In product (the wider term covering all of product and/or tech teams), we can be doing all the proactive discovery we want, but it will never remove the desire of colleagues around the business from providing their own ideas, requests and/or relaying such requests by-proxy from customers.
And as much as the product community pushes for ever-more-constant direct user engagement, we should continue to encourage and embrace this additional feedback stream. Our friends in the sales, marketing, delivery & support teams have a different relationship with our customers, focusing on the outcomes and positives the product or service is doing, often hearing not just from the power users who enjoy collaborating with the tech folks, but the casual or everyday users too.
And more than this, our colleagues often know the product and market just as well as us in tech, and their ideas and opinions are just as valid to explore and assess as our own.
So, how can we encourage that feedback while ensuring we capture the right information, the important information, the valuable information, and how do we help our co-workers know what to find out and supply?
The good ol’ feedback/ideas form, of course!
But this is not just for process or bureaucratic nonsense. The questions asked serve several purposes, including democratising the feature decision process, and embedding both product process and product strategy into (traditionally) our more commercially-focused colleagues.
In this article, I’ll lay out what I believe to be the important questions to ask, and why we ask these specifically. Note that this is specifically for an internal product ideas form, not designed with external customers/users in mind.
Questions for an ideas/feature request form:
The Basics
❓Who are you:
Information relating to who the colleague is, their department etc etc. If needed, their email address to get in touch with them to continue the discussion.
Why: Aside from the obvious of being able to follow up with additional queries, this removes the anonymity of the idea and ensures that the colleague literally and figuratively ‘puts their name to this idea’ and commits to the proposal. This should reduce the amount of ‘throw it over the fence’ ideas.
The Story
📰 Headline:
In one line, what is this all about
Why: Give it to me in 1 sentence…
🖼️ Description:
All the details. Here, use any tools to you have available to guide the colleague as to what information you need. You want to know the problem the end user has, as much background as possible. Ideas for solutions are fine too (this should not be discouraged).
You could split this out into ‘What is the problem’, and/or ‘what is the opportunity’. This typically needs more setting up in terms of context with the business.
Why: This is also obvious, as much detail as possible. Here though, depending on your chosen form technology, you should look to provide guidance on the information you want. This could be through a written guide elsewhere, or as prompt text on the form itself. You may also look to split this out into different fields/questions to better help staff. Ultimately, you want to know as much background about the problem to solve, the opportunity (not just with one customer but more/all customers), and ultimately to have the colleague ‘sell’ this idea to you.
Value
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Practical Product Ops to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.