1
Ideation
2
Validation
3
Planning
4
Design
5
Development
6
Launch
7
Iteration

The Ideation Stage

Ideas rarely come out of nowhere. While we like to imagine they'll strike us during a shower or a quiet moment, generating workable ideas usually requires intentional effort. During the ideation stage, it's important to welcome all ideas without judgment because no idea truly matters until it's validated.

Checklist: What Makes a Good Idea?

  • Does it solve a real customer problem?

  • Does it align with the product's goals and strategy?

  • Does it provide measurable value, such as improved retention or increased revenue?

  • Is it feasible within your team's constraints (time, technology, budget)?

  • Does it offer differentiation from competitors?

As a product manager (PM), your role in ideation varies depending on the product type and stage. Here's how it typically plays out:

For Brand-New Products

If you're working on a completely new concept, like Netflix's original DVD rental service or Uber's ridesharing idea, ideas often emerge by observing unmet customer needs. These pain points may be ignored or poorly served by existing solutions. The focus here is to design an innovative solution that addresses these gaps in meaningful ways.

For Relatively New Products

For newer products, the priority is identifying essential features the product needs to compete. These features are often non-negotiables that customers expect. For instance, an online education platform without an online payment option could struggle to attract users because people now expect seamless, digital transactions. At this stage, you're racing to cover the basics that will help the product establish itself in the market.

For Mature Products

With established products, the process becomes more systematic. There are many ways to gather ideas:

  • Customer Research Teams: They provide insights into unmet needs or emerging trends.
  • Competitor Analysis: This helps identify features competitors have that your product lacks.
  • Customer Support Teams: They offer direct feedback from users about common complaints or issues that could lead to churn.
  • Sales Teams: They highlight missing features that are losing deals and share frustration over slow feature releases.
  • Internal Stakeholders: Occasionally, your boss or other stakeholders might push for specific features, adding extra considerations to your decision-making process.

PM's Role in the Ideation Stage

Your job as a PM is to collect, organize, and evaluate these ideas critically. Not every idea will make sense. Some might already have workarounds or better alternatives. Others could be technically infeasible or too low-priority to act on now. Here's where your filtering criteria become crucial.

Once you've identified a feature worth pursuing, your next step is to validate the hypothesis through further research and then plan how to bring it to life. This process, while iterative, ensures that you're building features that genuinely add value to your product and your users.