Creating the Perfect Messaging App: Our Collaborative Approach

The start of a new week and we have another task to take on as Product Managers. We had just completed our first task where we collaborated with the product design team to write a product requirement document for a food delivery app we decided to call BellyTime. It wasn't easy, and we faced some challenges along the way, but we managed to overcome them.

It was a great feeling to see the smile on our faces when we finished the document and received positive feedback from our coordinator, Drey.

Now, we have another task, but as rapidly developing product managers, we were not worried. We decided to take it on and do our best.

"Failing to plan is planning to fail." - Benjamin Franklin

This adage perfectly summarizes our approach to this week's task. From our little garnered experience, We now understand the importance of thorough planning and documentation to ensure that the final product meets the user's needs.

So, the first step we took was to have a sprint planning meeting to discuss the task at hand and agree on the goals necessary to fulfill the task. We were tasked to create a “direct messaging app” project on Jira Software, prioritize and organize the backlog into sprints, run scrum ceremonies, and more.

Next, we conducted research to identify pain points that users face with existing messaging apps and received 20 responses, which helped us prioritize 11 features such as user authentication and privacy, instant communication, customization, storage and backup, community building, editing and management, marketing tools, geolocation, and a search feature. A decision was taken to conduct a survey to gather feature requests for the app.

After this, we held another scrum meeting on Wednesday to prioritize and organize the product backlog into sprints. During the meeting, we identified the key features necessary for the first sprint and after prioritizing the key features, we created our first sprint. We held daily standup meetings to discuss progress, challenges, and how we could improve our workflow during the sprint. We also moved some other features from our backlog into other sprints which will begin once the first sprint ends.

During our Sprint reviews, we identified one of the challenges to be balancing the need for quick execution with thorough planning. As product managers, we understand that it is crucial to prioritize planning and documentation to ensure that the final product meets the user's needs. However, we also had to keep in mind the need for timely execution to avoid project delays.

To ensure that we were not compromising on either planning or execution, we decided to write a product requirement document (PRD) on Thursday. We used Click-Up, a project management tool. It allowed us to assign tasks necessary to create a comprehensive PRD that included functional and non-functional requirements, user stories, pain points, acceptance criteria, success metrics, and a roadmap.

We deliberated on how to hold our sprint retrospective meeting since we did not have developers as part of the team. We agreed that we could utilize the Confluence app for future purposes and itemized what we would do.

1. What could we have done better?

2. What did we do but did not work out and have to improve upon?

3. What actions did we take that helped us greatly?

Overall, our project was a success, and we were able to deliver a project on Jira that will inform the deliver a direct messaging app which we hope will meet stakeholders' expectations and the users' needs. As product managers, we concluded that the key to successful product development is to work collaboratively, prioritize planning and execution, and continuously improve our workflow.