5 mistakes to avoid in creating a Market Requirements Document

A product aspires to create value for a (large) group of people, at a price they are willing to pay for that value. MRD captures that product value, price and the size of the interested group. However, sometimes even successful companies proceed without a good MRD and as a result, the features keep changing during the development leading to delays, unplanned expenses or the product missing the core value for the ideal customer. The product can be cancelled midway or have a low adoption rate after launch, leading to considerable frustration among well intentioned and hard working team members, the loss of time and capital notwithstanding. This risk can be reduced with an effective MRD.

We discuss five mistakes to avoid in crafting an MRD.

Mistake #1: Start with JIRA

It is tempting to kickstart the engineering in JIRA with timelines, issues, bugs and any new requirements. While JIRA is an excellent choice for project tracking this is not a software for MRD development that needs to be a self contained independent document. By splitting MRD across JIRA issues and bugs, we risk losing clarity on the goals and value proposition,

Mistake #2: Not Validating the Unmet Need

How do we know that the problem is worth solving? Is the need real or do we have a solution looking for a need? How urgent is the need? How many people with that need?

We must identify the user personas for whom the product is being made and validate the critical need by either gathering available data or finding a way to recreate the problem in a controlled setting in the absence of competing products. Some companies circumvent this challenge by choosing not to be the first movers and instead learning from the failures of others but such strategy comes with the obvious risk of being left behind in that space.

Collecting data via simulating the user experience is not necessarily hard. One interesting example was Domino’s pizza partnering with Ford on testing Pizza delivery by robots on a self driving car. It involved sending in a regular car with a human driver but the participant user was required to open the passenger door and collect pizza from the backseat without interacting with the driver. Perhaps the experience was creepy. Who would be comfortable approaching a strange car and opening the door in the night? Undoubtedly, the companies collected valuable feedback well before spending big engineering budgets. Most products and their features - hardware, software or service - can be tested this way without having the real product and yet collecting user feedback, understanding the user journey, developing the user personas and estimating the price the consumer might be willing to pay. 

Mistake #3: Not Signing up the Influencers and Early Adopters.

Early adopters provide valuable feedback on all aspects of the product which in turn impacts product design, its features and deployment planning. Running a field trial with a beta release is a rewarding exercise towards a successful product launch. Influencers can be popular figures on social media, well connected experts who may volunteer as early adopters and share their experience positively with their connections.

Mistake #4: Not Having a Product Deployment Strategy (PDS)

PDS involves product installation guidelines, alpha and beta releases and feedback loop, upgrade and maintenance planning. Many good products fail because the product is difficult to use. Not thinking through the PDS can also lead to increased cost of ownership or warranty which could brick the financial models behind the product. Fortunately, developing a good PDS is not very hard. All it requires is putting an effort behind identifying user challenges and having a plan to address each issue. 

Mistake #5: Not Having a Go-To-Market Strategy (GTM)

GTM involves having marketing plans, channel agreements, inventory readiness, pricing strategy, date and medium of product launch. During concepting phase, GTM seems to be a distant need but giving this an upfront thought can allow maturing of these plans alongside the product development. Many channel partners have strict requirements and it could take months to iron those out. Product launch budget should be integral to the product development. 

The effort spent in crafting a complete and vetted MRD is rewarding. It creates value by either showing why a product should not be developed or what is truly needed and thus reduces the overall cost and timeline for product development and introduction. MRD ultimately helps define and enforce quality, a subject I will address in another article. 

Related Articles:

The 3 Hills of Product Development