Build a Product Narrative

Gautham

A narrative is a report of connected events, real or imaginary, presented in a sequence of

written or spoken words, and/or still or moving images.

Narrative is just a natural progression of things

• Thoughts

• Words (Narrative fits in here)

• Action (Alpha launch)

Where are you now?• You have finalised on an idea after ideation

• You know who your Target audience is

• You have surveyed your customers and talked to them

• You know what their problems are

• Some of your notions of how the product should be has already been debunked

Why do you need a Product Narrative?

• We are seeking C.L.A.R.I.T.Y; so that we can act cohesively as a group and produce very real results.

Let me lead with you an example

• All of you have been through the Admission process at SV.CO, right? Well, we have decided to alter it a little, and I’m about to give you a sneak preview :-)

• I am gonna take you through a real product narrative on which the engineering team of SV.CO is actually working on.

These are actual screenshots from an internal product

narrative doc for ‘Admissions’ process

The process that you guys went through

The doc starts with clearly listing all steps from a user perspective

The details harden, listing down of the details that are to be collected about the applicant in

the beginning are discussed.

What happens after the details are entered?

Notice how the product narrative

is collaborative

Details of the next steps (Application Fee, in this case)

Let’s skip a few steps, what should the teams see when they have cleared the coding task?

How should adding co-founders happen? What should happen next? What happens if they fail the video task? What happens if the team clears?

How does having a robust product narrative help?

• Clarity. Clarity. Clarity

• Time is not wasted

• Teamwork is meaningful, productive and fun.

• Everybody clearly knows what’s being built and most importantly, what’s not being built

What can go wrong if you don’t have a good product narrative?

• Major league chaos

• Serious wastage of time

• Misunderstanding and arguments among founders

What are some common mistakes teams make while making a product narrative?

• Teams try to make it too rigid, too explanatory

• Every worst case scenario is imagined and corrective action is tried to build in. Not a great practice. Ship and improve. Ship and improve.

• Not making the product narrative construction a collaborative effort.

First draft of every document ever written sucks.

That’s okay. Just ship it.