What can you realistically improve on a product in three months?

In three months, the right goal is not to “redo everything”

In the products we have worked on, we have often seen one or more of these issues, rarely all at once:

• a strategy that has become unclear;
• a roadmap that is difficult to prioritise;
• poorly defined roles;
• a user journey that has grown more complex;
• marketing and product out of sync;
• decisions made with too little data;
• manual tasks that could be automated.

Three months are not always enough to build every solution. They are enough, however, to remove a large part of the uncertainty that keeps the team from moving forward.

First phase: understand

Before changing anything, you need to know what really deserves to be changed. That can require:

• reviewing business objectives;
• analysing the product;
• reviewing available data;
• gathering user feedback;
• conducting interviews;
• analysing the organisation;
• reviewing existing decisions and priorities.

The expected result is not an exhaustive list of flaws. It is a hierarchy.

Second phase: decide

Once the diagnosis is in place, several decisions can be made:

• what product direction to take;
• which problems to address;
• which ones not to address now;
• what user journey to aim for;
• how to prioritise;
• how to bring the product to market;
• which responsibilities need clarifying.

This is often the hardest part. A product rarely slows down for lack of ideas. It slows down far more easily for lack of decisions.

Third phase: put the new ways of working in place

The engagement is only worthwhile if the decisions keep being applied after the provider leaves. That means leaving behind:

• a roadmap;
• prioritisation criteria;
• explicit roles;
• rituals;
• tools;
• dashboards;
• documentation;
• a handover.

The team can then use the work done without extending the engagement indefinitely.

Example: La Bonne Carte by 5LEGS

La Bonne Carte is an engagement of around 90 days, adapted to your schedule, at €33,000 excl. VAT for product teams in SMEs and scale-ups. It includes in particular:

Product strategy

• Live Product Diagnosis;
• Product Vision Realignment;
• Roadmap Scoping;
• Shared Prioritisation System;
• Product Organisation Diagnosis;
• Team Performance Dashboard.

Discovery

• Customer Journey Workshop.

Product marketing

• Go-To-Market Strategy;
• Marketing & Product Sync;
• Internal Communication Guide.

Organisation and delivery

• Role clarification with a RACI;
• AI audit and automation opportunities.

Handover

• methods;
• tools;
• documentation;
• handover to the team.

The three founders of 5LEGS lead the engagement themselves. Senior partners in design, data or tech step in when the topic requires it.

What three months do not guarantee

An engagement of around 90 days does not mean:

• developing a complete platform;
• redoing every interface;
• making every dependency instantly disappear;
• achieving a specific business result regardless of context.

Above all, it should leave you with better decisions and an organisation able to execute them.

In short

In three months, it is realistic to understand where the problem lies, make the main decisions and put the team in a position to carry on. So the question is not only “what can a provider deliver in 90 days?” It is above all: “What will our team be able to decide and do on its own at the end of those 90 days?” That is the goal of 5LEGS: making teams autonomous, with the methods, tools and decisions staying with them once the engagement is over.