OASIS Product Management Mantras, Chapter 7

Make sure that both you and your users can sum up your product’s key features … in 30 seconds.

This concept is also known as The Elevator Test. This is a great test for pitching your product, feature, or idea. Imagine that you are riding in an elevator with somebody that you just met, and that person happens to ask you what your product or feature “does.” You are traveling only a few floors with this stranger … could you successfully convey your concept in that short time? If the answer is “no,” then something is not right. In an enterprise-grade, robust product, this may not seem like an easy task. However, even SAP has a clear tagline. Clarity of explanation should arise from clarity of feature set scope. Clarity of feature set scope arises from clarity of user goals. Clarity of user goals arises from an acute awareness of real customer problems. This is a paramount goal in all future OASIS development. That is, to ensure that features reflect best-case solutions to real, proven customer problems. In many cases, less becomes more. This ensures that only the most valuable features, which solve the most common and the biggest customer problems receive the most attention.