Follow up questions
- Q1. If you look back, how would you do it differently?
- Q2. What is the learning that you’ve had from this experience?
Example Answer
Situation – The first product that I delivered was when I did not have any software development experience. And how I transitioned skills that I learned in my life to make it a successful product. This product was aimed at being Uber for the logistics industry, when the 4 biggest logistics companies came together and they wanted to transform their job posting, driver recruitment, job tracking, and invoicing.
Concern – When I joined, SOW, Scope, mocks and roadmap had already been decided. All of the feedback came from the clients and at no point, actual users were contacted.
Action –
- I used my lack of knowledge in logistics to gain access to actual users within our client companies.
- I started understanding the industry with just 5 drivers and 5 logistics admin. I understood how they work, and their receptiveness to a digital product. With them, I understood what matters to them most in the entire journey. This helped me in the refining product roadmap
- For example, The roadmap had invoicing, and onboarding as the highest value items, however, Driver Recruitment and Job tracking were actually more important to them, as the current system had a very archaic way of doing this.
- I worked with my UI person and brought him together for these interviews, we started collaborating on creating mocks. Many mocks got refined as well
- For example, when the drivers would be driving, the earlier mocks had a lot of analytics to it, but later we refined it to just a destination map. – Simplified UI
- I went further in creating a focus group with these drivers where I would send them updates and get realtime feedback – I called them my internal advocates.
Results
- We started with 5 each side and IE and at the Private Beta launch we were at 50 each side, this helped us at the time of launch when we launched with more than 1000 each side, at least 500 more than targetted.
- Every driver completed an average of 3 jobs a week, as opposed to targeting just 2.
- I used my skills gathered from my earlier jobs to make this product scalable, relatable, and something that drivers were proud of as they were a part of this journey.