Product Initiative

What is a product initiative?

For example, imagine you’re building an application for a brand loyalty scheme. The product goal would be a fully functional application that allows members to access rewards. Product initiatives might include developing secure sign-up forms and UX design.

Characteristics of a successful initiative

Here are a few key characteristics of successful product initiatives.

They align with the product vision

Product initiatives are the threads that come together to form a complete product. With that in mind, they must strongly align with the overall product vision. Each initiative needs to directly feed into the final product in a way that offers complete value to the user. They also need to link with crucial customer wants and needs. So, if you have a product goal that aims to boost user numbers, and customer feedback has highlighted issues with your user interface, a product initiative may be to refresh the UI to entice new users. 

They have measurable outcomes

To ensure your product initiatives are working towards the product goal, you need to assign a measurable outcome to each initiative. This will allow you to see how each initiative will impact the final product, which will directly help with prioritization and resource allocation. 

You can use a wide range of methods to measure the success and impact of a product initiative. OKRs and KPIs are the most common, because they rely on key results (like functionality levels) and user data (like conversation rates and customer satisfaction.) It’s important to note that you need to establish a baseline measurement before implementing a product initiative so you have something to compare to. Using tools like airfocus’ OKR template can make it easier to measure progress and keep the team working towards the right goal.

They enable cross-functional collaboration

Successful product initiatives require teams to work in harmony. Cross-functional collaboration is crucial when working on a product initiative, because you need a diverse skill set that encompasses a wide range of perspectives. Reducing silos and communications gaps can significantly boost cross-functional collaboration, resulting in faster decision-making, better ideation, and increased flexibility to deal with changing requirements.

How to set product initiatives

Product managers need to lead initiatives and bring together cross-functional teams to ensure product initiatives are achieved. They need to guide teams and ensure the product vision remains at the forefront of everyone’s minds during each product initiative.  To execute and achieve product initiatives, product managers need to:

• Set product goals: Product goals need to be tied to the overall goals of the business. They should also reflect key customer needs and what will provide the most value to your users.

• Choose the right metrics: Focusing on the wrong metrics can quickly lead you down the wrong path. Make sure the metrics you choose directly correspond to your product goals.

• Maintain communication: Keeping everyone in the loop ensures that your teams work in the right direction. PMs should also ensure that the appropriate stakeholders clearly understand initiatives and product goals.

• Check in on progress: PMs need to check in regularly to ensure progress is going well, making appropriate changes to the process, initiative, or goal if required. 

Product initiatives vs. features vs. epics

It can be easy to get initiatives, features, and epics confused. Each works towards the overall product goal, but they represent different elements. Using the terms correctly helps give valuable context to conversations and avoid confusion. Here’s a quick rundown of what each term means. 

• Initiative: A product initiative is an action the team needs to take to reach the product goal. 

• Feature: A feature represents functionality that needs to be built into the product to achieve the product initiative.

• Epics: An epic is a large task that needs to be completed to build functionality that works toward the product initiative. 

Measuring the impact of initiatives

Initiatives and product goals are quite similar to OKRs. You can think of the initiative as the objective, and the product goal as the key result. With that in mind, measuring how well the team is progressing toward achieving your initiatives and product goals is essential. 

Using KPIs will help you understand the impact of your product initiatives. Some great KPIs to use include: 

• Number of active users

• Customer satisfaction score

• Net promoter score

• Conversion rate

Which KPIs you choose will depend on your initiative and product goal. It’s also important to factor in user feedback because it can offer fresh insights into how well your initiative has performed.