Tough decisions? Create a Compass to Help You Navigate.

How to Create a Clear Product Purpose that Guides Tough Decision-Making

This article is the second in a series of articles for EdTech entrepreneurs with too much on their "to-build" list (aka backlog). The first article is here.

Why does your product exist?

It may sound like a simple question, but it’s one that many EdTech Entrepreneurs struggle to answer. Even those who intuitively know why their product exists often find it challenging to put it into words for themselves, much less articulate it to their teams so that they are all moving in the same direction.

However, those with a clearly articulated product purpose can use this purpose as a guide in navigating tough decisions and trade-offs.

In this article, I’ll explain how to create this compass by articulating your product’s purpose and why having a clear product purpose is so important in product development.

Why is defining your product’s purpose so important?

A product purpose can be used as a “product compass” to help guide you and your team when making tough decisions. These decisions are inevitably required when you, your team, and your customers have more ideas for improving your product than you have time and resources to build them.

When considering whether to build a product idea, evaluating each idea against your product’s purpose gives you and your team a sense of the value of any particular idea. The closer an idea moves your product to achieving its purpose, the more you should consider building it.

A product purpose can be used as a “product compass” to help guide you and your team when making tough decisions.  

Using a clear purpose as a compass also provides the following benefits:

1. You will deeply satisfy the needs of your users, leading to increased word-of-mouth sales.

2. Your product will be easier-to-use, more cohesive, and of higher quality.

3. It will be harder for competitors to copy or dislodge you.

4. You will save time and money.

5. You can more easily, and intentionally, react to a changing market landscape.

6. You will be more easily able to delegate decision-making.

How to Determine Your Product’s Purpose

To get clear on your product’s purpose, you and your team need to articulate, agree, and document answers to the following questions together. Documenting these answers together as a team quickly uncovers misalignments and misunderstandings, which is essential to maximizing the resources you have and preventing costly mistakes down the road. You will go farther and faster if everyone is moving in the same direction.

Documenting your purpose as a team ensures everyone is moving in the same direction

Question 1: Who is your product serving?

Is your product intended to be used by classroom teachers? Students outside of the classroom? Caregivers?

Get as specific as you can. “Classroom teachers” isn’t enough. “4th grade public school teachers during the ELA portion of the school day” is much better. This specificity doesn’t mean you are only selling to this group, but it does help you get very clear about who to prioritize.

In EdTech, there is often more than one group involved in the purchase and use of your product. For example, school principals may buy products for teachers and students to use. Similarly, caregivers often buy products for children to use. This means you will need to think about the complete purchase and usage cycle of your product. Who is buying your product? Are they the same group using your product on a regular basis? Do you have multiple types of users?

In EdTech, there is often more than one group involved in the purchase and use of your product. For example, school principals may buy products for teachers and students to use.

You must take this into account for your product. If your buyers and users are different, recognize and document it with your team.

I will refer to both buyers and users of your product as "the people you serve" for the remainder of this article.

Question 2: What Problem is Your Product Solving for the People You Serve?

Now that you’re clear on who your product serves, you need to be clear on why they would buy and use your product. And the reason that people buy and use your product is that your product is solving one or more problems for them.

At the end of the day, customers buy solutions to their problems. If they are hungry, they will buy food. If they are bored, they will buy entertainment. If schools have low literacy scores, they will buy products to help them boost literacy scores.

Customers buy solutions to their problems. The problem your product solves must be clear for customers to want to buy your product.

What problems does your product solve for the people you serve? If your product doesn’t solve a problem for them, they won’t buy it.

Write down multiple problem statements. Make sure they are clear and concise. Include the people you serve in the problem statements. Do not include any reference or bias to your product.

Example problem statements:

1. Classroom teachers of K-1 students lose valuable classroom time getting students logged into the computers.

2. Busy caregivers don’t have the visibility they need to target the most effective ways to help their elementary school aged students.

3. Learning gaps have become exacerbated post-COVID and teachers lack the tools to properly identify and remediate them for middle school math students.

Spend several minutes writing the problem statements. Do this for each of the types of the people you serve (for example, students and teachers). Then select the best problem statements to use moving forward. The best problem statements are those that:

1. Are clear, concise, and understood by your team.

2. Your team has good reason to believe are real problems that the people you serve care about solving.

3. Your team is well positioned to solve.

As a team, select your top 1-3 problems to solve. It is best if these problems are related to each other in some way. If the problems are too different from each other, you will find it difficult to solve each of them without spreading your resources too thin.

Question 3: Why do the People I Serve Care about Solving this problem?

As a team, document and agree on why the people you serve care about solving these problems. These should be practical reasons that will apply to most of the people you serve.

For example, recall example 1 from above:

Classroom teachers of K-1 students lose valuable classroom time getting students logged into the computers.

Teachers and administrators care about solving this problem because spending a lot of classroom time on activities that do not promote learning leads to less teacher time for activities that do promote learning. This can lead to less overall learning.

Write several reasons down clearly and concisely. As a team, select at least one and up to three critical reasons the people you serve care about solving each of the problems selected in question 2.

Question 4: How will we know we are achieving our purpose?

You will know you are achieving your purpose by seeing movement in key metrics that you need to identify. Agree as a team on what you are attempting to impact and the metrics by which that impact will be measured. Be sure to select metrics you can control.

Note that some metrics, for example, scores on end of year assessments, may not see changes in your desired time frame, so be sure to include some metrics that will happen in your desired time frame.

Continuing with our example from above, an important metric would be average login time per class.

Pulling it all together and Next Steps

Answers to the above questions must be properly articulated and documented. As stated earlier, answering these questions with your team creates alignment on the direction for your product and ensures everyone is moving in the same direction.

Once you are satisfied with your answers to the questions, the next important step in the process is validating with the the people you serve that the problems you are solving are problems that they care about. This will be the focus of the next article.

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