Episode 3: Insight Creation w/Thom Thavenius

7 April, 2020 / Host: Magnus Billgren

Building Successful Products: The Importance of Insight Creation

As a product manager, creating successful products that will be used by people in the future is a thrilling task. However, this requires building insights to inform strategy and decision-making. Without insights, our decisions and strategy are merely guesses. In this article, we discuss the importance of building insights and how it can be achieved.

Insight Creation Process

Thom Thavenius, an insights expert with a background as a Principal Analyst at SÄPO, emphasizes the importance of building insights. He shared a three-step process for creating insights:

  1.  Information - Collect and challenge
  2.  Facts - Validate information
  3.  Insights - Connect with your usage

Thavenius suggests that the best tool for creating insights in uncertain situations is to work with scenarios. Scenarios describe a future that we can plan for, and we can make multiple scenarios in uncertain times. The different scenarios make us mentally prepared.

Scenario Analysis

Scenario analysis is a powerful tool for dealing with the unknown. It involves creating multiple scenarios, evaluating them, and selecting the most likely one. The steps involved in scenario analysis are:

  1.  Identify entities that influence your focus market/context/situation
  2.  Identify the major features of the market/context/situation
  3.  Identify factors that can reinforce the market/context/situation
  4.  Identify factors that can depress the market/context/situation
  5.  Identify known uncertainties that could influence the market/context/situation
  6.  Describe possible unknown uncertainties that could influence the market/context/situation (the black swans of your analysis)
  7.  Describe the most likely scenario – your primary scenario
  8.  Describe an alternative but likely development – the alternative scenario
  9.  Describe a wild and crazy scenario – the unlikely scenario
  10.  For each scenario, describe 3-5 indicators to be periodically evaluated
  11.  Establish an evaluation process involving decision-makers/stakeholders

Working with Scenarios

Thavenius emphasized the need to write scenarios as "STATUSes" or "As_Is." Then they can be used and referred to in your work. Also, the use of indicators for the scenarios is a mind-changer to make scenarios work.

Building insights is an essential process for product managers to develop successful products. Insights help to inform strategy and decision-making, and working with scenarios is an effective way to create them. Scenario analysis can also be a powerful tool for dealing with the unknown. By following the steps outlined in this article, product managers can build insights that will guide them towards developing successful products.

To further enhance your insight creation skills and other product management competencies, The Productbeats Product Management Certification Program offers comprehensive training to help product managers build their competence and knowledge platform. The program provides tools, methods, and the competence to use them for fuller product action, including insight creation. With a solid knowledge platform as a lifelong companion throughout your product management journey, you'll be well-equipped to navigate the ever-shifting environment of product management.