Before knowing how to build a product plan, I believe, we should know why to build a product plan. Majority of the entrepreneurs, product heads, product managers have been developing successful products without a product plan. Over a period they had turned into big brands. The question, then why to create a product plan? Let’s assume, John and David went to a supermarket to buy similar items in terms of quantity and quality for a month. John went to the store with a list of items, brands, and weight of the items to be purchased. David just walked into the store casually.

An hour later John came out with the list by spending $100, it had taken 2 and half hours for David to finish the shopping with the bill of $180. What could be the difference?

John	David
John is very focused as he has list of items.	David has to figure out the items by exploring the store.
His budget did not cross 100 dollars as he is well planned.	He picked the items apart from necessary.
As the list is ready, he picked the items from known rows.	Picked the items based on exploration.
Came out with in an hour with less efforts and time.	It took 2 and half hours as nothing is planned.

I hope, you agree with me. Let us understand how to build product plan from scratch.

Functional Requirements

Essentially, functional requirements are the thriving elements for the product. What to be developed, what is the USP (unique selling proposition) to be built in? What are the features from customer demand? The features which have been evolved from innovation. Each feature must be documented with supporting use case and business scenario so that, the importance of the feature to be developed will be evident and clear. The functional plan should describe the modules also.

Technology

Technology is the enabler for functional requirements and it is an imperative part of any product plan regardless of the industry. Technology plan describes the technology stack, tools and applications to be used or integrated, why these are right fit for the product? Architecture must be developed considering the functionality. The robustness of architecture determines the complexity of application it can support. Right blend of architecture and functionality can produce an essentially good product.

Product Roadmap

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Product Manager/Product owner is the person who creates the roadmap. Product roadmap consists of priority, vision, short – and long-term goals. Based on the priority, features will be split across the timeframe. Usually, JIRA, Agile craft and other applications are being used to build the plan and progress. Features in the roadmap will further split as user stories, considered as backlog in a product plan.

Project Plan

A product is consisting of smaller projects. Dividing into smaller and meaningful parts would help to develop the product effectively, It could be based on a module or technology stack. Development should not get paused for the functional flow fulfilment, each project can be developed with different teams and expertise parallelly so that the small parts can be integrated into a meaningful flow. Eventually, project plans have to be prepared to develop a given scope of requirements.

Integration Plan

Integration plan is the key to avoid multiple technical and environment issues. To understand where to deploy? How to integrate? and When to integrate? Often this plan is to combine multiple functions, teams, and departments with in the organization and outside of the organization.

Communication

Communication is the key to make decisions. Multiple departments, stakeholders within the organization, and outside the organization are part of a product development. Outside the organization might be vendors, associates, or business partners. The communication plan should define the mode of communication, level of communication, and the frequency. Apart from this, the escalation mechanism also included. Eventually, communication plan should be part of a product plan.

Budget

Budget plan is a typical spending plan. Allocating budget determines how much to be burnt at each department for a given period. Budget determines where to spend and where not spend, eternally ensures to have money in place to complete the product.

User Acceptance

Preparing a user acceptance plan is equally important to functional requirements plan, to accept the functionality implemented we need to validate the features, business scenarios, and end to end flows. We perhaps, miss lot of validations as the product has multiple features and flows, launching a product without validation may lead to failure. Eventually, it should be part of a product plan.

Product launching

Last but not least product launching is reaching the customer. Numerus activities have to be taken care before launching the product. The necessary communication to all stakeholders, complete documentation should be in place, marketing and promotional activities which are part of Marketing plan should be incorporated. Letting know to existing and new customers. The most important activity which can’t be left setting up customer care to fix the issue as the earliest.

TemplatePoint is the great source for product plan templates

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