Using a Kanban board, manage a cross-sectional team to deliver a To-do App. Document the lessons, retrospectives, and challenges.

Here's another phase of our growth.

Together with my teammates, we managed cross-sectional teams to deliver two (2) To-do Apps, during this process, we managed two different Product designs (UI/UX) and Quality Assurance Analyst teams.

Task: Using a Kanban board, manage cross-sectional teams to deliver the to-do app by Saturday. Document the process, lessons, retrospectives, and challenges. Cross-sectional teams

1. Product designers
2. Quality Assurance

I would be taking you through the documentation process.

PROCESS: The task to manage more than one team was overwhelming at first. As growing product managers it's easier to work with PMs, specifically because you're working in a field you are familiar with but this was a little scary because we had to manage teams outside our field. However, this was our task and we had to do it.

1. The first thing we did was hold a meeting with all the team members and make plans. Since we had to develop a web and mobile app in 6 days, we decided to divide ourselves into two groups. Dividing into teams made it easy for us to set tasks for both. We identified problems, researched, came up with a solution to the problems, identified our target market, created a product vision statement, and analyzed our competition. But, it didn't end there, we also had to make sure we would follow each team up. So, we set daily stand-up meetings, this way, it was easy to get to know our team members, follow up and critique the work. We also continued the software development life cycle: research, analysis, design, development, implementation, testing, and launch. How did we do it? It's all here.

Identifying the problem: Market/industry research: The focus was on understanding the common problems associated with carrying out day-to-day activities as and when due. We did this research to understand the needs of the target audience, the value of the market, the size of the market, potential returns, and common problems such as lack of an organized daily schedule, proper itemization, and scale of preference.

User research: From the review of the market research, we were able to primarily understand the problems the target audience face and with this, we drafted a questionnaire with good specifics to better understand them. forms.gle/t7esmS5RY4urKbbX7

Assumption: From the research, we were able to come up with some assumptions about the primary and secondary problems the market was facing. An example of such is the question- “how do I ensure that I do not forget the things I have to do even on a very busy day?” We also created user personae.

User personae Persona 1: Name: Jason Adewale Occupation: Architect Demographics: 29 years old gentleman, who likes to study interior decoration during his free time. Jason needs a simple, straightforward To do app for free, he hopes to be more productive and manage his success. He uses a lot of distracting and confusing apps, he also likes to give priority to his task but doesn't know how.

Persona 2 Name: Doyin David Occupation: Student and a Model Age: 23 Location: Dublin, London. Bio: Doyin is a student and a model, who has been modeling for different agencies for 8 years. She always tries to catch up with her school projects and assignments while also trying to make time for photoshoots, exercise, and meetings. GOALS:

1. Organise and prioritize task
2. Always stay up to date and follow a schedule.
3. Set reminders to help her remember to do certain things. FRUSTRATIONS:
4. She's in search of a To-Do app that will help her manage her day-to-day activities.
5. She wants the Todo app to sync with a goggle center and email so that she can get reminders for her activities.
6. She sets an alarm on her phone because she doesn't remember when her tasks are due.

Persona 3 Name: Hassan Ayomide Occupation: Student and a Freelancer. Age: 22 Location: Lagos, Nigeria. BIO: Ayomide is a student and a freelancer on Upwork. He works for different clients access the country. He always tries to catch up with school activities as well as meet up with deadlines to deliver a task. GOALS:

1. To manage school activities and work.
2. Always control the delivery time as a freelancer.
3. Set a to-do task for new jobs. FRUSTRATIONS:
4. He needs a to-do app that can keep him up to date with school activities.
5. He needs an hourly reminder before a deadline for the delivery of a document.
6. Get a badge to manage how productive he has been while using the to-do app.

It is with this that the exact problems being faced were gotten and we were able to come up with a product idea to solve them.

Product Idea/Solution Name: Doo-it (mobile and web app) TaskPanda (web and mobile app) A To-do app that promotes organization, accountability, and productivity by helping you track your goals, ideas, and accomplishment. This app provides an overall positive effect on your business or career. It also balances your work life.

Product Vision: Go from being overwhelmed to being in control of your tasks. Stay anywhere and crate and manage your schedule at any time. Trust the process, you will never miss a task.

Competitor analysis: Who created the best todo apps? Why are they the best? What can we do better? What have they not done? These are the questions we asked ourselves while searching. From Trello to Microsoft todo to todoist, we analyzed each and recorded insights. This analysis helped us understand their tactics, strategies, and how they provide value to their users. We were able to answer all our questions.

Product Strategy: Our users are identified majorly as Generation Z, Millennials, and Generation X. The main feature of the to-do app is to allow easy and proper management of day-to-day activities. Allows users to be able to set a reminder for a task as well as meet up with other life activities. Our key performance indicator was measured on the rate of the user's growth, retention rate, conversion rate, daily active users, and monthly active users rate.

Business model canvas This is the strategic planning tool we used to illustrate and develop our business model. It identifies the key elements that make up a business. • Key partners: Students, entrepreneurs, • Key activities: Design, software development, marketing • Key resources: Product design team, quality assurance team, front end, and backend developers. • Value proposition: Increased day-to-day productivity, convenience, organization • Customer relationship: Automated and longterm • Channels: Google AppStore, Apple store, social media. • Customer segments: People between 13-55 years of age. • Revenue streams: Downloads.

Execution: The To-Do App was a one-week project and despite the short timeline we worked as a team to brainstorm on the project, research, and explore new tools and software so that we could devise the best strategy to deliver on the task. We worked with two teams of designers (Product design Team 3 & Product design Team 4) to design the screens and prototypes for the App and the landing page for the website using Figma, And a Quality assurance analyst to test for functionality and usability. We explored Jira and Confluence for our Kanban boards, Road map, and documentation while we consider strategies to overcome the constraint of not having developers to bring our designs to life. We explored some no-code tools and discovered Glide. apps as they had functionalities we needed to build the Application.

RETROSPECTIVE: We, as product managers scheduled a meeting after the product shipped to discuss what happened during the product development and release process. The goal of this meeting is to improve things in the future based on the conversation and what we learned. Challenges/Constraints: No front-end developers No Backend developers Zero budget Short timeline Lessons Teamwork: we learned to work with people completely outside our field (product management) Accountability: we had to report every move to one another, and it helped us work on time and be accountable. Management: leading different teams for one task was not easy but we did it. We were also able to improvise and work without certain resources. Time: we prioritized and delivered right on time, even though the short timeline pulled us out of our comfort zone.

Working on this To-do App came with a lot of tasks but indeed a great one for us.

Thank you for reading. Kindly, stay glued as we journey together.