How do you keep track of product ideas at an early stage?

Question

👋 Hello everyone. We are at an early stage with our product. Inevitably we are starting to think about all the cool features we might be able to build in the future. However, many of them are a long way off or need further validation, etc. We are hesitant to start using a product management-specific tool at this stage because they are a bit overkill for a small team. But, we also want to be able to park things somewhere and be able to link it up with user interviews we are doing.

Does anyone have a system/product in mind that works well for this stage?

Kaloyan Dobrev · Accepted Answer

I will say Trello is the product that covers everything. The idea is how mentally(visually) you separate ideas.

Robert Zalaudek · Answer

I'd say rather than introducing something new build on what your team is used to. If you're already using Trello for example then simply set up another board for your ideas. If you use sticky notes then use those.

Gab Bujold 💀 · Answer

Hey @mattcrail ! I would say that the best way to start working on features would be to have a long "interview" with your best users. At V2 Cloud, when we started, we used to talk a lot to our super users that were enthusiasts about our product. I think at an early stage it's the right way to go. If you see a pattern on how your product could be improved, focus on that. On your next step, you can also use https://canny.io/. It's an affordable tool that let user suggest new features and even votes/follow-up on which one they like the most.

Branimir Hrženjak · Answer

At real early stages we used a kind of online of collaborative web whiteboard. You just pasted an idea in there and it appeared as a little virtual sticky note. Great stuff!

Sterling Freeman · Answer

@mattcrail  found this on youtube. Upvote if it helps so others know: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzVvjKLdAbk

Andre · Answer

A shared Google Doc or Google Sheet are a great fit for such a use case. It's free and provides real time collaboration.

Ben Church · Answer

Notion, trello, google sheets. Take your pick! Ive used the first two successfully for just this so far!

Felipe Otálora · Answer

Always focus on what your users want. I fairly believe that product development is mostly done by reaching out and hearing customer feedback. As you mention, probably most of those features require validation and your customers will give you that. So if you can pick up the phone today and talk to your users you will start to learn about a possible backlog. To prioritize the backlog do Kano Surveys, there is a great chapter from the book Lean B2B that talks about this.

tela · Answer

As a nascent product studio, ideas are critical. We have a two-fold process: We have a Slack channel, which lets us gauge early interest from the team and how aligned the idea is with our vision of creating products that lead to an enduring human civilization.

Once they pass that test, we add them to Notion where we can continue refinement and discussion. The Notion link in the Slack side conversation on the idea ties all the bits together.

Yoofi Annan · Answer

@robert_zalaudek yeah i seen most start ups use trello for this...

Vinayak Joshi · Answer

Trello seems to be the ideal product for this. Though I use Dynalist because all my other data is in Dynalist.

Ben · Answer

At the very early stages I tend to use Wunderlist as a way to note down ideas as they come to me.

When I decide to investigate a particular idea I move to Trello to keep a priority ordered feature list etc.  It's easy to view, review and amend when you start getting feedback in.

Juan Arteaga · Answer

I love to have a backlog category on Trello , or Asana . At Klipped we add every potential feature to our backlog so we don't forget and then we revisit them when is time to add new features.

Answer

I'll tell you about it soon.

Stellifsoft · Answer

Airtable, just to be in vogue!

How do you keep track of product ideas at an early stage?

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