And that's the talk! Thanks for joining us for this #SlowpokeLiveToots of a #DjangoConUS2024 talk.
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Once the product is shipped, what next?
Metrics! How do you know if the product is actually meeting goals? How are you measuring it?
Once you're feeling confident you have the right direction of ideas to solve the problems. it's time to do tech tests.
This is where engineers, especially senior engineers, get brought in to think about the feasibility of the full solution, raising concerns and suggesting alternatives.
Once you have ideas on how to solve issues in the user journey map, you need to test those ideas, through user research of small a/b tests in the product
With an understanding of the company's strategy, how do we use this to build the right things?
We start with personas and customer journey mapping.
Personas: fictional representations of a target audience. They are (deliberately!) stereotypes, with characteristics and demographics.
Customer Journey Maps: The steps a user/persona goes through trying to accomplish a task. Including things like how the user becomes aware of solutions, and how they remain sticky to a product.
Roadmaps exist to get everyone on the same page for what's being worked on, and prioritizing allocation of resources.
Roadmaps have their own frameworks and timelines, like Now-Next-Later.
Goals: You've probably encountered some form of these most often as an engineer!
There are common frameworks like:
- OKRs (Objectives and Key-Results)
- SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-Bound)
(Editor's note: OKRs get a bad rap because, like Agile, they're often very poorly implemented. Check out https://phildini.dev/touring-breakfast-factory-thoughts-high-output-man for my take)
Strategic Plan: the specific beats general.
Example here: Yahoo's Peanut Butter manifesto from 2006, which is worth looking up for more detail.
Digging in: Mission & Vision.
Mission is WHY the company exists.
Vision is WHAT the company is trying to achieve with their mission.
The clearer these are to you as a developer, the more strategic and autonomously you can operate.
Think of strategy as a funnel.
Mission & Vision is the most broad description of what's trying to be accomplished by the business
Strategy is more focused on outcomes
Goals more focused still
Roadmaps should be narrow and concrete.
phildini