to order or “bucket” initiatives

Part 5: Roadmapping

1. Relative sizing of initiatives
2. Sequence based on cost/benefit analysis and release robustness
3. Identify the MVP and subsequence release timing and form into a roadmap artifact

Part 1: Project to Product Overview

• Difference: Project vs. Product

Part 2: Process and Approach

• Waterfall
• Iterative delivery with waterfall requirements
• Blended discovery and delivery

Part 3: Common Constraints

• Lack of persistent, dedicated teams
• Redefining the role of the PMO
• Absence of Product Management capabilities
• Separation of Business and IT
• Project-based funding
• Project planning

Part 4: Planning and Product Horizons

• The Iron Triangle
• Product roadmaps

Part 5: Measuring and Learning

• Measuring outcomes not outputs
• Measuring product and market impact

Part 6: Game and Quiz

The session combines presentation and interactive conversations to provide value post-class to the participants. Below is an example of an agenda, but can be customized to fit the needs of the client.

Part 1: Understanding Project vs Product

• Funding Models
• Approval Models
• Communication

Part 2: Understanding the 3-legged stool

• What is it?
  • Feasibility
  • Viability
  • Usability
• Why is it important?

Part 3: Understanding the role of a Product Manager

• Where do I fit in?
• Key Responsibilities
• Patterns and Anti-Patterns

Part 4: How can I bring skill sets from my previous role?

• Business Analyst
• Project Manager
• Developer
• Team Lead

Part 5: Understanding your Product

• You need to be able to answer these questions and explain why you care:
  • What am I building?
  • Why am I building it?
  • Who am I building it for?
  • How will I know it is successful?
• Creating your strategy
• Communicating about your Product
  • Roadmapping
  • Feedback Loops
• Sustaining your product

Part 1: Design Thinking Overview

• What is Design Thinking?
• What if you don’t think of yourself as a “designer”?
• Solving problems – design thinking vs. older approaches
• Attitude and mindset
• The relationship to agility

Part 2: Divergent and Convergent Thinking

• Divergence and Convergence as the design thinking foundation
• Divergent thinking characteristics
• Convergent thinking characteristics
• The problem space
• The solution space

Part 3: The Design Thinking Process

• Empathize and understand
• Defining problems and design challenges
• Ideation
• Prototyping
• Testing and iterating
• Design thinking at scale

Part 4: Empathize & Understand

• User research
• Human-centered design
• Empathy maps
• Observation
• Subject-matter expertise

Part 5: Defining Problems & Design Challenges

• Creating problem statements
• How to define problems
• Five steps for framing problems
• Wicked problems
• Defining a design challenge

Part 6: Ideate

• Divergent vs. convergent ideation
• Brainstorming
• “How might we”
• Affinity diagramming

Part 7: Prototyping

• Prototyping explained
• Iterating on prototypes
• Feedback on prototypes
• Pivot or persevere?
• Different types of prototypes

Part 8: Test & Iterate

• Starting to think about scale
• Priorities of testing
• When is it too late to pivot?
• Keeping testing agile
• Iterating towards to delivery

Part 9: Design Thinking at Scale

• Why scalability is important
• Common obstacles to scale
• Managing size
• Organizational complexity
• Budgets and accounting cycles
• Organizational culture
• Introduction to frameworks

Part 10: Conclusion

• Start with divergence
• Think human centered
• Try it before they buy it
• How you can use design thinking
• Additional resources