Aligning Product Development with Business Goals

In our recent book club meeting, we delved into the crucial topic of aligning product development with business outcomes. The conversation focused on how to define and achieve desired results in our construction software industry. Here are some highlights and key takeaways from our discussion.?

Main Highlights?

1. Aligning Product Development with Business Goals??

We emphasized the importance of ensuring that product development initiatives align with broader business objectives and customer needs. Understanding both the business opportunity and the value proposition to the customer is paramount to determining high- value development efforts?

2. Defining and Achieving Desired Outcomes??

The conversation centered around the necessity of clearly defining what success looks like in product development before delving into problem statements and solutions.??

3. Translating Contractual Language into Market Value??

One of the challenges discussed was how to handle the often complex language of contracts. Beyond the contractual requirements, how efforts must drive overall customer satisfaction and high-value solutions for the broader market.?

Discussion Points?

We structured our discussion around several key themes and insights from the book:?

1. Business Outcomes and Product Development?

• Opportunity Solution Tree: Highlighted the limitations of an output-focused approach to product development and the need to change focus to opportunities.? ?

• Mapping Product to Business Outcomes: Stressed the importance of aligning product outcomes with organizational goals.? ?

• Continuous Discovery: Emphasized the need for continuous communication with our customers and users to drive ongoing improvement and changes to our offering.?

2. Challenges Discussed?

• Achieving alignment between executive team business outcomes and product team product outcomes.? ?

• Translating contract terms into broader market value propositions.? ?

• Differentiating between objectives, outputs, and outcomes and how to write well-constructed outcome statements.? ?

• Incorporating feedback quickly and effectively on a regular cadence.?

About the Author

Alan Neal was a consultant to Kahua starting in 2010 but has been at the company since 2017. At Kahua, he is a Product Strategist specializing in User Experience and manages the teams responsible for user research, product design and development of the front-end of Kahua. Alan holds a master's degree in Instructional Technology from the University of Georgia, as well as a Bachelor of Business Administration from Georgia State University.