Journey Mapping: A Product Development Process Case Study

Underpinning every successful product is a successful 产品开发过程. 作为Toptal的高级产品经理, 我发现，把这个过程当作一个产品来对待，会带来可衡量的改进，触及我们工作的方方面面.

The team I lead comprises an engineering manager, nine 软件工程师，一名质量保证工程师. 我们的工作涵盖了广泛的产品和功能，促进了我们人才网络的健康供需平衡. 在接下来的部分中, 我将分享我们是如何利用客户旅程地图来改进产品开发流程并提高效率的, 沟通, 和协作.

When the Process Is the Product, the Team Is the User

Products that are unsuccessful or ineffective often result from what a team, 甚至是一个人, 认为 users want and need, not what they actually want and need. 好产品, 然而, is built on the qualitative and quantitative data derived from extensive user 研究 会话. 同样的, 如果领导者认为自己知道团队的需求，那么产品开发过程本身可能是不成功或无效的.

As 产品经理 或者团队领导, 你应该进行与产品跟踪相同的用户研究, 面试, and surveying—with your team to make sure your process is similarly successful. The goal is to understand how your team is using the 产品开发过程 and address any 痛点 they encounter along the way.

构建客户旅程地图

There are various ways to collect feedback from users, but 客户旅程地图 is the product discovery technique I use with my engineers. 结果是一个图表，说明用户在与您的公司互动时所经历的步骤, 无论是通过产品, 在线体验, 零售经验, 服务, 或者它们的任意组合. 用户拥有的接触点越多，地图就越复杂，因此也就越有必要.

这一技术通过探索用户的行为和情感来揭示痛点和机会. It’s an excellent way to uncover problems in your process.

Within the diagram, users are depicted as hypothetical personas. 每个角色都应该有一个简短的个人介绍, including a description of their inner motivations and responsibilities, 因为这有助于使他们人性化. 每个角色都应该代表一种关键类型的用户，以提供解决方案必须满足的各种需求.

旅程地图是按用户阶段组织的. 每个阶段都代表了用户在整个过程中试图实现的一个主要目标. For each stage, and for each persona, ask your team to consider:

• 动作:用户做什么?
• 情感:用户的感受?
• 痛点:困扰用户的东西?
• Opportunities: What are some possible solutions?

Asking the team “What bothers you about this product and how can we fix it?” would not be a useful way to gather information because, 在提问的时候, they may not recall use cases or how they felt when they experienced an issue. 要求他们将交互分成几个步骤，并询问他们用户是如何遇到每个步骤的，这有助于团队表达与旅程每个阶段相关的情绪.

将这一理论应用于我们的整体团队

To understand how this theory applies in action, 考虑一下我和我的工程团队创建的产品开发过程的旅程图.

使用 米罗, 我制作了旅程地图板, splitting the 产品开发过程 into eight major stages:

• Roadmap Planning, and Defining Objectives and Key Results (OKRs)
• 产品规格
• 技术分析和工作分解
• 实现
• Quality Assurance and User Acceptance Testing (UAT)
• 预发布
• 释放
• 发布后的

我选择了两个角色——软件工程师和产品经理——因为他们是参与这个过程的主要用户.

• 软件工程师谢尔盖: Sergey ensures the initiatives are delivered on time and to a high standard, 同时维护一个健壮的代码库，并了解最新的技术和工具.
• 产品经理马特: Matt确保团队优先处理最具影响力的项目. He also listens to stakeholder needs and communicates updates to the team regularly.

会议前, 我帮马特填写了旅行地图, 我的角色, in order to get an idea of how much time was required to complete the exercise, as well as to set the team’s expectations of the format. 下一个, 我连续两天安排了两次90分钟的训练，以确保我的团队有足够的时间在不失去注意力和精力的情况下完成练习. Because most engineers are unfamiliar with the journey mapping process, I shared links to the 米罗 board and a YouTube tutorial to help them prepare. 在第一次会议开始之前，我确认每个人都理解了这些概念.

作为主持人, 我让团队提出行动建议, 情绪, 痛点, 也为谢尔盖的角色提供了机会. 一些团队成员一开始很害羞, but once a few people shared their 的想法, 会议开始进行. I filled out cards on the 米罗 board based on their input.

Key Learnings From the Journey Mapping Process

The journey mapping process yielded five main takeaways:

1. 保持会议的简短和集中. If there are more than a few stages within the journey map, I advise splitting the effort into two or three 会话 to maximize productivity and to prevent team members from losing focus.
2. 做一个榜样. 填写 产品经理 泳道前的会话设置 诚实和开放的语气，并展示如何表达这些问题，鼓励团队 members to share their own 情绪 and 痛点 more readily.
3. 创造情感安全感. Team members may find it intimidating to share their 挣扎——很可能是因为害怕被评判——但尽量不要干预. 迟早会有一个更勇敢的团队成员打破僵局，事情就会开始 移动. When that happens, show empathy and appreciation. 这将使其他成员国放心 他们在一个安全的环境中，他们会更舒服地分享他们的 的想法.
4. 和你的团队一起制定一个后续计划. Some problems may be hard to solve, especially 如果解决方案涉及其他团队或部门，但计划让您的团队更新 与可能产生影响的责任方的任何相关沟通或变更 旅程绘图过程的结果.
5. 以行动步骤结束. Create a list of action items, and assign an owner and deadline to each, which will help you realize tangible results from the session. 举几个例子 resulted in our case are depicted in the following table:

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为什么 Was the Journey Mapping Exercise Effective?

在展示潜在的改进机会和培养团队精神方面，旅程绘图工作非常成功. 它在以下方面帮助了我们:

1. 它揭示了我认为事情运行顺利的问题，并强化了不做假设的重要性. For example, I assumed that everyone had sufficient training on Jira但事实并非如此. 在光谱的另一端, 我认为要求工程团队为新功能录制演示视频会给他们带来负担, 事实上，他们很重视这个练习，因为它帮助他们提高了演讲技巧，减轻了他们在镜头前的焦虑.
2. It illuminated some improvements I could make, 例如重组计划封面，使其更易于工程师访问.
3. 它授权工程团队对他们控制范围内的结果负责，因为他们是提出他们可以测试和进一步迭代的变更的人. 这主要是一个自下而上的过程.
4. 它揭示了痛点热点主要围绕路线图规划和实施.
5. 它通过承认共同的挑战，在团队之间建立了更牢固的工作关系. 例如，我们团队中的许多人认为他们是唯一在与 CI / CD管道 for a particular subsystem when, in fact, most of the team was struggling.

扩展的考虑

如果每个产品经理或 工程部团队领导 和他们的团队一起经历这个过程, 可能会出现一系列常见的问题, indicating which issues should be addressed first. Teams should follow the updated process for a few months, then the feedback loop must be revisited again. 这个循环应该持续下去，直到产品开发过程变得自然和容易, and supports the needs of the users in building top-quality software products.

就我的团队而言，我们的新流程在几个方面带来了切实的改进:

• The average time for tickets in review has been reduced by 22%.
• 在过去的三个季度中，产品OKR完成率上升到90%以上.
• 针对高优先级bug的服务水平协议时间在100%的情况下都得到了满足.
• There have been no failed 释放s due to deployment problems.
• The average number of post-释放 reported bugs has decreased by 37%.

如果你的团队参与了 建筑产品, then your process should be subject to continuous scrutiny and improvement. 如果一个函数没有很好地执行, or if its 产品开发过程 is weaker, 这将影响最终结果. While I used this practice for an engineering team, it can easily translate to 用户研究、设计、 UI / UX，以及内容团队.

Your 产品开发过程 is your most important product. 使用这个练习来帮助完善它，看看它对你的团队制作的每个产品有多大的提升.