Product Trio Activities

The following items represent common activities that members of a Product Trio will do in the Product Development Process. Depending on what is underway, some of these may happen each week, but many parts happen on-demand. For example, interviewing is an ongoing process of gathering information, but the group may not start building a new solution each week.

The following activities should be performed in order, by all trio members:

1. Identify initiative to work on

Inputs: CHT Roadmap

Outputs: New Google Drive folder, Slack message

Consult the CHT roadmap and work with Product Team leaders to align with strategies and initiatives.

This will be a discussion either via Slack or video call to discuss where to make an impact next. Agreeing on an initiative will scope where to look for opportunities to make the right impact at the right time. From there teammates should work towards an outcome of an improvement in line with the initiative.

For example, an initiative may be something like “interoperability”. With that in mind, teammates might talk with technical partners to understand how interoperability is working for them today and what opportunities there are for the CHT to do better, where “better” would need to be established. In this example that might be quantified as the amount of data flowing between the CHT and other systems.

At this stage it is important to reach a consensus of what the desired outcome is.

Once the initiative has been established one of the trio members should:

1. Create a new folder in Google Drive within the process folder, in the corresponding Focused Working Group folder for the initiative. Using the example on this page, this would result in a new “Interoperability” folder within the Allies Team folder(private link).
2. Post a message in the Slack channel making it clear what the team is going after. For example, the following would be posted in the #product-allies channel:

@channel We’re starting work on the Interoperability initiative. Working documents can be found in the Interoperability folder as we make progress.

2. Set up interviews

Inputs: None

Outputs: Calendar invitations

1. Arrange interviewees and schedule onto Google Calendar and Zoom for all trio members
2. Decide who in the trio will be:
   1. Leading the interview (asking questions)
   2. Taking notes
   3. Handling call logistics and recording
3. Create a Google Doc for shared notes called “[interviewee name] interview notes (example) in the initiative folder. These will be mostly raw, unprocessed notes so a simple doc with headings of teammate names and space for bullet points for each person is sufficient.

3. Conduct interviews

Inputs: Interview Plan, Interview Notes Doc

Outputs: Interview Notes Document

1. Join call
2. Set up recording function. Depending on if it’s telephone or video etc this may change in how it’s done, but it is important that it is done.
3. Conduct interview. Some important notes for doing this:
   1. Our goal is to sample the user experience
   2. We want to know what the person does, not what they think or might do
4. Immediately after the interview, each trio member should open the interview notes Google Doc and add bullet points under their name with their thoughts.

4. Create journey map

Inputs: Interview Notes Document

Outputs: Journey Map

1. Design trio member reads interview notes from all teammates.
2. Design trio member creates new journey map Google Spreadsheet named “[initiative name] Journey Maps” in the initiative folder.
   1. It should capture what each persona is doing, thinking, and feeling in each step of their overall journey, along with pain points.
   2. If applicable, capture devices or other software used during different touch points.
3. Each different journey map is created as a named tab in the spreadsheet.

5. Identify opportunities

Input: Interview snapshots

Output: Opportunity Solution Tree (OST) updates

1. The design trio member makes an initial pass at updating/creating the Opportunity Solution Tree (OST) based on the interview data. This is not meant to be final though, and ideally this activity is done interactively as a trio. Our modification here is to accommodate for our distributed team and time zone availability.
2. After the draft update has been made to the OST, the design trio member notifies others in the dedicated Slack channel:

@channel The initial OST updates have been made. Please review and add/remove/comment so we can get to opportunity selection next.

3. All trio members review the OST changes and make any comments or modifications using the Google Doc comment features.

6. Choose specific opportunity to go after

Input: Opportunity Solution Tree

Output: Opportunity Selection Document

1. One trio member should create a new Google Doc in the initiative folder in Google Drive named “[Iniative Name] Opportunity Selection”. This document is intended as an asynchronous workspace, not any sort of official documentation.
2. Each leaf node from the OST for the initiative should be added as a “Heading 2” in the document.
3. Each trio member should add any comments/thoughts under each opportunity as a way of asynchronously collaborating, also using the Google Docs comments feature to converse on specific points. Comments should have a prefix of the teammate’s initials (in “[ZY]” format) so it’s clear to others who’s thoughts they are.
4. Each trio member should find the 1 opportunity they think the team should go after and tag themself under that heading (using the Google Doc @name functionality).
5. The trio should discuss opportunities in the document until there is agreement (not just a majority “vote”) on which opportunity to go after, considering the goal of having the biggest impact. Most thoughts should be in the document, but it’s ok to work things out in Slack too.

7. Discuss competing solutions

Input: Opportunity Selection Document

Output: Story Maps

1. One trio member should create a single Google Presentation document named “[opportunity name] solution options” in the initiative folder that each trio member can add to. The sample story map doc can help with the format.
2. Each trio member should individually think up solutions and convey them as story maps by adding new slides to the shared document.
3. Each step in the story map should have assumptions listed below steps.
4. Once each trio member completes their story maps, they should notify the team as such in the channel.

8. Choose the one solution to implement

Input: Story maps

Output: Solution Selection Document

1. One trio member should create a new Google Doc in the initiative folder in Google Drive named “[Iniative Name] Solution Selection”. This document is intended as an asynchronous workspace, not any sort of official documentation.
2. Each solution from Story Map doc should be added as a “Heading 2” in the new document.
3. Each trio member should add any comments/thoughts under each solution as a way of asynchronously collaborating, also using the Google Docs comments feature to converse on specific points. Comments should have a prefix of the teammate’s initials (in “[ZY]” format) so it’s clear to others who’s thoughts they are.
4. Each trio member should find the 1 solution they think the team should implement and tag themself under that heading (using the Google Doc @name functionality).
5. The trio should discuss opportunities in the document until there is agreement (not just a majority “vote”) on which solution to implement, considering the goal of having the biggest impact. Most thoughts should be in the document, but it’s ok to work things out in Slack too.

9. Implement

Do it. Build it. Make the things.

Identify a partner who will use the thing that’s being made and communicate with them about progress so it can be deployed without delay.

10. Measure

1. Create a new chart in Superset. This should be considered a disposable chart, used to measure impact for a few months max. This doesn’t have to be anything fancy.
2. Share chart url with the team in the channel.

11. Advocate for and communicate successful solutions

Reach out to the community team. You just did a bunch of great stuff and have a lot of “show your work” materials to craft a good story about what we’re doing at Medic. For the right opportunity, the community team colleagues can find the most beneficial way to get a blog, forum, or other post out there. This can make a big difference in fund raising, which is what keeps Medic doing the work we’re doing.