We’ve started a series of Lean Canvas reviews at work, which is a succinct way to share a product’s current ecosystem and plans to expand or focus its features. I shared mine today, which led to a constructive conversation on how to tighten up the model and view the current environment differently.
Beyond evolving a business model, the lean canvas is an excellent tool for communicating your analysis and plans for a product. Thus it’s also a great initial tool for onboarding a new Product Manager as it gives them awareness of all aspects of a product’s business model. This then empowers them to think of new product ideas by supplying the basic vocabulary and goals for a product that they can leverage to express their own proposals.
Consider these aspects of the canvas when reviewing it with the new PM to help them get the full value from the exercise:
- Problem – Make this juicy to captivate the emotions your customers feel. As a PM, why should they lose sleep over scheming great solutions to this problem? The “Existing Alternatives” section also gives a chance to talk about competitors in the market.
- Customer Segments – This is a place to introduce personas and other formal categorizations of users that the new PM can use as shorthand in future communication.
- Unique Value Proposition – After you review the canvas, you may want to come back to this section to see if the new PM has an alternate way to express the proposition. With their fresh eyes, they may see a different angle that you missed to make it more compelling.
- Solution – You can introduce some basic existing or proposed product concepts here, that will then be built upon in later activities like feature demos and tech diagramming.
- Channels – Be sure to cover any unique or oft-forgotten channels like special partner relationships. This can also highlight the different internal and external communications the new PM will need for launch coordination.
- Revenue – Help the new PM see what financial numbers are important to the business. Is it monthly recurring revenue, or one-time sales, for instance?
- Cost Structure – This is the place to highlight any uncommon costs such as data acquisition or partner integrations. If you can put concrete numbers it will get the new PM a baseline for comparing the scale of different models.
- Key Metrics – Try to get specific to give the PM a focus in exploring new products. This helps them see the user behaviors you want to increase or decrease. At work, we’re also exploring the use of “KPIs” for this panel to better link it to higher-level planning.
- Unfair Advantage – Tie it all together and talk about how this product gives you a competitive advantage.
Another use for the Lean Canvas can be in the interview process. If your product has a rich website, you could have the PM candidate create the Lean Canvas for one of your existings products for the first interview. This prework will validate interest from the candidate, give you a chance to review actual work material, and judge their critical thinking and research skills. With the same above conversations used in onboarding, you can investigate the candidate’s product thinking and share some more details on the product to ensure they’re excited to manage it.