What are you building and why?

TL;DR: A potential framework to flesh out an idea into viable business.

Why is your purpose?

• Why do you exist?
• What problem or opportunity are you addressing?

What is your mission?

• What do you want to accomplish; think about the product or solution you want to offer.
• Your mission is not a collection of all the things that you already do; rather it is the thing that all things you do should align to.?
• Your mission is not a thank you note to each department.
• If you have to look up your mission and purpose every time someone asks you,?you likely have no idea what you are really doing.

What is the Core Hypothesis?

• There is a large enough segment of customers who would be willing to pay handsomely to use our novel solution to solve their problem in order for us to achieve sustainable profitability.
• What MVP do you need to build to establish a product market fit?

The MVP

• What CUJs can validate the core idea?
• What KPIs are you going to use to measure the product-market-fit?
• What data do you need to collect to make growth and revenue projections?
• How will you establish business model viability?
• What user research testing have you done? How inclusive was it?

Critical User Journey:

• X is ___ (persona) who wants to accomplish ___ (task) with ___ (challenges) by using ___ (feature) of the product.
• Example CUJ - Amy is a patient in village in India who wants to get medical attention from a qualified healthcare provider in a location with poor internet connectivity and no qualified doctors, via an assisted video consultation with basic biomedical testing apparatus.

MVP Considerations:

• What is the market and its size?
• What user research testing have you done? How inclusive was it?
• What CUJs can validate the core idea?
• What KPIs are you going to use to measure the product-market-fit?
• What data do you need to collect to make growth and revenue projections?
• How will you establish business model viability?

Product Market Fit

Measuring the Product-Market-Fit:

• Product: DAU | MAU
• Market : Which user segment is more receptive to your product? How big is it? Does it feel right or do you need to rethink your product?
• Fit: Unit pricing | LTCV | CAC | Conversion | Churn

What comes after Product Market Fit?

• What have you learnt from your customers and how has it influenced your feature prioritization?
• What features are missing?
• What features need to be removed?
• What have you learned about your market from your MVP?
• Do you need to adjust your KPIs / metrics??
• What additional instrumentation we want to add.
• What inefficiencies have you identified?
• Roadmap: How does the above inform/evolve your long term vision?

Roadmap and Execution

How does the above inform/evolve your long term vision? Create a prioritized list of objectives you want to accomplish across the following areas:

• Product: Tactical | Strategic | Aspirational Features
• Growth: Partnerships | Marketing | Sales | Automation | Supply Chain Optimization | Going Vernacular | Customer Support | Reporting
• Efficiency: Onboarding | Supply Chain | Setup | Success Metrics
• Culture: Hiring, rewards, career progression, diversity, equity & inclusion

Framing

1. Based on the above, create a narrative of what you are planning to do over the next one year, what success looks like, and why.
2. For the things that you want to hit in the next 3-6 months, create a detailed breakdown into OKRs - Objectives + Key Results
3. For each KR, you would need a list of tasks/ initiatives that you can track with owners and timelines.

Establishing Milestones

A set of OKRs could be grouped together to achieve the above marquee objectives and could define the milestone exit criteria.

• Revenue | Major Launch | Reach | Coverage | Contracts | Partnerships | etc.

FAQs

Who is responsible for building the roadmap?

Building a roadmap should be a federated process requiring both top down and bottom up alignment. Instead of leaning on hierarchy, lean on area owners and subject matter experts who best understand the data and customer behavior. The CxOs should not build a roadmap in isolation.

How often should I update the roadmap?

Once you have significant new information about the customer or the product-market-fit. Typically after each OKR cycle.

How do I track progress?

Assign accountability for Key Results (KRs) to the respective area owners. Empower the leaders with autonomy to track individual tasks and projects the way they feel comfortable. The beauty of using the OKR methodology is that you don’t need to use the exact same software / methodology to track progress. The CEO does not need to review all tasks or attend all the standups :-)

What should we do if we don’t hit a milestone?

It is normal to not be able to hit all the milestones, especially when the objectives and expected outcomes are ambitious by design. The most common reason is identification of new (previously unknown) information about additional work needed, new dependencies, blockers, etc. However, any new risk or scope creep should be communicated prompted to make the required timeline adjustments. This is even more critical in case of cascading dependencies. Leaders should ensure psychological safety so that people feel comfortable sharing risks upfront.