Innovation Games -- Creating Breakthrough Products Through Collaborative Play
This chapter excerpt represents an installment from the book, "Innovation Games: Creating Breakthrough Products Through Collaborative Play, " authored by Luke Hohmann. Copyright 2007 Luke Hohmann. Published by Addison-Wesley Professional, September 2006, ISBN 0321437292. All rights reserved.
Prune the Product Tree: Shape Your Product to Market Needs
Gardeners prune trees to control their
growth. Sometimes the pruning is artistic,
and we end up with shrubs shaped like animals
or interesting abstract shapes. Much of
the time the pruning is designed to build a
balanced tree that yields high-quality fruit.
The process isn't about "cutting," it is about
"shaping." Use this metaphor to help create
the product your customers desire.
The Game
Start by drawing a large tree on a whiteboard
or butcher paper or printing a graphic image
of a tree as a large format poster. Thick
limbs represent major areas of functionality
within your system. The inside of the tree
contains leaves that represent features in
the current release. Leaves that are placed
at the outer edge of the canopy represent
new features. The edge of the tree represents
the future. Write potential new features on
several index cards, ideally shaped as leaves.
Ask your customers to place desired features
around the tree, shaping its growth. Do they
structure a tree that is growing in a balanced
manner? Does one branch, perhaps a core
feature of the product, get the bulk of the
growth? Does an underutilized aspect of the
tree become stronger? We know that the
roots of a tree (your support and customer
care infrastructure) need to extend at least
as far as its canopy. Do yours?
Why It Works
One of the greatest challenges in creating
and managing a product is creating a balanced
picture of everything that must be
done to be successful. The problem can be
complicated by overly linear, inorganic representations
of product road maps, which
tend to represent product evolution as linear
over time. By tapping into our understanding
that products must grow in a planned way,
and that products are supported by a variety
of mechanisms, Prune the Product Tree allows
customers to shape all aspects of the
product, instead of just providing feedback
on a selected set of features in a road map.
You and your customers both know that
features vary in importance. We tend to want
to put our efforts behind the most important
features—those features that provide the
greatest value to customers. Unfortunately,
sometimes this means that we put too little
effort behind the features that are needed to
complete the product. The Prune the Product
Tree game provides your customers with a
way to provide explicit input into the decision-
making process by looking at the set of
features that compose the product in a holistic
manner.
Prune the Product Tree also gives product
teams the rare opportunity to identify, and
potentially remove, those product features
that are simply not meeting customer needs.
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Prune the Product Tree: Shape Your Product to Market Needs
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