PowerPoint Presentation

Mapping through Miro Ainsley Casement. ProductTank Belfast logo.

My name is Ainsley and I’ve worked in Logistics and Operations for over a decade with various companies throughout my career. It is this background industry experience that allowed me to join the product team at Selazar, a tech company that specializes in e-commerce fulfillment. I brought my knowledge and experience of 3PL to Selazar so that I could provide valuable insight towards what end users from different perspectives want to see and how to optimize their interaction with our product. The jump from Logistics and Operations into tech has been a steep learning curve, I still have a lot to learn. However, I have been blessed to have an awesome female led team who have shown me nothing but kindness and encouragement. They have helped empower me to bring my ideas and visions to life, with their valuable mentorship and feedback. I’ve also been lucky to have support across departments as I map my way through product..

Mapping through the product development lifecycle.

This is where Miro really helps to map all the ideas of the team together in one place, it also allows collaboration between us so that we can see each other’s ideas. You will make mistakes, but I believe that it is how you deal with them that is the key for growth. The beauty of product is that there are no right paths or answers, everything is a variable and can be easily corrected with a little creative flair. Feedback is never a negative term and is the most powerful tool we have for improvement. We are given our requests and requirements, we then have to make it happen with the best solutions. For me, the brainstorming process is the place where we bring everything to the table and run through each process map for not only the customer journey but also the logic that runs in the background. We can visualize both the Front-end and the Back-end of a product feature or new project in one space. Our Devs can see the product journey, we can add feedback from them or make improvements with ease and our Design team can show us first edits of how it all comes together This is the place where we look for mistakes or risks in our draft or design so we can engineer the product against it before any work is started..

Miro allows us to not only map the customer journey in our brainstorming sessions, but it also allows us to upload our research documents when we are looking at our market competitors to see how we can develop a unique product feature that fills gaps in our market. I can also upload full PDF or Excel documents to the board so that everyone can see any statistics I’ve found from my research, or, they can read any Client IT Specification manuals. Having every document related to the project in one board means that nothing is ever lost, I don’t have to search through e-mails or folders for a document, it’s right there for me and is easily accessible..

Mapping; Defining. Before any projects go any further, we need take everything that we worked out in the brainstorming stage and turn it into a clear, concise plan on how we will implement the changes. Below is a rough example of how this roadmap looks:-.

Mapping; Defining ctd. Due to the visualization that Miro allows us to have, we are able to see the path we have chosen clearly, we can also translate that into a high-level overview of everything we learned in the brainstorming session. This is when we meet with each department to get their individual feedback on what we have proposed, which gives them an opportunity to give their opinion and share their knowledge with us. This is invaluable to me, being new to product, as it allows me to see from each department’s perspective. It also acts as a safety net for me while I continue to learn more about product, if I’ve misunderstood how the current product works then this helps me correct it, if my ideas are great but wouldn’t translate well into reality, then I can scrap it. Feedback, whether positive or negative, is invaluable. The key to success is to remember that there is not just one source of knowledge, everyone in the company will have a different perspective than you or they will know something that you don’t, learn from them, take their opinions and advice into consideration. Miro allows us to have the constant feedback loop with ease, if we have a query or a comment about something on the board then we can easily add a sticky note and discuss it at the next meeting. A collaborative approach at this stage is key, here we have a clear direction of where we want to take the project, but we haven’t fully begun working on it. We can go back and forth between Brainstorming and Defining to make sure that our plan is refined, relevant to the requests/requirements and will not cause any disruptions with any other area of the project. It is better to find the errors now while we can implement changes, any later and we will cause significant issues with our release deadlines. Our main mantra at this stage in the lifecycle is “What do we need it to do? Can it be done? How will it be done? Will this solve the issues raised?”. This stage is the time for us to define the scope of our product..

Time for the Design team to shine! Due to the visualization that Miro offers us with the ability to create process maps, user stories, research and initial designs all in one place and in one board, it means that our designers already have a fair idea about the new feature. They can see all of the work that has gone into it so far, just by reading through a board. There is no looking for documents, missing meeting notes etc , it is all there in an easy to find location. The designers can also easily upload their own research to the board, including any imagery, color schemes, market research and so on. The designers have the freedom and flexibility to add their first design drafts, where we can then work out how the UI design can match the vision of the feature that we defined in the previous step. Designers can also use this as a point of reference, where they can give us feedback on how the defined plan may not necessarily work from a design point of view. Everything we do is to ensure that the end user has the smoothest possible journey throughout our product, just because something has great functionality doesn’t always mean it has good design. Everything about our improvements need to work functionally and provide an end user friendly experience. Once the final designs are approved, we then pass this all onto our developers so that they can begin working..

Mapping; Testing. As soon as our developers are finished with their tasks, everything is passed onto our QA team for testing. Due to the log of the product lifecycle that we have created in Miro, our QA team are able to look at the board and see every map behind each process, every query about the process and the drafts of each version. This means that they are able to fully understand how the feature got to this stage, they are given every detail and everyone’s notes on the feature in one place. By mapping out the sequence of events and showing how the feature was created, our QA team are better equipped for testing. They know exactly how the feature is intended to function through all the information on the Miro board, so if the feature doesn’t work as set out in the Miro map then that helps them to write up a report on it and we go back to development..

Our final step, where we find “X” on the map and our journey is completed. After release we will still keep our map on Miro as a reference point, in case we want to release a new version at a later date or in case there is a bug that we need to fix so we may need to refer back to the map to see what decisions were made, in regard to functionality, or to see how the logic behind the processes were defined. Aside from that, the hard work is done and the feature has now gone out to the wider world. It’s a time to celebrate the hard work and prepare to start the next one all over again!.

Final thoughts. For me, the beauty of Miro is the ability to map out the plan for the development process and the ability to have multiple teams collaborate in one space. Coming from a non-tech background it can be difficult trying to wrap your head around the many stages in Agile development (especially when the project moves back a step and forward a step a few times in a row). While Miro is an invaluable tool to help both tech and non-tech people come together, the main thing that has helped me transition has been the full support from everybody that I have worked with. Without them, I wouldn’t have had the success that I’ve had so far!.

References. Product development life cycle - Orpon Chowdhury (orponchy.com).