Philosophy
Our philosophy around product management blends quantitative analysis with strategic direction. We use data to inform our decisions, but we ultimately make the decisions that we believe match all of the complex factors.
Our goal is to focus on what makes Visor unique, not just build what other products have. We have a strong vision for what is uniquely Visor (and what’s not), and we are comfortable saying “no” to ideas that don’t fit our strategy.
Crucially, we have 2 axes of product development: (1) the features in our core platform, like the different view types and (2) the number of integrations we offer. Within the axis, the incremental value is exponential. And then, combining the axes also multiplies the value. Therefore, we believe our value function to customers generally follows the format:
Using this model, we constantly weigh and balance the impact of adding new platform features (that are valuable across all integrations) with adding more integrations (that will be impacted by the value of the platform features).
Tools
- Salesforce
- Keeping a CRM of all our users
- Tracking customer feedback & themes across feedback
- Internal product roadmap & backlog
- Notion
- PRDs & brainstorming
- As the data source for publishing our public product roadmap (via Super.so)
- Jira
- Project Management for items we are executing
- Fullstory
- For telemetry & identifying user friction
Process for customer feedback
When we receive anything that could constitute qualitative data, such as a user support ticket or notes from a customer success call, we log it to a Feedback database in Salesforce. From there, our product team is responsible for periodically reviewing these items of Feedback and categorizing them.
That includes linking the feedback items to broad themes, on which we are collecting information. It also includes linking the feedback items to any open or planned roadmap items. This allows us to trace a product project back to the voice of the customer. During development of our PRDs and designs, we can use this feedback database and even activate it by connecting live with the impacted customers. And when customers are awaiting certain features under development, we can use this system to ensure they’re informed.
Process for roadmapping
Our team reviews the roadmap 2x per week, including smaller items and large initiatives. Approximately 1x per quarter, we run a more thorough review.
Goal-setting
We use a home-grown goal-setting framework, called VTIP. Read more here.
We align all our projects to initiatives, which have associated metrics and goals. By doing this, we’re able to understand what metrics each project is intended to influence. This also allows our team to identify how our work is aligned with that of others on other teams. And it shows how our projects connect back to the company vision.