Key configuration & set up decisions

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Key configuration decisions for most teams are as follows:

• Portfolio structure
• Idea workflow
• Tagging
• Initiatives and Objectives
• Impact and effort scoring
• People and permissions
• Integrations

Portfolio structure

There are three levels available to set up your products within ProdPad:

• Products - individual products with their own roadmaps, commonly used for end value or team based
• Product Line - groups individual products together, enabling a rolled up roadmap view and canvas section
• Portfolio - effectively all products within your ProdPad account, with enhanced canvas based on lean business canvas model and rolled up roadmap views across products/product lines

Idea workflow

Your idea workflow should be updated to show the entire ideation lifecycle for your organization. Ideally, you should have steps for

• Initial assessment
• Discovery/research
• Execution (e.g. in Jira)
• Post-release validation
• Not Doing/Duplicate/Failed Experiment

Tagging

Tags are useful for filtering & highlighting relevant context for your organization and can be used across the following areas:

• Roadmap initiatives (working version AND published)
• Ideas
• Feedback
• Personas
• Contacts
• Companies

Tags can be useful as an additional level in Portfolio Hierarchy, for example if you have more than 3 layers of "Products" in your current ways of working and want a further way to break them down in the Portfolio roadmap.

Some common examples of how other customers have used tags include:

• Foundational work vs improvements
• Functional areas e.g. “Analytics”, “Search”, “Filtering” 
• Market segments
• Departments
• Major Releases or Milestones
• Highlighting dependencies
• Product lifecycle, e.g. “startup”, “maintenance”, "decommission"
• Lean startup derived language, e.g. "Assumption", "Experiment", “Hypothesis”
• Programs/projects that would deliver on that associated theme

Recommendations:

• Consider how tags would map to labels in your delivery tool e.g. Jira
• Where possible, use existing framework in ProdPad rather than duplicating with tags 
  • Objectives & Key Results
  • Roadmap initiatives
  • Link ideas & feedback
• Consider starting without tags, and iterate based on needs

Initiatives & Objectives - "The Why"

Work is expressed in ProdPad via initiatives linked to objectives on your roadmap

• • They should represent a problem to solve, with ideas being HOW you're going to try and solve that problem
  • Objectives are linked to initiatives to show the desired outcome - i.e. “If we make it easier to understand the app, we’ll see increased market share”
  • Objectives usually span multiple roadmap initiatives

Impact & Effort scoring

• There are three options for your account
  • Fibonacci
  • T-shirt sizes
  • 1-10

• Considerations
  • They should be used for prioritization, not project planning
  • They should be “relative” (i.e. impact of Feature X > Feature Y)
  • Consider aligning by creating definition document (example)
  • Can be used for both Roadmap Initiatives and Ideas

People & Permissions

• Admins
  • Access to all data, all functions
  • Can update the Portfolio Canvas, OKRs, and Feedback Portal
  • Generally limited to a small number, ideally 2-3 per account
  • Consider assigning Admin seat(s) to IT
• Editors
  • Can view and edit any idea
  • Can edit roadmaps to which they’re assigned
    • Or all roadmaps, if no assignments made
  • Can make changes impacting product processes (roadmaps, integrations, or workflow)
  • No administrative/billing access
  • Cannot delete products
• Reviewers
  • Can add and edit their own ideas & feedback
  • Can't edit ideas added by others (unless specifically assigned to idea as owner)
  • Can’t access company settings
  • Can’t make any changes that will impact the product process (edit roadmaps, integrations, or workflow)

Integrations

Integrations are integral to facilitate working outside of ProdPad, with other stakeholders, and centralizing all product discovery and strategy within ProdPad.

• Different types of integrations available:
  • Development (e.g. Jira, Azure DevOps)
  • Collaboration (e.g. Slack, Confluence, Google drive) 
  • Designs (e.g. Marvel, Invision, Sketch etc)
  • Feedback - Multiple customer touch points - Connect via APIs or via Zapier

This guide explains how to work with integrations.