product discovery - Xero Partner growth

Additional detail, process and artefacts available at interview

TL;DR

I used my facilitation skills and experience working with agile development teams to help explore, evaluate, prioritise and commit to product ideas that would solve user problems and align with the team’s mission.

Problem

Our product team had a clear mission, but too many ideas and a lack of a prioritisation process were holding us back.

Approach

Run a series of workshops to review existing product ideas, generate additional ones, flesh out existing ideas, and then evaluate them against each other. Then prioritise the product ideas based on effort and value, working to validate the high-priority one using experiments and prototyping.

Process

Working with our engineers and product manager, I: 

• Facilitated decision and prioritisation workshops

• Conducted research with accounting partners

• Ran ideation sessions

• Built potential product ideas into prototypes

Result

After product discovery, we explored multiple product ideas and variations. We decided to pursue the creation of a new Xero product that would match existing Xero advisors (accountants and bookkeepers) with small businesses looking for accounting help. It could provide value to both Xero's core customers - small businesses and accounting and bookkeeping partners.

Our research found that attracting new clients and managing leads was something accountants and bookkeepers didn't enjoy and acknowledged wasn't their strength. The new product would assist partners in growing their practices by delivering warm leads.

It would also benefit Xero's small business customers. Our data analysis showed that small businesses were more financially stable and operated longer when they had the assistance of an advisor who understood the specifics of their business.

The two core target customers and the pain points being addressed were compelling to the company, which is why this product received further investment.