FeaturePlan supports an end-to-end process plan enhances the product management process.

As outlined in the following diagram, the process aids product managers to manage enhancement requests, define problem statements, analyze
identified opportunities, formulate supporting features, define associated roadmaps and requirements, and plan releases.

A brief explanation of each process stage:

Manage Enhancement Requests
The enhancement request management process provides product managers with a process to sort and allocate enhancement requests submitted by different stakeholders, either from within the organization or from customers, within a central repository. Product management ensures that these enhancements are complete and understood clearly before processing them further.

Define Problem Statements
Understanding the problem at the root of an enhancement request allows the product management team to provide a right-sized solution to the problem is that in line with
corporate or product strategy. A single problem statement ideally addresses multiple enhancement requests.

Analyze Opportunities
Problems are categorized into one of three categories to indicate the different levels of analysis needed to understand the opportunities completely.
• Maintenance and Utility - Problem statements in this category do not need opportunity analysis and will be selected based on portfolio mix thresholds.
• Enhancement and Improvement - This category is for problem statements needing analysis, including Strategy Alignment, Opportunity Size, Competitiveness, and Service/Cost Reduction.
• Transformational - Transformational refers to riskier opportunities that are significant departures from the organization’s current market offerings. The organization’s ability to execute on the opportunity is assessed in order to further quantify the risk of pursuing the opportunity in addition to the analyses listed in Enhancement and Improvement.

Define Features
Features outline the goals and solution concepts responding to one or more problem statements without describing the actual technology required to achieve the solution.
Once defined, features can then be shared with different stakeholders, including colleagues in product marketing and product development. This early interaction with product development makes it possible for them to provide high-level “t-shirt” sizing (S-M-L-XL) of features so these can be more accurately plotted on roadmaps.

Define Roadmaps
The product roadmap allows for features to be plotted on a timeline based on user-defined periods. FeaturePlan makes it possible to create different roadmap scenarios to be submitted for approval. Once a specific roadmap is agreed upon, product management can then begin defining requirements for the approved features.

Define Requirements
Requirements provide product development with a description of what is needed to meet feature goals. It is important to note that a market requirement should not address how it should be implemented, as this should be decided by product development. Based on how the requirement will be implemented, detailed estimates can then be provided by product development for the requirements so that product management can begin defining releases.

Define Releases
In release definition, the first step is to define a release candidate providing boundaries, such as go-to-market information, product positioning, the proposed requirements, and product release timeline. This is also where the creation of the traditional MRD takes place. The release candidate is submitted for approval, and once approved, it is considered to be the plan of record with which all stakeholders will move forward.