The Digital Platform Behind Bain Public’s SOAP™


As product managers, you’re often probably delayed by the time-consuming document assembly necessary for ‘spaced repetition’ of the roadmap strategy. As you well know, repeating your product strategy often leads to better recall later on and prevents any misalignment in the future. One of the best ways to increase the strength of memory is through this repetition at regular intervals, targeting communication and engagement approaches.

And while keeping everything in a task management tool (i.e. Jira, Trello, Asana project boards) works fine, it requires the product managers to remind everyone of the roadmap strategy, including the why, what and how. Ultimately, the benefits of extra visibility, shared context and team collaboration, are high but leave little time to engage with the existing task management system and workflows.

This is why when it comes to managing a product roadmap, one of the most important things an organization needs is a unified product document ecosystem — from high-level strategic objectives, feature ideas and market size numbers to exit comparables and industry reports supporting market timing and growth.

So what’s our product document ecosystem solution? SOAP™

SOAP™: The Digital Platform
SOAP™ helps you slow down your thinking, gather information, structure it and fill in the gaps, so teams collaborate and manage what to build all in one place. As a reminder, SOAP™ is a methodology and digital platform we created for product planning and roadmap prioritization based on principles of product strategy, lean startup, user-centred design, data science and more.

Representing Strategic Importance, OKR, Anchor Criteria and Pillar Content, SOAP™ offers a full picture of your product strategy, tactics, metrics and roadmap all in one place. So there’s no more guessing and no lack of focus or direction.

While in our previous article we focused on the SOAP™ 12-module process and dove into the three steps of product innovation, this article will take a closer look at the software component that supports the process.

Simple, accessible and intuitive, the SOAP™ digital platform enables you to detail all aspects of your product journey. It provides a central management interface to detail your strategy, blueprint and what to build all in one place. We've created this platform around best-in-breed templates, presentations, and slides to connect every aspect of product management and provide inspiration for your own product roadmap.

The Benefits of Using the SOAP™ Digital Platform
From having a complete roadmap overview and automating document creation to unifying your product document ecosystem, there are a number of benefits to using the SOAP™ digital platform.

A Roadmap Overview
With SOAP™, you can set a roadmap strategy, build ecosystem maps, capture ideas, define initiatives as well as prioritize and communicate all in one place. Your roadmap, reference documents and archive material are available at a glance. Distribute your files to stakeholders and ensure reviews go through a consistent process with feedback and approval.

Avoid Time-Consuming Document Assembly
Our tool allows you to automate document creation with dynamic templates and strategic content. Assemble documents easily through a Q&A walkthrough and drastically cut time spent building complex reports through real-time updates with validators and checks to prevent mistakes. You can build awareness around roadmap decisions using email automation and keep users and stakeholders up-to-date with what’s happening now, soon, and in future versions of your product.

A Product-Centric Digital Work Environment
With SOAP™, you can unify your product document ecosystem. Securely share documents to stakeholders through user permissions with a single sign-on. Keep all of your files secure with data encryption, data privacy and versioning, as well as enable access to all product assets directly from the applications used by product managers.

Enhance Your Roadmapping Process
With there being a number of benefits to using the SOAP™ digital platform to help you streamline your product management workflow, you can further enhance your roadmapping process thanks to the many SOAP™ features, allowing you to gain full control.

  • Set your strategy: Organize your ideas with a walkthrough of a single source of truth for your product's mission and principles.
  • Smart templates: Get guided through product tactics creation, metrics implementation and roadmapping program management.
  • Product ecosystem map: Drag and drop from our shape library. Make your map smarter with easy-to-understand data. Drive innovation.
  • Lead product initiatives: Replace many manual tasks and build your prioritization plan with automated workflows.
  • Define features and scope: Build a solid foundation for the prioritization program with crucial and strategic requirements.
  • Prioritize the best ideas: Gather data directly from stakeholders. Track and manage all feature reviews and feedback to final approval.
  • Communicate: Get real-time input from stakeholders and keep them in the loop. Ensure reviews go through a steady process.
  • Share documents securely: Share files and review links anywhere. Present your upcoming plans with a quick snapshot of your progress.
  • Comment on documents: Built for collaboration: click to discuss ideas directly as intuitive comments replace back-and-forth emails.
  • Cloud-based integration: Write from anywhere, on any device and integrate it seamlessly to your favourite tools.

Getting Started with SOAP™
Our SOAP™ product management methodology is a sustainable, repeatable planning and prioritization framework. To date, we’ve worked with a number of clients to transform and assess their vision and execution as well as help them to stay focused on what they want to achieve, leading them to become more product-driven.

"Bain Public's SOAP™ processes and tools offer 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. That’s why companies using SOAP grow faster where everyone is aligned, motivated, inspired, and ready to innovate." Justin Hunt, CEO and Co-Founder, Blaise Transit

Curious to know more? The SOAP™ digital platform comes bundled with our SOAP™ processes. 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.

Thanks to Loren O'Brien-Egesborg and Gabrielle Drouin for contributing to, reading drafts of this article and overseeing aspects of its publication. Also, if you have any feedback or criticism about this article, then shoot us an email info@bainpublic.com.


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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.