Scope-down - Tips to get your product faster to the finish line

Feeling overwhelmed by a massive project? Here's a process to help you scope down that mammoth of a project into smaller, more bite-sized pieces that you'll release quicker.

We've all been there. You're staring at this seemingly ginormous project and have no idea where to start. Or you've already tried to break it down into tiny pieces, but it still seems like a beast. 

Here are some tips to help you scope down that mammoth of a project into smaller, more bite-sized pieces that you can release quicker.

Here's an efficient process to scope down.

1-2-3. Feedback. Problems. Solutions

When writing the product brief or the business case, you'll highlight the feedback you received from your target audience, explain the problem they experience and detail the solution you want to build.

Ask yourself a few key questions:

• Who is the target audience?

• What is the problem we're trying to solve?

• And most importantly, what is the right solution for the context?

Once you've identified your target audience, problem, and solution, it's essential to focus on building only one thing at a time.

If you need to build for multiple audiences or solve multiple problems, great! Just don't do it at the same time. Build only one thing. It's better to build and release one feature that solves one problem for one audience. 

4. Map the whole solution

Alright, it's time to get creative! Let's start thinking big and designing the complete solution. Don't worry about scoping down yet; we'll get to that later. At this stage, the goal is to get clarity on the complete solution; understand the breadth of impact of the proposed solution.

Once you have designed the whole solution, you'll want to map and frame it from the perspective of the users. By framing the solution from the user's viewpoint, we can better understand what is most valuable to them and prioritize accordingly. It's always easier to scope user values than features.

One way to accomplish this is by conducting a user story mapping session, a collaborative exercise where the PM, designers and devs map out a user's journey breaking a feature into user stories. The user story map from this exercise provides a visual representation of the feature or product's user flow, enabling the team to prioritize each feature component.

5. Prioritize the user value

Now, let's prioritize those user stories! Once you have a clear map of the feature you're building, you'll want to take all the user stories and prioritize them. 

MoSCoW Prioritization or the Kano Model is simple enough for our goal at this stage: to assess the minimum viable value the solution should bring our customers. 

☝️But hold your horses! Remember to document your strategy as you go along. Write down the reflections you had as you prioritized the list. What are the questions you asked yourself? What did you leave out and why? Document these thoughts in a scoping strategy document.

Finally, plan a scoping session with your team to review and prioritize all the user stories unprioritized. Before the session, you'll want to share the scoping strategy document with them so they know how they should approach this session.

The goal of writing it beforehand is to anchor the conversation, not to be prescriptive. Be ready to be challenged on the scoping strategy. As the team discuss the user stories, you should prioritize them and update your scoping strategy.

Remember to document and update your scoping strategy along the way. By doing so, you'll be better equipped to communicate the direction of your product with stakeholders and answer questions like "Why is this feature coming before this one?"

6. Select only what’s necessary

Once you have a clear view of the value the solution brings to your customers, it’ll be easier to understand where the minimum viable value is.

Then, you’ll want to write a milestone document to tell the story of your product and list the different phases of the development.

As you re-prioritize user stories, you'll inevitably need to adjust the solution and review the designs. For larger and more complex features, it's valuable to go through steps #3 a #4 a second time to ensure the adjustments didn't affect the scoping strategy and the prioritization.

To wrap things up…

Scoping down a project is a crucial step in product development. It's easy to fall into the trap of trying to build something for everyone and try to solve every problem at once, but this approach often leads to a bloated, ineffective product that takes forever to develop and may not even meet your customers' needs.

Instead, by building only one thing, gaining clarity on the complete solution, and prioritizing user stories by involving your team in the process, you can scope your project into more manageable pieces that deliver value to your customers faster.

Scoping down your project isn't always easy, but it's worth it. By breaking a large project into smaller, more achievable pieces, you'll make progress faster, gain trust from your stakeholders and ultimately deliver a better product to your customers. 

Next time you're staring down the barrel of a ginormous project, don't be afraid to return to this list and take the feature one bite-sized piece at a time.