Self-Driven Initiative
I worked directly with the engineering team on operational readiness reviews (ORR) and we didn’t have a product manager. ORR involves many people focused on different aspects of the review process. Because of this, I wanted to do a deep dive into the end-to-end journey so we could align on the holistic vision, identify opportunities, and help drive the direction of the product.
Deliverables
- Personas
- Overarching experience map
User Interviews
What is each role focused on?
I conducted customer interviews to learn more about what the priorities, tasks, and pain points each type of role had. I spoke with engineers, review owners, organizational leaders, and ORR subject matter experts.
I took the notes from these interviews and coded them based on certain quotes or observations to show the larger themes and sub-themes around customer needs.
Note: The actual quote or observation has been replaced with placeholder text as this is only meant to illustrate process
Themes and sub-themes
The major themes were around process definition, content, action items, dependencies, guidance, and reporting with sub-themes including commenting, notifications, time and effort, question relevancy, prioritization, tracking, access/availability of ORR SMEs, and sharing.
This report was also used to share data with leadership on opportunities and decisions around feature prioritization.
Persona Definition
Getting Crisp on Our Customers Wants and Needs
I created 7 personas based on the information that was learned from the customer interviews and reviewed them with the team before finalizing.
Experience Map
The End to End Journey
Because of the complexity of this process and the involvement of so many different people, I wanted to create a 1000ft view of what this experience looks like and how each role fits so I created an experience map. I also included information on pain points, ideal features (and what their statuses were), and opportunities we could consider.
I had also started creating individual user journeys for each persona, but was unable to finish because there was a shift in priorities and I needed to move on.
Getting Results
Alignment, Data, and Conversation Starters
I initiated this project because I wanted to get a better understanding of the breadth and scope of the product I was helping to support, but I also wanted to use this as a mechanism to drive alignment on the team’s expectations for how our product functions and creating formal documentation of who our customers are. With no product manager, these documents were used to drive the conversation around what our roadmap should focus on and which features to prioritize.