The power of soft skills in balancing Desirability, Viability and Feasibility

Every day we have to make a decision between what you want to do, what you can do and what’s actually good for you. Whether you realise it or not Desirability, Viability and Feasibility (DVF) applies to almost any situation. From deciding what to order from Deliveroo down to what kind of services to offer customers, these 3 lenses are equally crucial in reaching the optimum result. When designing and delivering products, every decision brings a trade off and walking that very thin line is what leads to success. Product is the tie bringing together experience, business and technology and creating one aligned vision across each business unit. Whilst tools can help balance DVF, it’s often understanding different peoples’ needs that is the real secret to effective decision-making.

João Craveiro describes this as “connecting the two triads of product management”

First off, what exactly are we trying to answer?

When assessing ideas for a new service, product or even each feature, you want to answer some fundamental questions to understand it’s potential.

• Desirability- Is there a need for it? Do people want it? Does it solve a pain point for someone? And will this service fit nicely into their lives?
• Viability- Will it be worthwhile for us as a business? What value will it bring in? Can we afford it to build and maintain it?
• Feasibility- Can we deliver it? Do we have the right tools, technology and people to build this and look after it once live?

Whilst they all seem equally important questions, inevitably some areas always get neglected. Last week I hosted a webinar on DVF and interestingly 60% found desirability to be the most neglected parameter. Reasons included; not knowing how to assess it accurately; and making subjective assumptions that are never verified.

What tools can help assess DVF?

Whilst answering those key questions seems simple, they’re subjective and answers can vary on a wide spectrum. Many tools have been developed to help take away the ambiguity of assessing DVF. Here are just a few:

1. Empathy Mapping- to understand desirability research must be carried out to understand exactly how customers interact with your service, by interviewing them you can understand what they say, think, feel and do at every step of your customer journey and identify the pain points to solve.

2. Cost Benefit Analysis- build the business case behind each solution to estimate the size of the prize. With the benchmark data from the value tree, input the Capex and Opex costs to both build and maintain the service

3. Prioritisation Scorecard- Bring all your D,V and F metrics into one excel and score them against each other. Map out all value metrics in a value tree framework and same for your effort/complexity metrics. Each idea is ranked based on their impacts on each parameter. This is a simplified version Weighted Shortest Job First (which is also a great Agile tool to use). This will identify which ideas are no-brainer quick-wins, which are long term strategic differentiators and which belong in the bin (or back on the backlog).

4. Product Canvas- The key artefact to define the value proposition, outline D V and F as concisely as possible to ensure no misinterpretations of the solutions. This artefact, although simple, helps identify glaring issues especially when comparing to live products.

5. Service Blueprint- When designing your service, map out in swim lanes the customer journey (to see where the pain points are being addressed), the platform and channel (to assess integration and technical feasibility) the supporting processes for each step (to assess operational feasibility), and the target metrics related to each step (to track directly business and customer value). This artefact brings purpose and clarity, showing how every business unit orchestrates together to play a part in delivering value.

So where’s the problem?

Whilst tools add structure to decision-making, just following them to the T can’t guarantee a favourable outcome. In these workshops where you carry out complexity scoring or metric benchmarking, there will be always be lengthy discussion. Different working personality types will become apparent such as:

This is a great read for understanding different work personality types.

• The Neg Ferret- will always default to how this idea could fail
• The Dreamer- great for innovation but can lead to a list of ideas that will never be realised
• The Yes Man/woman/person — promises delivery of a feature or achievement of value without fully verifying
• The Introvert- afraid to break bad news and may not speak up when delivery or value is at risk

Product should facilitate these workshops and ensure every voice is heard and each argument is explored. If you’re like me and when you disagree with something it’s written all over your face, try these fail-safe responses to keep discussion productive:

DVF is a topic that will always be relevant, because firstly, it is apparent every day, in every meeting in every email, there’s some draw from a D, V or F perspective. And secondly because it is so tricky to master. The application of the DVF tools and soft skills will vary based on context and business culture. Where one business is stuck in the wheels of doing only what they’ve done before but another they’re so focused on innovation that they never meet ROI, the approach taken will have to match. Utilising the tools will give you a great step up, but overall understanding people will be the ultimate skill in achieving the most desirable, viable and feasible product.