🚀 EVO15: How to use the Product Insights Radar
Product Evolution is about helping Product professionals, Product teams, Product organizations and the products they develop to level up.
One of the tools I’ve been using to amplify the collective intelligence of Product teams is the Product Insights Radar.
The Product Insights Radar is a shared visual space to collect product insights from the whole Product team and other contributors (Sales, Customer Support, Social Media etc.)
The purpose of having such a radar is to enable the Product team to make better Product decisions based on all the insights that are explicitly shared and updated, continuously.
As you can see, there are three areas on the Product Insights Radar:
Market, Competition & Tech Insights (External Macro)
What is happening in our market?
What are others doing?
How is technology evolving?
What things is it allowing us to do easier?
Customer & User Insights (External Micro)
What do our customers need and expect?
What are the users of our product need and do?
Organization Insights (Internal)
What is happening in the teams that we work with?
How is the whole organization evolving?
There are also three layers of insights:
Fresh Insights (Outer layer, Color: Green)
Newly discovered;
Not thoroughly validated.
Solid Insights (Middle layer, Color: Turquoise)
Backed up by growing evidence;
Some validations might still be needed.
Core Insights (Inner layer, Color: Blue)
Stable and reliable;
Thoroughly validated.
The Product Insights Radar is dynamic, in the sense that some of the insights move towards the center as they become validated better (e.g. triangulated), while other insights might lose relevance over time and move outwards and even off the radar.
Creating the Product Insights Radar
List all the insights that you currently have, on each of the 3 areas.
Are these insights fresh, solid or core? Map them accordingly on the layers of the Radar.
What sources will constantly bring insights on the Radar?
Where would you need more, better, validated insights for your product?
Creating the Radar doesn’t have to be a complicated activity.
We’ve done this initial setup of the Product Insights Radar in a 2h workshop with the Product team + contributors exposed to various facets of the Market, Competition, Tech evolutions, Customers, Users and Organization.
It was illuminating every time for everyone to see and discuss about all these Product insights, literally on the same page.
A visual workspace like Miro or Mural is well-suited for this kind of mapping because:
Everyone can contribute realtime;
(in Miro) Each insight can be written as a card, instead of a post-it. This allows for attaching links and extra details for each of the insights. Like for example linking a user insight with the specific user interview kept in Dovetail, or linking a specific move in the market identified by the team as relevant to the specific press/social media links;
The Product Insights Radar can be extended indefinitely or adjusted according to the volume of insights in specific areas;
The noteworthy insights can be easily highlighted visually;
The Product Insights Radar can be easily exported (as a snapshot) to be used in communication with internal stakeholders;
Similarly, internal stakeholders can be invited to keep up-to-date with the evolution of the Product Insights Radar (e.g. with view rights only).
Additionally, if the team uses other tools for the Product Insights dimension of product development, like a Trends Map, Competition Analysis, Behavior Architecture Maps, Key Success/Survival Factors etc, these other tools can be easily shared on the same “Product Insights” shared board that the Product team can use as a ‘single source of truth’ for all things related to Product Insights.
Adjusting the Product Insights Radar
As a Product team,
When and how will you use the Radar?
When and how will you add new insights on the Radar?
When and how will you eliminate insights from the Radar?
How will insights move from fresh to solid to core? (e.g. How will you know that an insight is validated?)
An important mention here is that the Product Insights Radar adds more value to making better Product decisions if using and adjusting it becomes a habit of the team. So it’s useful to clarify how you will embed the Product Insights Radar in your day to day work, as a Product team.
For example:
If you are running Discovery/Research/Exploration sprints, will the “Definition of Done” for that sprint include updating the Product Insights Radar?
If you are only doing Delivery sprints, will checking how the Product Insights Radar might be updated become a habit linked to (maybe before?) Sprint planning?
If you are doing quarterly review sessions with other teams (e.g. Sr. Leadership team, Sales, Finance, Marketing, Customer Support), will this be an opportunity to sync and align on the evolution of Product Insights, by using the radar?
As a reference, there are many types of Product Insights. Here is a selection, mapped on the 3 areas of the radar:
Market, Competition & Tech Insights
Market Insights: Relevant information about the market(s) that we're serving with our product.
Competition Insights: Relevant information about the entities that are competing with our product for our customers' money and our users' attention.
Tech Insights: Relevant information about the technologies that our product uses or might use to create value for our customers and users.
Trends: Relevant information about the wider trends that might have an impact on our customers, our users and our product.
Moves in the Market: Relevant information about the various strategies that are played out or general dynamics of the market(s) that we're serving.
Customer & User Insights
Customer Needs: Relevant information about the needs of our product's customers.
Purchase Behavior: Relevant information about the actual purchasing behavior of our product's customers.
User Needs: Relevant information about the needs of our product's users.
User Behavior: Relevant information about the actual usage behavior of our product's users.
Organization Insights
Organization Needs: Relevant information about the needs of our extended organization that might have an impact on our product's evolution.
Key Stakeholder Needs: Relevant information about the needs of our key stakeholders that might have an impact on our product's evolution.
Interdependencies with other Teams: Relevant information about the interdependencies with other teams that might have an impact on our product's evolution.
Origins of the Product Insights Radar
The radar is a brand new tool that I’ve created in 2022 and that I’ve been effectively using with the Product teams that I’ve been working with.
There are multiple sources of inspiration for this tool, including:
The concepts of strategic radar and extended intelligence networks from Strategy;
The concept of war rooms from Strategy;
The concept of informational landscape from Mathematical Biology and Complexity Science;
The concept of scan hit from Foresight;
The practice of environmental scanning from Foresight;
Practices from Information Design and Visual Facilitation.
If you have ideas & suggestions for evolving the Insights Radar, please reach out on LinkedIn.
As a strategic adviser and lifelong learner, Bülent Duagi works with Directors in 🇷🇴 Tech companies to help them make more impact with better strategic thinking - which usually translates to:
🧭 having a clear strategy that enables better and faster decision making;
🤝 organizing better to both run operations and implement strategy with the available bandwidth and budgets;
🚀 implementing strategic initiatives and programs in an efficient and effective manner, paying attention to the people side of change;
⚡️ intentionally developing proper internal capabilities that are sustainable in the long run.