Creating Product Backlog for a New Feature/Product - Data-Driven Approach

As Product Managers, It is one of the key responsibilities to keep a healthy product backlog which creates a superior value proposition for the customers, users, and business. When you get a directive from the business (leadership or your boss) what to do, what to prioritize, and MVP then the activities that we do are mostly tactical.

This article is for those who are planning to build a product backlog for a module/feature that may not exists yet in your product portfolio and getting started on what to build and how to persuade the leadership with a detailed data-driven analysis.

My recommendation is to create a feature matrix with High-Level Features Vs Various existing competitors (including your product). You can apply this for existing products as well as products that you want to build anew.

The first and foremost important step is to Identify all capabilities that the product can do. The following 4 point analysis can help to list everything that can be done using the product/feature.

1. Mind Mapping

With the experience and knowledge, list down all possible features that the product should have without worrying about whether these features are possible, feasible, or compatible with your current product portfolio at this point in time. The best way to do this is by understanding the detailed business process using the Design Thinking approach. Identify the personas and what they do as part of their job/role and whom they interact with and what capabilities they need to do their job well. By understanding their pain points, you can build capabilities that can help to alleviate them.

1. Competitive Analysis

Review and Identify all your competitors (Large/Mid/Small) and check which companies are providing with the same/similar features. This can help to confirm/add to the list you created using Mind Mapping. As you do this, create a feature matrix. Add a description to each of the capabilities so that It is clear for those who are reviewing the feature matrix. You can add notes to each cell for your product where the capability stands.

3. Stakeholder Feedback

Even if you thought through most of the features and listed down, the most important aspect is - listen to your customer. Even if you are not Interacting with them directly, you can interact with those who interact with them. You will be surprised to know the kind of insights they can share on what they think and why they think, what they heard from customers/users. Your support team, services team, consulting, sales, marketing, and leadership teams can give immense insights into the business process and customer pain points which can become the capabilities to build.

And more importantly, your customer feedback, user feedback, and partner feedback will help get you what challenges they are facing and need your help to resolve them.

4. Latest Market Publications

There are Industry experts who are focussing on various research areas that in your product operating space. They can give insights into new trends, new Initiatives, new direction, and cross-functional capabilities that your product may need to address in the future. They could be consulting organizations like McKinsey, BCG, Deloitte, etc. or academic organizations like HBR, MIT, Stanford, etc, or white papers published by some of your competitors and their insight into customer problems.

All these insights can give you a detailed product backlog that probably is comprehensive. All you have to do is review how the market needs to perceive your product capability.

By creating a scale of 0 - 10 and marking all your immediate competitors on the map, you can mark As-Is and To-Be states to identify what you need to build.

This analysis can help you get a very deep insight into the product and business and can help immensely to contribute to various forums you may participate in product roadmap meetings, product strategy meetings, and your day to day working with various stakeholders.