Initiative Types

Initiative Types

Metrics Movers. These are features that will move your target business & product metrics significantly. In most healthy product organizations, there are specific goals and strategies behind the decision to invest in a product or feature. Engagement. Growth. Revenue. Typically, very few features are actually metrics movers. Know which ones they are ahead of time, because in the end, the judgment of whether your product or roadmap succeeded or failed will rest on the evaluation of the metrics.

Customer Requests. These are features that your customers are actively requesting. There is no mystery here. Listen to your customers, and know which features they want to see the most. You don’t necessarily want to implement every suggestion, but product professionals need to listen to direct requests carefully, with humility and deep consideration. Nothing irritates customer more that to see you roll out new features that exclude the ones that they have already identified and requested actively.

Customer Delight. These are features that customers haven’t necessarily asked for, but literally delight them when they see them. Typically these are features that require several ingredients: listening to customers to understand their pain points, leveraging a knowledge of technology to know what might be possible, and innovative design to come up with an unexpectedly elegant & delightful experience.