But first, as usual, I need to make some disclaimers that are important when making a good product decision.

The first one is: before looking for solutions, do an initial analysis to understand the market and what your users expect from your product. A good article that can help you with this is: “How to create a market analysis and avoid surprises in your product launch”

The second one is that every change in a product or project will also create changes in the processes around it. Like any change, we need to know how to map, negotiate, and convince the people involved. Here, I explain how to manage stakeholders more effectively: “Stakeholders – improving your power and impact”

The third point is the famous “thinking outside the box.” In the past, I always wondered what this expression really meant. Over time, I discovered that one of the best ways to think outside the box is simple: talk to people. Different people bring different experiences, different problems, and different ways of seeing the same situation. Many times, this is what leads us to ideas we would never find alone.

The fourth point is: take things out of their usual place. Sometimes, changing the purpose, context, or use of an object, idea, or product can be the beginning of a great solution. For example, during the pandemic, there was no way to go to the cinema in the traditional way. Then someone brought back the idea of watching movies in a parking lot. Great idea, right?

The last point is: do not return to the boxes too quickly. In everyday work, after having a good idea, it is easy to be dragged back by meetings, urgent tasks, and operational pressure. Find time to execute new ideas, always remembering that a good idea never executed is worse than an average idea that is actually done.

This is also where execution data becomes important. A tool such as Saint Jude can help teams understand whether an idea is becoming too expensive, whether the tasks created for the solution are well written, whether the MVP is consuming more time than expected, and whether risks are appearing before the solution reaches the market. Creativity is important, but execution visibility is what helps transform an idea into a real result.

Having said that, I will move on to some tools that can help you generate and organize ideas. I will start with the best known:

Brainstorming

Brainstorming is essentially the generation of ideas by a group of participants, without judging whether they are right or wrong at the beginning. Everything is valid. The organizer brings a problem to the group. Example:

- We need to double the sales of our website.

And then the participants start sharing ideas:

- We need to give a 10% discount.

- We need to call each user by phone and offer a product.

- We need to put a monkey dancing tango with one of our products on the website.

- We need to ask Bruce Springsteen to write a song about one of our products.

Yes, some ideas will be completely distant from what can realistically be done. This is normal, and these ideas should not be rejected too early. In a later stage, the team will take each idea and discuss why it could or could not be implemented, what can be gained, what can be lost, and what risks are involved. It is almost like using the double-diamond technique for idea generation. I will write another article to make this easier to understand: “How to use the double-diamond technique.”

Crazy 8’s

Fold a sheet of paper three times and unfold it afterward. You will have eight different spaces to start your Crazy 8’s exercise. I will explain it in more detail:

At the beginning, the organizer proposes a problem. Here, I will use a different problem from the initial one simply to keep the reading more pleasant:

- Our customer is leaving the cart without completing the purchase.

The first rule is: no one can write sentences in the spaces. Everyone must draw the idea. It does not matter whether you draw well or not. Think of it as a doodle.

Second: the organizer gives 40 seconds for each drawing.

Third: do not think too much. The first idea that comes to mind is the one you need to draw. Do not waste time looking for the perfect idea. The first one that appears is the one you draw.

Fourth: impossible ideas are valid and help unlock creativity.

Lastly: bad ideas can be improved in the next drawing. You can also take an idea from a colleague and improve it.

Then, the organizer takes the generated ideas and, as in brainstorming, discusses them with the team until arriving at one, two, or three final ideas that can move to the next step: the MVP. I leave here a good book about ideas: Steal Like an Artist – Austin Kleon

MVP

I will be brief here because I already have another article that explains the MVP concept in more detail. In summary, in this step we create a minimum viable version of the product and test it in the market. This involves the creation of hypotheses and the development of the MVP itself. I leave here the link to the article: “How to create a market analysis and avoid surprises in your product launch”

At this point, the main question is not only “what should we build?” but also “how can we validate this with the least effort and the highest learning?” In project execution, Saint Jude can support this process by helping teams compare estimated effort versus actual effort, identify tasks that are unclear, monitor cost and schedule consumption, and detect risks before the MVP becomes bigger than it should be.

MVP Matrix

During the work of generating ideas to solve a problem, it is common — almost inevitable — that more than one idea passes through the team’s initial funnel. At this point, it is up to us to choose which ideas should be implemented first and which ones should be left for later.

Here, I bring the MVP Matrix, a tool that helps categorize ideas and make their order of implementation clearer. The idea is simple: we create a grid with the following dimensions:

• Important
• Not important
• Urgent
• Not urgent

Then we use the quadrants to decide what to do with each idea:

• Do
• Delegate
• Plan development as beta
• Eliminate

In the end, we place the ideas in the quadrants according to their importance and urgency.

Quick explanation:

• Important and urgent – do it now
• Important and not urgent – plan it for a later release
• Not important and urgent – if possible, delegate it to another team or company
• Not important and not urgent – do not do it

The MVP Matrix becomes even stronger when combined with data. Saint Jude can help teams understand whether a solution is truly urgent or only feels urgent, whether it is consuming too much project budget, whether it affects schedule predictability, and whether the team has the capacity to execute it without creating new risks. This helps transform prioritization from a subjective discussion into a more evidence-based decision.

Afterward, we can use the PDCA cycle to control adjustments and improvements. I will soon write an article about: “Continuous improvement and PDCA cycle.”

I have come to the end of this article. Here, you learned how brainstorming, Crazy 8’s, MVP, and the MVP Matrix can help you find better answers to your product and project problems. The goal is not only to generate ideas, but to choose the right ones, test them with discipline, and execute them with visibility.

What do you think? Do you use any other techniques, and would you like to share them? Give a like to this article, comment on LinkedIn, or share it on your social networks.

See you soon!

Erik Scaranello