An overview of themes

Themes are pivotal guideposts that steer your product development towards strategic goals while focusing on the user needs. Themes derive purposeful product evolution by acting as a guiding light for multiple teams working on the different parts of the same product.

This article delves into the importance of themes in product management, as well as when you would need to create them. You’ll also learn how themes enable products to stay relevant and purposeful in the face of changing markets and user needs.

What is a theme?

A theme is a high-level goal or overarching idea that represents how a product will deliver value to its customers. In other words, it’s the reason why customers buy a product or make a product worth investing for investors.

Themes are based on strategic plans and derive from your product roadmap. You can use them to communicate the strategic direction of the product to the key stakeholders. Additionally, themes enable you and other cross functional teams to align efforts.

A theme is split into multiple epics and epics are further split into features which are then turned into user stories. Themes are accomplished over a long period of time ranging from six months to twelve months, or even longer in some cases.

The importance of themes for product managers

Themes are crucial for product managers for several key reasons. These include:

1. Strategic alignment — As a PM, you have to make several decisions during product discovery and development. With a clearly defined theme, you align all product development activities with the strategic goals set by the leadership
2. Focus and clarity — Instead of turning into a feature factory, themes help steer your focus towards the business goals. This helps the product teams to understand what’s most important for the organization
3. Prioritization — Having a clear theme helps you to prioritize the right features that can ultimately bring the company closer to achieving the overarching objectives
4. Stakeholder alignment — Leadership and key stakeholders are aware of the themes set at the company level. It’s imperative that you bring alignment across key stakeholders for product related decisions
5. Measuring impact — You generally measure the performance of a feature post launch, but if there’s a prevalent theme then the metrics are tied to achieving the strategic objectives set by the theme. This lets you measure the impact of a feature in a more meaningful way

Overall, themes help you stay focused on achieving the strategic objectives while building products, make quick decisions in the right direction, and facilitate effective communication with key stakeholders.

When do you need a theme in product management?

Now that you understand the importance of themes, let’s take a look at situations where having a theme would aid your product management. Some of the main situations include:

1. Complex/large-scale products — When a product has a lot of features, it can be chaotic to have multiple teams work on different parts of the product at the same time. In such complex products, themes can prove to be beneficial by maintaining coherence across product areas
2. Dynamic markets — User needs can change over time, and markets can evolve with changing environmental factors. Themes can enable the product teams to adapt the product with these changes
3. Product lifecycle changes — At different stages of the product, you need to think differently. Identifying themes according to the stage of the product lifecycle, helps you to hone your team’s focus
4. Enhancing user focus — Themes can be created around user needs. Such themes ensure you’re focused on developing features and improvements to meet the identified user needs

How do themes differ from epics and user stories?

Themes sit at the top of the pyramid and are further broken down into epics and user stories. Everything falls under themes. To understand the division better, let’s examine how themes differ from epic and user stories in the agile methodology:

Theme vs. epic

Theme vs. user stories

Step-by-step process for developing themes

Here’s a step-by-step process based on my experience working on product management for the last ten years. Let’s assume an established product with a product strategy and vision in place. You would do the following:

1. Analyze the data — Analyze the product performance and the user behavior to evaluate how users interact with the product. Identify the improvement areas based on the data collected over a large period of time
2. Identify the themes — Identify the major buckets of product areas that need improvement. Define the user journey, their pain points, and how alleviating those would bring the organization closer to the overall product vision. Industry benchmarks, or previous data can be very powerful to isolate these themes and get the necessary support from the leadership
3. Define the themes — Prepare a presentation identifying the key product areas, improvements needed, and how solving those would aim to attain the business objective. This doesn’t involve any tactical details, just an overview of what needs to be done and how it’ll be useful for the company and the users
4. Circulate it across key stakeholders — The next step is to present it across key stakeholders and help them understand the focus of the theme. Answer their queries and empower the teams to take product related decisions based on the identified theme

Once themes are identified and the leadership is aligned on the focus of the themes, teams are assigned to work on the epics and user stories falling under the theme based on the priority.

Conclusion

Every product-based organization should identify themes and organize its product development based on it. Doing this will not only help in structuring work, but also provide a meaning or purpose to the prioritized work.

Teams feel empowered when they work on something that they know will bring value to users and the company. Themes are a great way to create a purposeful product by uniting everyone working on the product towards a single goal.

Featured image source: IconScout

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