What are the real problems you’re solving for your customers?  Which features will entice customers to enthusiastically buy your product?  Do the ideas being discussed in your online forum match your company’s DNA and product strategy?

These are questions that many people in our industry work, and work, and work, really hard to solve every day.  But, maybe more work (as we normally think about it) isn’t the answer.  Maybe it’s time to play.  Seriously.  Skip the urge to round up the whole team in a stuffy meeting to debate it out, the next time you have uncertainty on your product plans.  Bring in some Legos, take your team outside to play a game or experiment with a few of the creative techniques that others are using to spark new insights, prioritize features and elicit the right requirements.  There’s tons of research on the study of how children learn through play – how it sparks creativity and enhances problem solving skills.  Yet, in the corporate environment, play isn’t a norm.  But, that may be changing.

Think this sounds crazy or too ethereal?  Maybe…maybe not.  Skepticism is understandable, but there are some very smart people at some very successful organizations challenging the myth that play and work don’t belong together.  In fact, they’ll tell you just the opposite, and they have plenty of research and success stories to back it up.  They suggest you should encourage collaborative play at work, and that specific to product development, it can make all the difference between creating the right product or missing the boat completely.  Undoubtedly, one of the toughest challenges of innovation is accurately understanding what customers really want, need and value most (translation:  what they’ll gladly pay you for).  Even when you ask customers, they often struggle to clearly articulate their needs.  So, what do you do?

My goal of this article is provide you 2 groups of links – the first is a list of books and resources with creative techniques to inspire innovation; the other includes resources for mastering requirements fundamentals.  This summary of resources is the intellectual capital of others based on their many years of experience and expertise.  As a point of disclosure, Jama has no financial interest in these resources – so the purchase of books, training courses, etc. have no impact on me or Jama.  The resources I highlight are ones I read, and I respect their content.  This article intentionally excludes software tools (sorry sales team and partners), I wanted it to focus on educational resources.  I obviously believe in the value of tools, but we won’t cover that here.  Since time is a real constraint for all of us, I’ve invested 10 hours pulling together this list – so you only have to spend 10 minutes to learn about them.

Creative Techniques for Sparking Ideas and Uncovering the Unspoken Customer Needs

• Innovation Games by Enthiosys.  As an example, the “Buy a Feature” game is offered as a free chapter on InformIT
• The Back of the Napkin by Dan Roam, solving problem through simple pictures
• The Red Rubber Ball at Work by Kevin Carroll, a fun and inspiring read
• The Game Changer by A.G. Lafley, insights from Proctor & Gamble’s CEO
• IDEO’s Method Cards – 51 ways to inspire design – get a set of these for your team,  originally created 7 years ago, but still dead-on
• Authenticity Is Now by ZIBA Design – this book is in limited distribution, but a great read if you can get a copy

Resources for Mastering Requirements Fundamentals

• Software Requirements, 2nd Edition by Karl Wiegers
• Volere Requirements Resources by James and Suzanne Robertson
• The Quest for Software Requirements by Roxanne Miller
• Practical Analyst blog by Jonathan Babcock
• BA Times, site devoted to business analysts best practices, (requires free membership for full articles)
• RQNG, community site for requirements management professionals (requires free membership for full articles)
• Tyner Blain blog by Scott Sehlhorst
• Required Defined blog by Seilevel
• Bridging the Gap blog by Laura Brandau
• Managing Requirements site by Joyce Ludwig
• How to Be a Good Product Manager by Jeff Lash
• SoftwareProjects.org blog by Bas de Baar
• BetterProjects.net blog by Craig Brown
• The 280 Group for Product Management resources
• B2T Training and SQE Training for professional certification and training
• Industry associations:  iiBA, PDMA, AIPMM

In summary, whether you use these resources or others, there’s 5 things that I’ve learned to be true over the years:

1.  There is no silver bullet technique for magically eliciting requirements.  You have to test different techniques, try different interview questions and learn which combination works best for each situation and audience.  And, it will change from project to project.

2.  Customers know what they like and what frustrates them, but they don’t know how to perfectly articulate their needs.  That’s your job to figure out.  You can ask direct questions, but usually the “a-ha” occurs during more authentic conversations and your observation of the unspoken problems they’re experiencing.

3.  Not to be dramatic, but the stakes are high.  The difference between getting requirements right or wrong can make or break your business.  No amount of beautiful design or agile engineering will compensate for the fact that you aren’t solving a real problem customers care about.

4.  The task of understanding the needs of your customers and capturing their collective voice isn’t owned by one person.  It’s a shared responsibility and its valuable to have a high level of collaboration continue throughout process.

5. When work is enjoyable, people perform better.  Thus, there’s merit in having the lines between work and play blurred.  It’s not a coincidence that some of the most successful and innovative companies in the world have high employee retention, fun corporate cultures and loyal customers who love the products they build.  That isn’t by luck, it takes work to have work feel like play.  Enjoy the journey.

For it to flourish, innovation’s future lies in a less disjointed approach – we’re already seeing signs of it becoming more holistic and collaborative.”  – Tim Hulme, business strategist at IDEO and author of The Future of Innovation

I’m sure I’m missing some really valuable resources, so please let me know others you’d like to share, post a comment here or email me.  Thanks to those who shared their insights and resources with me earlier to include in the article.  Feel overwhelmed by the list?  Just commit to trying one new technique this month and take it from there.  Let’s build great products.

For customer success stories, visit: http://www.jamasoftware.com/customers
For more info on Jama, visit: http://www.jamasoftware.com