How to Define a Product Scope

Updated 03/25/2022

Oftentimes, companies fail to create successful products not because their idea is bad but because they don't invest the necessary time to define their product scope.

They end up building products based on gut feelings instead of data and user research. These products probably boast an overwhelming number of features users don't need or understand.

In short, time and money are wasted and businesses experience scope creep.

Scope creep: when unforeseen project requirements build up after the effort begins, causing teams to spend more time and resources on the project than expected. 

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Building a product that users care about requires a plan, a methodology, and a process. When you work on a complex, costly project such as the development of an app, establishing a product scope is crucial.

Essentially, product scope is the sum of all the features and characteristics of a product or service. How it will look, how it will work, and what it will offer to users.

Need help building a product? Connect with a top app developer on Clutch today.

3 Steps to Define a Product Scope

The scope of a project informs both project managers and teams responsible for the execution of what requirements and tasks will populate the project timeline. This ensures that all parties are on the same page throughout development. 

1. Lay the foundations of your product
2. Define and prioritize product features
3. Define the minimum viable product (MVP)

In following these simple steps, your team members will be better prepared to work seamlessly alongside each other, finishing the work on time and according to budget. 

1. Lay the Foundations of Your Product

Before you start defining the functionalities of your app, you need to gather the information that will lay the foundation for your digital product.

Here are two topic areas to focus on in order to gather the correct info:

• Understand your end-user
• Define the product's value proposition

Understand Your Users

The first big thing you need to do is to identify who your users are and what they need. 

A fundamental part of creating a successful product is to realize that you are not the user of your product.

To solve your users' problems, you have to step away from yourself and try to understand their feelings, goals, and key behaviors that will guide your product.

One great tool to do that is to create user personas. Personas are fictional characters you create to represent the different types of users that will use your product or service. It’s an excellent resource to understand your customers' needs and expectations. 

Source

What Goes into a User Persona?

When developing user personas, you're going to want to get specific with the information your use to envision your audience. User personas typically include the following components:

• Demographical information: age, race, gender identity, education, marital status  
• Professional and financial information: career path, industry, company size, professional skills 
• Values, fears, and concerns: morals, objections associated with products, decision-making drivers
• Goals: priorities, challenges, things they want to achieve
• Preferences: how they communicate, where they get their news, what social media they use, types of media they watch

Each of these pieces of information can help shape a user persona.

Additionally, remember to construct negative user persona info when moving through this exercise. Negative information is any traits you're looking to avoid in your target audience. Especially when defining scope, negative info can help you discover which users may be too expensive or challenging to reach effectively. 

What's more, user personas are useful throughout the entire product development process: from deciding which features to include in a prototype, to evaluating the end product.

To create a persona, you will need to gather information about your users. One of the best ways to do so is to run user interviews.

Identify Your Product's Value Proposition

A value proposition is your product's promise to customers. You can think of it as your company's elevator pitch.

What is Included in a Value Proposition?

A value proposition is a clear statement that captures the following 3 components:

1. How your product solves users' problems and how it satisfies their needs
2. Specific benefits your product delivers
3. Why customers should buy from you and not from the competition

Establishing your product's value proposition at the early stages will help you guide critical design and development decisions, such as feature prioritization and product roadmap.

Value Proposition Example: Uber

One example of a company that offers an excellent value proposition is Uber. 

It conveys the simplicity and the benefits of the service, and explains why Uber is better than other transportation options:

• One tap and a car comes directly to you
• Your driver knows exactly where to go
• Payment is completely cashless

This tells users upfront what type of experience they’ll get if they choose them. 

2. Define and Prioritize Features

Now it's time to define and prioritize the features for your product. Consider your user personas and your product's value proposition in the following 2 steps:

• Highlight main functionalities 
• Make a features priority list to guide development 

These steps will make it clear which features are most important and need great attention throughout the build of the product. 

Identify Key Functionalities

Recognizing what features your product should have is, essentially, defining what problems will your product solve and what benefits will it bring to users.

One great way to identify key features is through brainstorming sessions. In his book Solving Product Design Exercises, Artiom Dashinsky describes an excellent framework for brainstorming product features called the 5W1H method.

This technique helps teams to make critical design and development decisions and answer six fundamental questions about the product:

Listing product features of the product will help you determine which should be prioritized. 

Prioritizing Features Based on Need

A product shouldn't try to solve all the user's problems. That's why you must prioritize your product's features to offer maximum value.

The core idea is to focus only on those features that serve the mission of satisfying the users' needs. You should be focusing on functionalities your product must have to fulfill its fundamental purpose.

The features that don't suit that goal should be cut, not necessarily forever but at least from the first version of your product.

It's better to have an app with a few polished, functional features than an overly complicated product that does things that nobody asked for.

However, with so many stakeholders involved in one product release, it can be challenging to know where you should begin. 

One of the most effective ways to prioritize features is using a lean prioritization matrix. 

In this matrix, think about the features you brainstormed and then categorize them based on the value they’ll add to the product and the amount of effort they will require. 

The following are four categories to help you prioritize features lists:

• Quick wins are features that are high value, low effort. 
• Big bets are features that are high value, high effort. 
• Maybes are low value, low effort. 
• Time sinks are low value, high effort, and should be cut for good. 

This tool allows you to compare features considering the impact they will have on the user's experience or your business, and the efforts they'll require for your team.

3. Define the Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

After you lay the foundations for your product, understand the needs your product will address, brainstorm the product’s features, and prioritize them based on value and effort, you’re ready to define a minimum viable product (MVP) and all the functionalities that it will include.

What is an MVP?

An MVP is a product with enough features to attract early-adopter customers and validate a product idea early in the development cycle.

It also helps the teams receive user feedback to iterate and improve the product.

What Features to Keep Out of an MVP?

The MVP shouldn't include everything you intend for your product. The features you don't include in the MVP are those you categorized as big bets or maybes in the lean prioritization matrix. These are high value, high effort and low value, low effort features.

While they may not appear in the MVP, they will be added in the further versions of the product. That's why you also want to create a product roadmap for your app.

What is a Product Roadmap?

A product roadmap is a long-term development plan that gives all stakeholders the information they need to coordinate development tasks. It's a clear way to represent the evolution of a product throughout its different versions.

This tool can be critical to the success of a business since it provides predictability to the development process and allows teams to allocate resources and coordinate efforts.

Defining a Product’s Scope Requires Critical Thinking and Multiple Iterations

Defining a product scope is setting clear rules on how to face the development of your app to meet users' needs.

Establishing the right scope from the beginning is critical to ensure that your product is going in the right direction to fulfill your business goals and your users' expectations.

It's also a necessary step if you want to keep a straightforward process with efficient cost and time management.

At Bixlabs, we help top-tier startups build successful digital products for mobile and web. We work with an integrated, resource-efficient process that ranges from validating hypotheses, all the way through launching.  

If you're looking for an experienced team to build your app, give us a call.