Understanding Business page

Understanding the client’s business and goals

When starting work on a new project, there are a few different parts of the entire project that you should consider:

• Client: This refers to the company you’re working with, including their industry, operations, market position, and strategic goals. Understanding the client involves knowing their business model, organizational structure, and key decision-makers.
• Product: The software applications or services provided to end-users. This includes the features, functionalities, and the value proposition of the product. Knowing the product thoroughly helps in identifying areas for improvement and innovation.
• Customer: The end-users who interact with the software. Understanding their needs, preferences, and pain points is crucial for delivering a product that meets or exceeds expectations.
• Project: The client’s goals to enhance the software to better meet customer needs and drive business success. This encompasses the project’s scope, objectives, timelines, and deliverables.

Understanding the client

When you join a new client, it’s important to establish a clear understanding of their business environment, goals, and challenges. This will help you provide targeted, relevant consulting advice from day one. A strong foundation in their operations and strategy will ensure you can integrate seamlessly into their team and contribute meaningfully.

• Leverage your Principal’s insights: Start by reaching out to your Principal to gain valuable insights. Principals manage the client relationship and will have the most up-to-date and direct knowledge about the client’s priorities, personalities, and any key nuances you should be aware of. They can also offer context on historical challenges, the client’s communication style, and preferred ways of working.
• Understand their business: Take the time to review the company’s mission, vision, and values. These elements give insight into the client’s core purpose and long-term goals. Understanding their “why” allows you to position your work within the broader scope of what the company is striving to achieve.
• Analyze products and revenue streams: Identify all the products and services the company offers. Ask for a list or review publicly available data to understand how these products contribute to their bottom line. Knowing which products are strategic priorities or high-revenue drivers can help you tailor your recommendations to areas of the business that matter most.
• Industry and competition: Research the client’s industry, focusing on trends, challenges, and key competitors. This context will give you a sense of where the company stands in its market and what external pressures may be influencing its decisions. Look at both direct competitors and emerging disruptors that could impact the client’s future.
• Identify challenges and pain points: During your initial meetings, ask specific questions about the company’s key challenges. These might include operational inefficiencies, technology limitations, market competition, or internal team struggles. Understanding these pain points will help you position your solutions as directly solving their most pressing needs.
• Review past, current, and future initiatives: Familiarize yourself with ongoing projects, recent completions, and the company’s future plans. This gives you an understanding of their priorities and potential areas where your expertise can be applied. It also helps you avoid duplicating efforts or suggesting solutions that have already been tried.

Conduct research

Thorough research is essential for becoming an informed and effective consultant. Think of this step as preparing for a job interview with the company—you’re not just learning about the company, you’re positioning yourself as someone who can bring unique value.

• Approach it like an interview: Treat your research as if you were preparing to interview for a role within the client’s company. Know the company’s history, the markets it serves, and its long-term strategy. This will ensure you’re prepared for in-depth conversations and can ask informed questions.
• Company’s digital footprint: Review the client’s website, blog, and any recent news articles to get an up-to-date picture of their latest initiatives and how they present themselves publicly. This will help you speak their language and engage more meaningfully with their team.
• Historical context: Learn about the company’s history. Understanding where the company has come from often provides key insights into why they operate as they do today. Are they an industry veteran adjusting to a new digital landscape, or a fast-growing startup still trying to find its footing? These dynamics shape their culture and decision-making.
• Leverage LinkedIn and social networks: Research key stakeholders on LinkedIn to get a sense of their backgrounds, areas of expertise, and career paths. This can help you identify common ground for building rapport. Additionally, look for any shared connections who can provide insights into the stakeholders’ leadership styles or preferences.
• Subscribe to industry updates: Stay informed about trends in the client’s industry by following relevant newsletters, blogs, or news sites. Being up-to-date on broader industry challenges or opportunities will make your recommendations more relevant and forward-looking.

SWOT analysis

A SWOT analysis is a strategic planning tool used to identify and evaluate the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats related to a business or project.

• Strengths: Internal factors that give an organization an advantage over its competitors, such as strong brand reputation, loyal customer base, or unique technology.
• Weaknesses: Internal factors that place an organization at a disadvantage, like limited resources, poor location, or outdated technology.
• Opportunities: External factors that an organization can exploit to its advantage, such as market growth, favorable industry trends, or new technological advancements.
• Threats: External factors that could cause trouble for the business, including economic downturns, increased competition, or regulatory changes.

Conducting a SWOT analysis helps organizations understand their internal and external environments, aiding in strategic planning and decision-making.

Learn their structure

Understanding how the client’s organization operates will help you navigate internal dynamics, identify key players, and position yourself as a trusted advisor.

• Understand the organizational hierarchy: Take time to map out the company’s organizational structure. Knowing who the decision-makers, influencers, and gatekeepers are allows you to tailor your approach to the right people. It’s important to identify both formal and informal leaders within the company.
• Decision-making dynamics: Every company has its own way of making decisions. Some companies rely on formal processes, while others are more ad-hoc. Understanding who influences decisions and how those decisions are made will help you better navigate internal politics and align your recommendations with the client’s internal priorities.
• Assess company culture: Every organization has a unique culture that influences how people communicate, collaborate, and work. Learn about the company’s culture by observing how teams interact and how leadership communicates its vision. Aligning with their culture, whether it’s fast-paced and entrepreneurial or conservative and hierarchical, will help you integrate smoothly into their teams and build trust.

Examples:

• Frontend context: The client’s website has a high bounce rate, signaling usability issues. By asking the right questions, a frontend developer discovers that page load times are a key frustration for users and focuses on optimizing performance to address this pain point.
• QA/QE context: The client’s QA process is causing delays in the release cycle. After discussing pain points, a QA engineer identifies the need for automated regression testing, allowing the team to move faster without compromising quality.
• Backend context: A backend developer reviews a failed initiative to migrate from a monolithic to microservices architecture. Understanding why the project failed (e.g., lack of support or insufficient expertise) helps avoid repeating mistakes in future recommendations.

Tips and techniques:

• Link your work to their mission: Make a habit of explicitly tying your deliverables to the company’s mission or vision in presentations or reports. It shows that you’re thinking about the bigger picture, not just your individual tasks.
• Set Google alerts: Stay informed on client competitors by setting Google alerts on relevant competitors and industry keywords. This helps you stay proactive in suggesting innovations or shifts based on market changes.
• Use probing questions: During initial meetings, ask “what keeps you up at night?” to uncover pain points that may not be immediately obvious. Follow up with more specific questions to drill down into operational issues.
• Confirm the impact: Always verify the magnitude of the pain points to ensure you’re focusing on areas that will have the most significant impact.
• Ask for lessons learned: When reviewing past projects, ask the client what lessons they’ve learned. This gives you a clearer sense of what strategies to avoid or replicate.

Questions to reflect:

• What are the long-term goals of the client, and how can I help drive initiatives that support these goals?
• What competitive advantage can I help the client gain through my expertise?
• How can I better uncover pain points that the client might not initially share?
• What can I learn from past projects to ensure my contributions are effective?

Client questions

Understanding the client:

• What is the core business or primary mission of the client?
• What market or industry does the client operate in?
• What are the key products or services offered by the client?
• What are the main revenue streams for the client?
• What are the client’s values and how do they align with their business strategies?
• Can you describe the organizational structure of the client’s company?
• What are the client’s business objectives for the next 1-5 years?

Understanding the product

Understanding the product you’re consulting on is crucial to providing value and aligning with your client’s goals. As a consultant, your deep knowledge of the product will help you make informed decisions and recommendations. This section covers the key steps to gain a solid understanding of the product.

Learn about the product

Before you can provide insightful advice, you need to fully understand the product’s purpose, functionality, and market position. This involves gathering relevant resources and getting hands-on experience.

• Identify the core purpose: Begin by clarifying the primary problem the product is designed to solve. Understanding this core function ensures that all further advice stays aligned with the product’s main goal. For instance, if the product is a project management tool, its goal might be to simplify project tracking and enhance collaboration.
• Request product documentation: Collect all available resources—feature specs, user manuals, FAQs, and other documents that explain the product’s workings. These materials provide a foundation for understanding the product’s features and limitations quickly.
• Get hands-on experience: Whenever possible, gain direct access to the product through demos or trial versions. Firsthand experience allows you to see how the product operates in practice, offering insights into its strengths and weaknesses. This familiarity makes it easier to engage with stakeholders and offer informed advice.
• Examine the product’s market position: Research how the product fits into the broader market and what sets it apart from competitors. Understanding its unique selling points and why customers choose it over alternatives helps contextualize your recommendations within its competitive landscape.
• Analyze key features: Focus on the product’s most important features, especially those that form its core value proposition. How do these features solve customer problems? Targeting the right features enables more precise suggestions while avoiding unnecessary complexity.
• Highlight the product’s uniqueness: Identify what makes the product stand out. This could be through proprietary features, unique integrations, or other differentiators that competitors lack. Emphasizing these aspects can help refine development efforts and strengthen marketing strategies.
• Review the strategic roadmap: Look at the product’s long-term vision and development plans. Anticipating future features or shifts in direction allows you to align your advice with the product’s evolving trajectory.
• Look for key metrics: Request access to dashboards that track Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) such as user engagement, feature usage, or customer satisfaction. These metrics offer valuable insights into the product’s performance and highlight areas that may need improvement or attention.
• Determine if it’s a profit or cost center: Establish whether the product generates revenue directly (profit center) or supports internal operations without direct revenue generation (cost center). This understanding is crucial for setting financial expectations and guiding strategic decisions.

Understand the target audience

Understanding who the product is for is just as crucial as understanding the product itself. The target audience’s needs, preferences, and behaviors heavily influence both strategy and consulting approaches. Tailoring recommendations to fit the audience is key to ensuring the product meets their expectations and delivers value.

• Categorize the audience: Start by identifying whether the product is intended for B2B (business-to-business), B2C (business-to-consumer), or internal use. Each category has distinct characteristics, which directly impact how the product is designed, developed, and marketed:

  • B2B: These products are tailored to meet business needs. They often focus on improving efficiency, solving operational challenges, and integrating with existing systems. B2B solutions may prioritize features like security, large-scale data handling, and compliance with industry regulations.
  • B2C: Consumer-facing products are designed with individuals in mind, emphasizing convenience, performance, and user experience. SEO, brand loyalty, and broad accessibility tend to be key priorities for B2C applications.
  • Internal: Internal tools are built for an organization’s employees and focus on improving operational efficiency. These products might prioritize specific workflows, role-based access, and flexibility for managing internal processes.

• Understand the target audience’s needs: Once the audience type is clear, delve deeper into their specific needs by reviewing demographic data, user behaviors, and pain points. This insight allows for more personalized advice and helps ensure that the product aligns with user expectations. For example, busy professionals may prefer streamlined interfaces with quick access to core functions, while power users might value advanced customization options.

• Understand the audience’s priorities: Research what the target audience values most in the product. For B2B users, key priorities might include robust security, seamless integration with other systems, and regulatory compliance. B2C users might be more concerned with user experience, ease of use, and performance. For internal applications, priorities often revolve around employee workflows, flexibility in data access, and efficient process management. Tailoring your recommendations based on these priorities ensures that the product delivers on the most important aspects for its users.

Maintain product knowledge

Product understanding is not a one-time task. As a consultant, you need to stay informed about updates, performance, and evolving user needs. This requires active, ongoing engagement with the product and its documentation.

• Keep documentation up-to-date: Make sure that all product documentation is regularly reviewed and updated to reflect changes in features, functionality, or strategy. Ensure that both your team and the client have access to this information.
• Encourage contributions: Create an environment where team members can easily share their insights or add to the documentation. This is especially helpful in fast-moving projects where knowledge is continuously evolving.
• Track metrics and progress: Continuously monitor dashboards and key performance indicators to stay on top of the product’s performance. Keeping an eye on these metrics will help you make data-driven recommendations and identify potential risks early on.

Examples:

• Adjusting UI for a B2C product: A frontend developer consulting on a B2C e-commerce platform notices that users primarily access the site on mobile devices. They prioritize optimizing the mobile user experience by reducing page load times and ensuring the interface is responsive to mobile interactions.
• Refining UX for an internal tool: A product designer working on an internal tool focuses on simplifying workflows for end users (company employees) by streamlining navigation and reducing the number of clicks required for common tasks. Internal audiences value efficiency and usability over aesthetics.
• Monitoring infrastructure changes: A DevOps consultant stays aware of changes in server loads by tracking infrastructure performance metrics. This allows them to anticipate scaling needs or spot inefficiencies early before they become major issues.

Tips and techniques:

• Use a “feature deep-dive” session: Spend time doing a deep dive into each critical feature—what problem it solves, how it’s designed, and where it can be improved. Document your findings and any assumptions for discussion with the client.
• Segment the audience by pain points: Instead of only focusing on B2B or B2C, go deeper by categorizing the audience into groups based on their specific challenges (e.g., cost concerns, speed, usability). This will help you tailor your advice and design decisions to address the most critical pain points.
• Use feedback loops effectively: Implement frequent feedback loops with the actual end users of the product, whether they are B2B clients or B2C consumers. Their feedback will reveal what matters most to them and can influence both product adjustments and your recommendations.
• Map user journeys: Build a clear map of the user journey from initial interaction to final conversion or goal completion. This will help you identify the most crucial moments in the user experience, allowing you to recommend strategic improvements.

Questions to reflect:

• How deeply have I explored the product beyond its surface-level functionality? Am I making decisions based on a full understanding?
• Have I thoroughly identified the different types of users interacting with the product? How do their priorities differ?
• How can I contribute to keeping product documentation up to date? What’s the best way for my team to share new knowledge and insights?

Product questions

Product understanding:

• What is the primary function of the product?
• How does the product solve problems or fulfill the needs of the end-user?
• What are the key features of the product?
• Are there any secondary or additional features that add value to the product?

Product goals alignment:

• How does the product align with the client’s overall business goals?
• How does the product fit into the client’s current product ecosystem?
• Are there specific business processes or workflows that the product is intended to improve?
• What key performance indicators (KPIs) should this product impact?
• Is the product intended to generate revenue directly or support revenue generation indirectly?
• Is the product expected to reduce costs or enhance operational efficiency? How?

Understanding the customer

In consulting, truly understanding the product’s end users is critical to delivering solutions that meet their needs. This requires not just technical expertise but also an understanding of the motivations, pain points, and behaviors of the product’s customers. Below, we’ll cover key areas to focus on when developing a deep understanding of the product’s customers.

Customer personas

Before diving into the technical or design aspects of a product, consultants need to have a clear picture of who the product is for. Identifying and understanding customer personas helps guide decision-making across development, design, and product management.

• Know the target users: Start by learning about the product’s key user groups. What are their demographics (age, location, role, etc.)? What are their pain points and needs? How does this product serve those needs? For example, if you’re building a product for enterprise users, understand how their workflow differs from that of smaller teams or individual users.
• Customer motivations: Why do these users choose the product over competitors? What problems does it solve for them? Is it ease of use, cost, or specific features? Knowing this helps ensure that you’re focusing on the most critical parts of the product experience. For example, if customers are choosing the product because of its integration capabilities, make sure that aspect remains central in development or enhancements.
• Analyze customer behavior: Pay attention to how users interact with the product. Which features do they use most often? Where do they encounter friction? What are the common workflows? This helps you understand which parts of the product drive the most value. For example, if analytics show users spend a lot of time on a particular feature, it’s worth looking deeper to see if it’s working smoothly or if they’re getting stuck.

Gathering customer feedback

Collecting and analyzing customer feedback is one of the best ways to keep a pulse on how well the product is meeting user needs. Consultants can add a lot of value by helping clients interpret this data and use it to improve their product.

• Use analytics: Start by reviewing the product’s analytics. This could include data such as how long users spend in the product, which features they use most often, or where they drop off. For example, if there’s high drop-off at a certain step in a checkout process, that’s a clear area where improvements could increase conversions.
• Collect feedback: In addition to analytics, it’s important to understand how the client is actively gathering feedback from their users. Are they using surveys, interviews, or usability testing? How is the feedback being integrated into their development process? Encourage clients to share this data with you so you can help prioritize and address key issues.
• Leverage research: Ensure that any available user research is integrated into your approach. This might include past customer interviews, user personas, or market research. For example, if a usability study found that users struggle with onboarding, work closely with the team to address those specific pain points in upcoming development cycles.

Examples:

• Analyzing analytics for performance issues: A QA engineer notices from product analytics that users consistently experience slow load times on a particular feature. By digging into the data, they discover that it’s linked to a performance bottleneck in the backend. Highlighting this issue to the team, they help prioritize a fix that improves the user experience and reduces frustration.

Tips and techniques:

• Engage with customer-facing teams: Regularly interact with the client’s customer support or sales teams. They often have the most direct insight into user complaints, needs, and expectations, providing valuable context that can be overlooked in technical discussions.
• Set up regular feedback review sessions: Establish a recurring schedule for reviewing customer feedback and analytics with the client. This keeps everyone informed about current user pain points and successes, allowing you to identify trends early and propose timely improvements.
• Combine qualitative and quantitative data: Don’t just rely on numbers. Pair analytics with direct customer quotes from surveys or interviews. This gives a fuller picture of the user experience and helps guide decisions that are not only data-driven but also customer-focused.

Questions to reflect:

• Have you considered how the product’s design and functionality support the daily workflows of its target users? Are there areas where the user’s specific environment could impact their interaction with the product?
• How do you ensure that you’re not just collecting feedback but actively incorporating it into your work? Are there any roadblocks that prevent feedback from influencing your development or design decisions?

Customer questions

Customer identification:

• Who are the primary customers of the product or service?
• Are there different segments of customers? If so, what are the defining characteristics of each segment?
• What geographic regions do the customers come from?
• What demographic groups (age, gender, income level, education, etc.) do the customers belong to?
• What psychographic characteristics (lifestyle, values, attitudes) define the customers?

Customer needs and goals:

• What are the primary needs and goals of the customers in using this product or service?
• How do the customers use the product or service to achieve their goals?
• What specific features of the product or service are most valued by the customers?
• Are there unmet needs or goals that the product or service currently does not address?
• How do the customers measure success when using the product or service?

Customer challenges and pain points:

• What are the main challenges or pain points customers face with the current product or service?
• How do these challenges impact the customers’ ability to achieve their goals?
• Are there frequent customer complaints or negative feedback? What are the common themes?

Understanding the project

When you first step into a project, it’s crucial to understand not just the technical work but the overarching goals and how your role fits into achieving them. This understanding will guide your decisions and ensure that you align with the client’s expectations and project outcomes. You should take the time to clarify objectives, examine the roadmap, and understand the people involved.

Project objectives

Understanding the objectives is the foundation of effective consulting. Having clarity around the project’s goals will help you provide relevant advice and stay focused on the desired outcomes.

• Talk to your Principal: Before diving into the project, confirm the key objectives and goals with your Principal or project lead. Ask questions like: What are the core success metrics for this project? Are there any non-negotiable outcomes or priorities? This step ensures that you have a shared understanding with your team.
• Scope and deliverables: Ensure you have a firm grasp of the project scope and the specific deliverables expected. Get clarity on the boundaries of the project to avoid scope creep, which can derail timelines and introduce unnecessary complexity. For example, if your role is focused on backend development, be clear on whether this includes building APIs, database management, or both.
• Identify risks and challenges: Every project comes with risks and dependencies that can impact the schedule or deliverables. Identify and document these early. This could include potential delays due to client approvals, technical hurdles, or resource availability. For example, a client may rely on third-party software that could cause delays if integration issues arise.

Roadmap and progress

Having a clear roadmap ensures that your work aligns with the broader project plan, helping you deliver effectively and avoid potential issues. By understanding the timeline, key milestones, and the project’s phase, you can track progress and adjust your approach as needed.

• Consider the product’s lifecycle phase: When you join a project, it’s crucial to assess the phase the product is in. For mature products, expect the project to follow a structured roadmap with well-defined milestones. For newer products, especially those developing a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), the approach may be more flexible and iterative, relying on prototyping and continuous customer feedback rather than rigid stages. This adaptability helps in refining the product and achieving product-market fit through each iteration.
• Identify major milestones: In larger, more structured projects, milestones often define specific phases with distinct goals and deliverables. Collaborate with the team to identify these significant markers of progress, such as completing a project phase or delivering a prototype. These milestones provide clear points for evaluating whether the project is on track. For example, milestones could include completing a sprint, delivering a working MVP, or achieving a key user acceptance test.
• Request a timeline: Whether the project uses fixed milestones or an iterative MVP approach, ensure you have access to the most up-to-date timeline. This could be a formal Gantt chart or a more flexible schedule shared in a project management tool. Use this timeline to align your tasks and prioritize effectively. If deadlines shift, recalibrate your tasks to stay in sync with the evolving project goals.
• Review and monitor progress regularly: Don’t limit progress checks to the start of the project. Schedule regular milestone reviews or iteration assessments to discuss current progress and make adjustments as necessary. In more traditional projects, this might involve a formal milestone review process, while in an iterative MVP environment, it could involve frequent feedback loops and prototyping adjustments. Continuously monitor progress through tools like Jira or Trello, ensuring that any delays or changes are addressed before they affect the broader project.

People and communication

Building relationships with stakeholders and staying connected through effective communication is vital to the success of any project. You must understand the team structure, dynamics, and communication preferences to collaborate effectively.

• Identify stakeholders: Know who the decision-makers and influencers are on the client side. This could include product owners, technical leads, or business stakeholders. Understand their priorities and how they measure success so you can align your contributions with their expectations.
• Set up communication channels: Establish clear communication lines from the start. This could be regular standups, weekly check-ins, or Slack channels for quick updates. Set expectations for how often you’ll communicate and the best methods to use. For example, daily updates may be useful for fast-moving projects, while weekly meetings might suffice for longer timelines.
• Understand team roles and dynamics: Get familiar with the different roles within the team, both on the Bitovi and client sides. Know who is responsible for what, and how different roles interact. For instance, if a client has multiple TPOs, understand which one oversees the area most relevant to your work to streamline communications.
• Align with the team: Observe how the team works together and identify any potential interpersonal dynamics that could impact collaboration. If certain team members struggle to communicate effectively or if there’s tension between stakeholders, take note and find ways to foster smoother collaboration. For instance, if you notice two developers are consistently at odds over technical approaches, consider facilitating a technical discussion to help them reach common ground.

Examples:

• Defining non-negotiable outcomes: As a backend developer, you’re tasked with building an API. The client insists on performance benchmarks, such as a maximum response time of 200ms under peak traffic. This becomes a non-negotiable priority, guiding design choices and optimizations.
• Monitoring key milestones: The QA team uses the roadmap to track when they should start testing a key module. By identifying that a critical feature will be delayed, they adjust their test cases and shift focus to lower-priority items to maintain productivity.
• Identifying key stakeholders: A backend engineer is working on an API that impacts several other teams. Early on, they realize that the business analyst is the main stakeholder for defining data requirements. Building a relationship with this person helps ensure that changes to data structures don’t catch anyone off guard.

Tips and techniques:

• Mitigate risks early: Don’t wait for issues to emerge—proactively ask about potential risks during the project planning phase. For instance, inquire about any expected delays, approval bottlenecks, or resource constraints that could slow down your deliverables.
• Frequent check-ins on milestones: Don’t wait until a milestone is missed to identify a problem. Regularly review progress with your team to see if everything is on track. If any delays are spotted, adjust the plan and inform the client early to manage expectations.
• Tailor communication styles: Different stakeholders will have different preferences for communication. Some might prefer detailed email updates, while others want quick Slack messages. Ask about their preferences early and adapt accordingly to avoid misunderstandings.

Questions to reflect:

• What assumptions have I made about the project scope that need clarification?
• Have I fully understood which outcomes are critical and which are negotiable for this project?
• What risks in my area of work could impact the overall project, and how can I address them early on?
• How often do I check my tasks against the project roadmap, and could I be more proactive?
• Have I built relationships with all the key stakeholders I need to collaborate with?
• How well am I managing the team dynamics, and could I facilitate better communication?

Project questions

Project understanding:

• What is the primary objective of the project?
• What problem does this project aim to solve for the client?
• What are the expected deliverables of this project?
• What constraints (time, budget, resources) are we operating under?
• What are the critical milestones in this project?
• Are there any anticipated risks or challenges we should be aware of?
• How will the success of the project be measured?
• Is there existing documentation or prior work on this project that we should review?

Roadmap details:

• What is the timeline for the project deliverables?
• Can you outline the phases of the project from initiation to closure?
• How flexible is the project timeline?
• What are the key milestones and their expected completion dates?
• Are there scheduled review points or decision gates?
• What dependencies exist between project tasks?