Understand how the focus on the user and their journey should be the central point of development for a successful digital product
By Antonio Costa
Many companies that are in the Transformation process, whether Digital or Agile, are making a very serious mistake in their Product Development wake. There is a strong focus on the Product and a low focus on the Customer. This makes the organization even have more organized and faster deliveries, but still ineffective.
And do you know why this happens? Sometimes the company has a big focus on making money and doesn’t realize that if it pays more attention to the customer’s pain and tackles those pains in a more organized way, the profit follows.
For this, there needs to be a change in thinking, which we call here “Focus on Products to Focus on Journey and Customer”. I’ll explain better what this concept consists of.
Product Focus
It is when an organization looks only at its product, forgetting its customer – the product comes first. It may even have an agile team or agile practices, but probably the predominant thinking will be traditional thinking, which makes the team seek operational efficiency. Companies focused on excessive efficiency, or with a great focus on the product, have some characteristics, such as:
Begin analysis for product or feature creation, by internal systems – the internal system will shape the solution;
Focus on closing requirements, getting everything detailed;
Business and IT areas still working separately, where there is not great trust between them;
Development teams looking only at their delivery, looking to deliver more tasks;
Malignment of channels, as the focus is on efficiency, one channel does not need to wait for the other;
Great focus on team productivity;
Changes to requirements are not welcome;
Focus on releasing new features, without measuring what already exists;
Delivering the product is more important than the quality of what is already done.
This list can be extensive and a new text would fit here to enumerate more features and even detail them…. However, let’s talk about what really matters: the correct model – Focus on the Journey and on the Client.
Focus on Journey and Client
When a team focuses on the journey and the customer, it means the end user is REALLY at the center of all product development. Understand a little better about the characteristics of this team:
It starts with the customer’s need to define the viable solution;
The journey of users and personas is clear;
Business and IT areas working together daily in a collaborative way;
Teams orchestrating deliveries, with a focus on value;
Equal experiences in all channels (omnichannel);
Short cycles for collecting feedback from customers;
Analysis based on customer data;
Opening for scope change;
Focus on the customer as well as their emotions;
Company goals focused on business or customer, not project delivery goals;
Great concern with product quality (because if you launch something that doesn’t work right, nothing will add to the customer;
concern about measuring used and unused features and simplifying features – rather than releasing more new stuff;
This list doesn’t end here either, but it contains the main points we see in the market. The big change, in general terms, is to be concerned with the customer’s experience, in their journey using that digital product.
Exercise
Having seen the points above, I suggest you go back to these lists and reflect: “How many items above can you identify in your team? Are they working with customer focus or more product focus?”
I also suggest you put yourself in the customer’s shoes, but in the following way, for a moment:
Remember a service or product you recently consumed that provided a very unpleasant experience for you… Remember before you go.
What did you feel? Anger, impotence? Did you think or speak ill of this brand? What was your attitude?
Now ask yourself: could the product you are creating be generating these same feelings in your user? Could he be complaining about your brand or is he disappointed with the experience he had using this product?
Finally, keep in mind that the customer will consume your product not because you use Scrum or Kanban or any other agile method; not because you have legacy or disruptive technologies; the customer will buy your product or service, because it generates some benefit for him or solves a pain in his daily life.
And if you want to ask any questions or talk more about this subject, leave your comment here or contact us!
