Introducing the Bain Public SOAP™ Product Leadership Framework. A Practical Definition.

Most companies don’t have a clear picture of their roadmap. This is the reason why many businesses fail, so the question to many business owners out there is this: are you confident that your engineering team is building the right features? Bain Public’s SOAP™ methodology and tool offers a full picture of your product strategy, tactics, metrics and roadmap all in one place. So there’s no more guessing, no lack of focus or direction. Bain Public companies grow faster because everyone is aligned, motivated, inspired, and ready to innovate.

But first, what is SOAP™?

SOAP™ is a methodology that Bain Public created for product planning and roadmap prioritization based on principles of Product Strategy, Lean Startup, User-centered design, Data Science and more.

It breaks product innovation in 3 steps -- Product Mission, Product Blueprint and Roadmap Pillars. This 12-week process covers the tactics, strategies and mindsets that underpin these 3 steps thinking. It's an approach designed to help organizations create knowledge and build product strategies. When employed, it will help create new value, respect stakeholder opinion while getting buy-in, and optimize product delivery through iterative releases while validating and eliminating waste.

The SOAP™ Methodology is designed and targeted to executives who are driving real results at the world’s fastest-growing product companies. These are the directors, VPs, and C-level leaders who have the mandate of delivering digital product solutions for years to come. Using a combination of expert advice, coaching and online software, Bain Public guides product leaders to establish a sustainable, repeatable planning and prioritization framework and create the environment that gets the most value out of a company’s resources.

With SOAP™’s organizational models, operational tactics and online tools, you will shape harmonious collaborations, accentuate connections and ease information sharing.

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Would you like to learn more about our SOAP™ process? Visit our Solutions page →

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A deep-dive into the SOAP™ Methodology

In a picture, SOAP™ guides you, step by step, to play to your strengths and passions while simultaneously leading your company from the "idea parking lot" stage of product strategy through the "development" and "go-to-market" stages of strategic product execution as shown in the picture below:

SOAP™ helps you to drive your business up the "drunken walk" stages into a zone of growing revenues and profits. Then, from this position of strength, we guide your organization to structure and prioritize the launch and development of new products that will, in turn, go through their own lifecycle stages for sustained, profitable performance over time.

The SOAP™ methodology encourages organizations to evaluate their high-level strategic baseline against the product mission, its strategies and tactics regularly. This can result in increased investment in some places and, from time to time, redeployment in others. These decisions are the result of the SOAP™ methodology being applied quarter after quarter.

Let’s look at the different parts of the system up close. The SOAP™ 12-module approach covers the tactics, strategies and mindsets that underpin the 3 steps thinking.

Step 1: Your Product Mission
Step 2: Your Product Blueprint
Step 3: Your Roadmap Pillars

The SOAP™ 12-Module Process:

	Module	Topics
1	Audit & Analyze Business Model	BHAG Define the problem Define the solution Revisit company value proposition Assemble your value proposition
2	Create a Business Model Canvas for your Product	Do you have a product/market fit? Revisit product mission, strategy, tactics Deep dive customer segment Deep dive value proposition Deep dive channels Deep dive customer relationships Deep dive cost structure Deep dive revenue stream
3	Product Mission, Strategy, & Tactics	Establish the product mission Define the product strategies Define the product tactics Complete your one-pager
4	Personas & Competitors	Establish the personas Define the competitors
5	Decision-making Framework	Being a "dumb" product manager Feature parking lot Decision framework
6	Blueprint & 666 Roadmap	Product blueprint Data portrait The 666
7	Pillar Documents, Strategic Value & OKRs	Product roadmap Pillar documents Product strategy OKRs Decision-making criteria
8	Pillar Documents & Technical Scope	Project triangle approach Scope RAID Defining DONE
9	Prioritize with engineers	Pillars Prioritization WTP vs perceived value Strategic scoreboard MosCoW
10	Prioritize with stakeholders	Prioritization Business impact Pillar documents OKRs Communication PLC management
11	Go-to-market Sales & Marketing	Launch plan Strategies Customer communication
12	First 30 Days	Wrap up Product leadership Roadmap

Done right, SOAP™ keeps the team, management, and stakeholders aligned on the why (goals), what (ideas) and how (steps and tasks), where every task is connected to a business goal.

Curious to know more? The SOAP™ process comes bundled with our SOAP™ digital platform. If you’re unsure of where you are in your product leadership journey and are looking for the perfect setup, we offer workshops to implement SOAP™ within the structure of your organisation.

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Would you like our Product Management Premiere E-book? Visit our Download page →

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About Bain Public

Bain Public, acquired by X Machina-AI Inc. in January 2022, offers consistent roadmap planning processes & tools for business leaders and product managers organized around what motivates, inspires and improves growth. Bain Public offers a variety of articles, e-books and approaches designed to help organizations understand their digital strategies, introduce elements of roadmapping and establish product-led change amongst the senior leaders and managers. Our approach, product, expert advice and coaching helps entangle complex technology, people and roadmap dynamics.

About XMachina

X Machina-AI seeks to provide a platform for the acquisition of Artificial Intelligence ("AI") entities in North America. The company’s thesis is based on an aggregation strategy to acquire successful AI targets and make them better through the addition of growth capital, streamlining of corporate processes and human capital acquisitions. The current sector focus of the Company is on enhancing supply-chain efficiencies, logistics and manufacturing.