Problem Fitment, Funnels & Pruning

Product management is all about solving problems alright, but that leads to a preliminary situation - which is identifying "THE problem" to solve for that teams ought to navigate first!

“A problem defined well is a problem half solved!”

-          Albert Einstein

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“FITMENT” - the force majeure!

Of all the routine(s) that happen regularly in the world of products and the lives of the people who envision, ideate, build & scale them, what do you think is the one term / phrase that gets repeatedly pondered over, highlighted, argued about, raised, & opposed?

→ “Fitment”

It is true.

Take a look at the table here covering the important phases of the PLC.

And, one could go on. Also, observe closely and you’d quickly find how fitment over each of those phases’ backlinks to the previous phase.

For instance:

1. say a product is struggling to find PMF

2. sales isn’t able to break ground & get those numbers rolling over the areas they happen to be targeting

3. teams get into a retro understanding how users’ excitement is waning

4. marketing reports a drop over consumption numbers & what could be considered a frenzy drop in interest levels

5. findings point to a competitor’s product having a new feature addition

6. teams begin to ponder over - “why didn’t we build that feature?”

7. doubling-down points to the order ideas were strategized, prioritized in

Sounds strangely familiar, does it?

A stat:

“An industry-wide consensus suggests that Problem Fitment is a step that more often than not gets overlooked in the workflow to building products”

So, given all these findings, it is safe to say, one ought to find “Problem Fitment” at first, as a precursor to finding “Product-Market-Fit”.

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More about Problem Fitment

Given any domain / market space there could be tons of problems that one could go on listing as it would have a bearing towards & stem from perspectives. Over an ideation exercise during the initial phases of the PLC, teams do get together and could spend ample time listing out all the problems that have been discovered. Also, given the way market's change on a whim it certainly would be great to jot all problems down and subject it to an episode of refinement so as to be able to identify / prioritize it well.

But there is this a small issue.

• Over one side of the story, most teams don’t know and seem to carry doubts over whether the research conducted would be enough & whether there could be enough discoveries & whether it is possible to arrive at THE problem to pick and solve for from a given list of them

• On the other hand, it is quite possible that they get into some sort of a tug of war over picking THE problem as it could all look equally important given the market space and the user groups they are to cater to & after all relying entirely on user’s feedback in this regard may not really help

So, one way to deal with this issue is to be able to condition oneself & the teams to operate within the scope as defined by the vision, business objectives, goal(s), OKRs, success factors & metrics that matter at that given time.

“Operating within the confines / boundaries / scope could easily be touted as one of the greatest strengths to learn & build on for all aspiring PMs”

Problem-Fitment (PF) Methods:

Here are a few common methods to help determine problem fitment.

Given each of those features it ought to be possible to rank (scoring them over confidence levels) against each of the methods used (refer figure).

Problem Fitment Methods

1) Research

Getting onto the first step of building products is mostly about being able to pick or sort out “Ideas” / “Problems”. But there is often a methodical process followed over picking / prioritizing / sorting / eliminating the exodus of ideas which is research. While on the topic of research, one could go into quite a bit of depth over them and conduct one or more of these: exploratory, secondary, primary, descriptive so as to be able to precisely establish users’ wants, motivations, the willingness to pay adding up to & strengthening problem fitment

If you want read more about the various types of research, here’s a snippet that may be of use:

Mistakes to avoid during research

2) Behavioral Understanding

Products have, are and will always be about the users and to be able to crackdown on that it is mandatory to build an understanding of their behaviors sans which it could feel like driving on a blindfold or shooting in the dark. Take a look at the world around you and the problems that seem to hit product teams post release when the adoption numbers fail to lift up in spite of all the hard work that teams put in, try and double-down on that and 9 out of 10 times it would most certainly point to an inaccurate / under / over estimation of the behavioral understanding of the users.

If you want read more about behavioral understanding of users, here’s a snippet that may be of use:

Black Box Modeling

3) Surveys

Cracking the code when it comes to being able to estimate the wants of the users / user groups could end up being quite complicated. Because nobody and not even the users themselves can vouch for / be absolutely sure of their wants. Metaphorically speaking it could feel like putting up with the attention span of a toddler / 2-year old which is where surveys could come to rescue but with a precondition that the questionnaire is formulated and directed well so as to capture the essence of the market without leading / misleading.

If you want read more about surveys and best way to formulate the questionnaire, here’s a snippet that may be of use:

Strawman & Steelman

4) Discovery

Establishing the problem ought to be the whole essence of research and discovery. Deeper silos of immersive research would mean an increased probability of landing on great & relevant discoveries. But, a slight problem there, is to be able to put all of those discoveries into perspective & fitting into scope.

Also, with the introduction of improvements / newer ways / approaches towards building products there is a lot of onus on making the whole discovery activity more continuous and ongoing without putting hard stops which could induce another small problem.

Discerning / acknowledging the problem is totally gratifying indeed, but it is still totally different from determining whether or not the problems happen to be a show stopper. And given the whole dependence over users and user groups, if the market space is unevolved / yet to mature, even the greatest of teams may struggle to get over this conundrum making problem fitment a distant dream.

5) Opportunity Scoring

Its’ all about getting down quickly to estimations of the total size of the market aka total addressable market (TAM). There could be tons of problems identified and most of them could look like they are good to be taken ahead to the subsequent stages but again doing so is not logistically possible.

Looking at each of the problem as an opportunity to capture a section of the market one could get into estimating the size by splitting it to carefully consider the demographics of each section of the target market & then getting into detailed estimation over identifying and bucketing the user persona.

6) Competitor Analysis

Given how analyzing the market space & the users, their behaviors, their wants ought to be put at the helm, the competitors, their products, features & the manner in which they have chosen to combat problems could also hold equal importance, if not more.

It is very possible that teams may have tons of ideas and as much as it is also possible that those ideas may not really be unique. Studying competition with an aim to understand what they are doing so as to emulate is never advisable. But, doing that in order to segregate information, gauge market’s maturity over how a given product / feature aims to target and solve the problem for that space could contribute very well towards establishing problem fitment.

The outcome of the problem fitment exercise is a prioritized list of problems perceived good to be carried over to the next stage & solved for

When it’s quite probable that these steps would yield a prioritized list, yet in some cases it could still look dicey and indecisive requiring some more analysis to preempt the build stage.

For instance, this one is a classic:

• all 5 problems are looking good to go, which one do we choose?

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Problem Funnel & Pruning

There could be instances where those 6 steps listed above in the previous stage don’t really point to one unanimous problem to choose, maintaining status quo over the confusion with regards to THE problem to pick, which may make it impossible to quantify it under tangible progress.

So, given a situation where all the problems identified are looking equally good to go, how does one arrive at “THE problem”?

Problem pruning could help to a great degree.

It’s a great idea to prune the problems itself (as a derivative of backlog pruning) to arrive at a prioritized list of problems, good to be taken to the next stage.

The Depiction of a “Problem Funnel”

Picture a funnel with all the problems making it to the top at the wider-end. It is only fair that each of those problems be subject to more intensive problem fitment methods.

So, here are some more:

Problem Fitment & Problem Pruning

7) Market Relevance

If the research conducted happens to be really deep and immersive, combined with a thorough behavioral understanding it ought to lend enough insight into the users, market space and “THE problem” that seem to be a burning issue to a whole lot of the sample space – the TAM.

So, going by what problem seems pretty relevant to the market given that point in time, it would augur well in this scenario and help clear up the clout.

8) Differentiators

If the previous steps have led to ample insight over the market space and the behaviors of the users, it could surely be enough to determine “THE problem” that could later on get converted to a differentiator, putting the org. totally ahead in the race given all the competition.

But, more often than not there could be a considerable amount of time that goes into building a differentiator right from envisioning it in the ideation stage all through the design and build and of course testing what could be a Hi-Fi mock with the user groups looking to factor in the feedback and improve it further. So, one crucial parameter to consider here ought to be the cycle time – TAT.

If you want read more about differentiators, here’s a snippet that may be of use:

Differentiate yourself! (+Satya Nadella’s interview excerpts)

9) TAT (Turn Around Time)

Everyone is almost always under a strict and stringent budget, more so given situations of crisis like what’s happening currently around the world with the Tech layoffs. So, the amount of time and effort required by resources to take it from 0 to 1 could also add up to being a big factor over contributing to the decisiveness of the problem to prioritize.

No rocket science though, given this method the one with the lowest effort & turnaround time to rollout would get picked straight away – the Low Hanging Fruit.

So, there! We now have a clear winner and also the clarity over which problem to target and why (refer fig. below).

The pruning phase has got us to cherry pick & arrive at “THE problem” and there seems to be enough reason to believe that taking this route would lead the org. to build a differentiator and there could be nothing more that’s required to get ahead in the race.

The outcome of a problem pruning exercise ought to be “THE PROBLEM” to prioritize alongside a well-defined “problem statement” that’s been vetted thoroughly and has passed through all these phases: - desirability, feasibility & viability!

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Conclusion

Problem Fitment ought to be a mandatory step undertaken by teams each and every time over taking those products from ideation (0) to build (1) by applying all methods as listed. And just in case one is not able to dissect the ambiguity and a more deeper analysis or insight is needed, one could hop over and put the Problem Pruning methods to effective use.

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