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6.1 Plan

In this capstone, you'll apply what you've learned about business strategy, research, and metrics to a product scenario. You will conduct several analyses, do user research, decide on your recommendation, and create a presentation summarizing your work.

There are several scenarios you can choose from. Or you could come up with your own scenario of interest, as long as it fits the assignment criteria. While each scenario is a little different, the work that you'll do will remain the same and should be reflective of the type of recommendations a product manager may be requested to produce.

Project Submission​

You will submit your presentation slide deck on Slack in the channel #capstone-01

Project requirements​

This capstone module is broken down into checkpoints to help you organize your work and time. Each checkpoint represents a milestone that you'd be expected to accomplish if you were doing this in a real work situation. Some of these will require you to submit items, and some won't. Make sure to read these checkpoints carefully so you know what's expected of you at each phase.

Your final presentation must include the following:

  • OKRs, KPIs, and product teardowns
  • SWOT analysis, competitive analysis, and market sizing
  • At least one MVP for proving whether or not it's worth fully investing
  • Customer funnel analysis, user flow map
  • At least two user personas for the new product
  • Evidence from user research (interview or observe at least three users)

Some steps in this process will be more time-consuming than others. Speaking to users, in particular, can take a while since you need to schedule and spend time with at least three different people. After choosing your scenario below, take a moment to plan how you would complete this project in a reasonable timeframe (we recommend a week to 10 days).

Scenarios​

Imagine each company listed below is trying to break into another, perhaps adjacent, market. Using the specific scenarios, decide how you would create a product that competes with entrenched players in that established market. What's the opportunity? How can you make your product great? Choose one of the following scenarios, or come up with your own.

In your role as a PM at [company], your boss wants you to provide recommendations on [providing this new product].

  • Lyft. Figure out how to compete against Uber Eats and create your own food delivery service.
  • Peloton. Create a new smartwatch for new kinds of classes, like jogging or biking outdoors.
  • Box. Expand your offering by adding email services.
  • HotelTonight. Offer new kinds of last-minute offers, in particular, car rentals.
  • Netflix. Add a music streaming service.
  • Early-stage startup. Develop a product to disrupt the language-learning industry.

Note: We aren't including anything related to AI, simple because it requires a deeper understanding of LLM, Transformers and core computing. AI is more about the technology and less about product management. But feel free to include and use an AI company in your capstone.

Make sure that you have access to interview or observe at least three users for whichever scenario you select. It's okay if those users are friends or relatives as long as they're in the target user base for that scenario. Don't use yourself as one of your users.

If you decide to come up with your own scenario​

Make sure it's a good fit for all the components of the assignment. Your scenario should be focused on the strategic opportunity of creating a new product to compete in a well-established market. You can choose to focus on a product you are hoping to someday develop yourself or find a case to explore in an industry or even company you'd like to work in.

Capstone​

Create a short description of your plans for this capstone. Your one-page planning document must include the following:

  • A short summary of the scenario you've chosen, including the product industry, target audience, and strategic question you will address. If you have any ideas on how you will approach the scenario, describe them here.
  • A plan for how you'll recruit and contact users for your user research. If you have specific people for this, who are they?
  • A planned timeline for completing this project, with timed goals for each component of the work.

This is going to be a lot of work, so make sure you are excited by the topic and that you've chosen a market you wish to know better. Good luck!