If you are a product developer, you might be wondering how to align your product vision, goals, and strategies with the needs and expectations of your customers, stakeholders, and organization. One way to do that is to use the Business Motivation Model (BMM), a framework that helps you define and communicate the rationale behind your product development decisions.
The BMM is an enterprise architecture framework that describes the elements and relationships of business motivation, such as vision, mission, goals, objectives, strategies, tactics, influencers, and assessments. The BMM helps you answer questions like: Why are we developing this product? What are we trying to achieve? How are we going to do it? Who are we doing it for? What are the factors that affect our product development? How do we measure our progress and success?
In my perspective, the Business Motivation Model (BMM) serves as a comprehensive framework within enterprise architecture, elucidating the components and interconnections of business motivation. It encompasses vision, mission, goals, objectives, strategies, tactics, influencers, and assessments. The BMM facilitates answering crucial questions such as the purpose behind product development, the desired outcomes, the strategies for achievement, target audience identification, and factors influencing development. Moreover, it aids in defining metrics to measure progress and success.
Like a compass guiding an expedition, the BMM provides direction and purpose so your product roadmap aligns to your True North objectives while adapting to unexpected obstacles.
The BMM can help you with product development in several ways. First, it can help you clarify and communicate your product vision, which is the ultimate purpose and direction of your product. By defining your product vision, you can create a shared understanding and alignment among your team, customers, and stakeholders. Second, it can help you set and prioritize your product goals and objectives, which are the specific and measurable outcomes that you want to achieve with your product. By defining your product goals and objectives, you can focus your efforts and resources on the most important and valuable aspects of your product. Third, it can help you design and implement your product strategies and tactics, which are the plans and actions that you take to achieve your product goals and objectives. By defining your product strategies and tactics, you can ensure that your product development is consistent and coherent with your product vision.
In my perspective, crafting a product vision serves multiple crucial purposes. Firstly, it fosters shared understanding and alignment among team members, customers, and stakeholders. Secondly, it aids in establishing and prioritizing product goals and objectives, which are specific and measurable outcomes sought with the product. By delineating these goals and objectives, efforts and resources can be directed towards the most significant aspects of the product. Thirdly, it assists in designing and executing product strategies and tactics—plans and actions aimed at achieving product goals and objectives.
To use the BMM for product development, you can begin with your product vision. Define what your product is, who it is for, and the problem it solves. Then identify the goals and objectives you want to achieve with your product, how you will measure success, and when you will reach milestones. Additionally, define the strategies and tactics you will use to achieve these goals. Analyze potential influencers and assessments that could affect your product development. Lastly, document and communicate your BMM to your team, customers, and stakeholders to ensure alignment and support for your product development.
BMM can be used in the product development process: 1- Identify customer needs and wants 2- Define product requirements 3- Prioritize product features 4- Design user interfaces 5- Evaluate product success
The BMM for product development can offer numerous advantages, such as creating a clear product vision that guides your development, setting realistic goals and objectives to measure your progress, designing efficient strategies and tactics that optimize your development, analyzing product influencers to improve it, and documenting motivation to align and engage stakeholders. All of these elements can help you ensure the success of your product development.
Using the BMM for product development can present some challenges, such as the time-consuming and complex process of defining and documenting the elements and relationships of your product motivation. It can also be difficult and subjective to measure and evaluate product goals and objectives, as well as hard and risky to adapt and update strategies and tactics. Additionally, it can be challenging and uncertain to anticipate and respond to influencers and assessments, not to mention demanding and costly to communicate and maintain your product motivation if it changes or evolves.
The Business Motivation Model (BMM) is vital for product development in several ways: 1. Strategic Alignment: Ensures product development aligns with the business's overall strategy and goals. 2. Clarifying Objectives: Defines clear objectives and goals for the product, derived from higher-level strategies. 3. Identifying Influencers and Risks: Helps identify stakeholders and assess internal and external factors impacting the product, including market trends and internal capabilities. In essence, BMM integrates product development with business strategy, ensuring products are not only technically sound but also strategically aligned and market-relevant.