In an environment where forecasting accuracy and interdisciplinary collaboration are at the heart of IT project success, mastering story points and Planning Poker becomes an essential lever for organizations. These relative estimation techniques offer a flexible alternative to traditional time-based methods by fostering team alignment and adaptability in the face of uncertainties. By detailing the mechanisms, benefits, and limitations of story points, as well as the practical implementation of Planning Poker, this article aims to provide IT and general management, project and business leaders with concrete strategies to improve reliability and streamline their Agile planning.

Understanding Story Points in Agile Project Management

Story points represent a relative unit of measure for estimating the complexity and effort of a user story. They allow teams to move away from clocked time and adopt a shared vision of the work to be accomplished.

Definition and Origins of Story Points

Story points emerged in the Agile methodologies to replace time-based estimates that were deemed too imprecise and overly focused on individual productivity. They combine several criteria—such as technical complexity, uncertainty, and amount of work—to offer a holistic measure of effort.

Unlike estimates in days or hours, a story point remains tied to the team’s relative capacity. Assigning five story points to one story and two to another indicates that the first requires roughly twice as much effort as the second, without fixing this observation to an absolute duration.

This granularity makes sprint forecasts more robust, as individual variations in execution speed tend to average out when aggregating the time spent across multiple stories. The key is to maintain overall consistency in the adopted point scale.

Criteria for Assigning a Story Point

For assigning a story point, teams consider three main dimensions: technical complexity, degree of uncertainty, and volume of work. Each element influences the assigned value, as it can slow down or speed up the story’s completion.

The technical complexity accounts for external dependencies, integrations with other systems, and the level of innovation required to develop or adapt a solution. The more complex the technology or business domain, the higher the story point value.

Uncertainty covers unknowns related to incomplete requirements or identified potential risks. When a story contains unknowns, the team may choose to increase the story point value or create a spike to investigate before final estimation.

Concrete Example of Use at a Swiss Industrial Group

A Swiss industrial group wanted to estimate the development of an inventory management module connected to its ERP. The Agile teams first assessed the complexity related to proprietary APIs and real-time data flows.

During a dedicated workshop, business stakeholders, architects, and developers identified three key criteria: transaction volume, security standards, and performance testing. They assigned an 8-point story, noting that a preliminary audit was necessary.

After three sprints, the team’s average velocity stabilized at 20 points. This visibility allowed them to refine delivery forecasts for the complete module to six sprints, with a buffer to absorb unforeseen issues without disrupting the roadmap.

Estimating Collaboratively with Planning Poker

Planning Poker combines collaborative estimation and group dynamics to quickly reach consensus. This playful method taps into collective intelligence and reduces perception gaps.

Principle and Workflow of a Typical Planning Poker Session

Planning Poker typically unfolds in two phases: presenting the user stories, followed by an anonymous round of estimation. Each participant has numbered cards based on an adapted Fibonacci sequence (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13…).

After a brief explanation of the story, each member of the estimation committee simultaneously selects a card. This initial free selection prevents anchoring bias and encourages each person to form their own judgment.

If some values diverge significantly, a discussion ensues to understand the reasons. Participants share their viewpoints and identify risks before conducting another round of voting until consensus is reached.

Role of Participants and Rules of the Game

The Product Owner’s role is to clarify business requirements and answer questions. The Scrum Master facilitates the session, ensuring adherence to the format and time constraints.

Developers and testers bring their technical and operational expertise by pointing out dependencies and hidden tasks. They maintain a holistic view of the story, rather than a detailed estimate of sub-tasks.

A crucial rule is not to argue during the first round. This initial silence ensures that everyone presents an uninfluenced estimate, then discusses it in subsequent rounds to refine the consensus.

Example of Planning Poker Use with an IT Team at an Insurance Company

In a major Swiss insurance company, the Scrum team introduced Planning Poker to estimate stories related to subscription process automation. Business experts, architects, and developers met every Wednesday.

For a complex story involving an actuarial calculation, card values ranged from 5 to 20 points. After the first debate, developers highlighted risks around interfacing with the pricing engine.

After two more rounds, the team settled on 13 points for the story. This transparency revealed the need for a prototyping task to be completed beforehand, which was then scheduled as a spike, ensuring overall timelines were met.

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Calculating and Leveraging Sprint Velocity

Velocity synthesizes a team’s capacity to deliver story points per sprint. It serves as a key indicator for planning and continuously adjusting goals.

Measuring Velocity and Interpreting the Results

Velocity is calculated by summing the total story points completed at the end of a sprint. On average, one uses the speed over multiple iterations (usually five) to smooth out fluctuations due to holidays, absences, or technical uncertainties.

Regular monitoring of velocity reveals trends: an increase may indicate team maturity gains, while a decrease signals obstacles or technical refactoring needs. Retrospectives help explain these variations.

Interpreting velocity requires caution: it should not be compared across teams of different sizes or compositions, but it enables each group to adjust commitments and calibrate ambitions.

Using Velocity for Release Planning

By relying on stable velocity, organizations can estimate the number of sprints needed to achieve a given backlog goal. This projection facilitates communication with senior management and business stakeholders about production timelines.

To plan a release, divide the total story points to be delivered by the average velocity. The result provides a high-level estimate of the time required, refined sprint by sprint based on feedback and priority adjustments.

This iterative model ensures a progressive approach: at the end of each sprint, the roadmap is reevaluated, priorities are adjusted, and efforts are redirected, all while maintaining ongoing dialogue with sponsors and stakeholders.

Limitations, Biases, and Precautions

Velocity must not become an end in itself. If used to pressure teams into artificially increasing point counts, there is a risk of underestimating tasks or sacrificing quality.

A common bias is altering the story point scale to display a more flattering velocity. This practice skews metrics and undermines the trust in Agile planning.

To avoid these pitfalls, it is recommended to maintain the same scale, document reasons for velocity variations, and foster transparency during retrospectives so that velocity remains a steering tool rather than a coercive instrument.

Advantages, Limitations, and Best Practices for Agile Estimation

Story points provide a holistic, collaborative view of effort, while Planning Poker structures the discussion and aligns perceptions. However, certain pitfalls can undermine estimation reliability.

Why Prefer Story Points Over Hour-Based Estimates

Hour-based estimates can suffer from false precision and fail to account for contingencies. Story points integrate complexity and uncertainty into a single value, strengthening forecast robustness.

By decoupling effort from calendar time, teams focus on functional scope and risks rather than time management. This encourages collaboration and collective assessment of dependencies.

This approach also fosters continuous improvement: after each sprint, the team refines its benchmarks, hones its estimation capabilities, and consolidates its velocity without being clock-bound.

Common Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them

Anchoring bias is common: participants tend to converge toward the first estimate voiced. Planning Poker mitigates this risk through simultaneous voting but remains susceptible to group dynamics.

Excessive fragmentation of stories into tiny tasks can dilute point value and weigh down backlog management. It is better to group functionally coherent stories and limit their granularity.

The lack of initial calibration is also a pitfall: it is crucial to define a reference example for each point scale, starting with a medium-complexity story so everyone shares the same benchmark.

Best Practices to Refine Your Estimates

Organizing regular calibration workshops ensures that the story point scale remains relevant. During these sessions, the team reviews completed stories to adjust its references.

Documenting assumptions and key decisions made during estimation sessions creates a useful history for onboarding new members and future adjustments.

Consistently involving both technical and business profiles in Planning Poker ensures a comprehensive evaluation of risks and requirements. Engaging all relevant stakeholders enhances estimate quality.

Example of Applying These Best Practices in a Project

A private bank serves as an example here. It recently implemented monthly story point calibration sessions based on a review of critical stories from the last three sprints. Teams thus harmonized their complexity perceptions.

Meanwhile, they made it mandatory to log decisions and underlying assumptions for each estimate in Confluence, promoting traceability and upskilling junior analysts.

Since then, the team’s velocity has stabilized and release forecasts have become more reliable. Management now sees schedules realized with less than a 10% deviation from initial estimates.

Optimize Your Agile Estimations and Strengthen Your Planning

Story points and Planning Poker are powerful levers to improve forecast accuracy and streamline collaboration between business and IT. By prioritizing relative estimation, enforcing anonymous voting rules, and tracking velocity without turning it into a constraint, organizations gain agility and mutual trust.

Best practices such as regular calibration, documenting assumptions, and involving all business profiles contribute to more accurate estimates and better release planning.

If you want to refine your estimation processes, tailor these methods to your context, and benefit from personalized guidance in digital product development, our Edana experts are ready to discuss and co-create the approach best suited to your organization.

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In a context where the success of a digital product relies on a shared vision and rigorous documentation, the Product Requirements Document (PRD) plays a pivotal role. It aligns IT, business, and design stakeholders around clear objectives, reduces scope creep, and ensures functional and technical consistency. This guide details the definition and position of the PRD in the product lifecycle, its differences with the MRD, BRD, and SRD, as well as the responsibilities involved in its creation. You will also discover a typical PRD structure, practical examples, tools and templates for writing it, and how to keep it alive in an Agile environment.

What is a Product Requirements Document?

In this section, we precisely define the PRD to structure your product process. Understanding its origin and role is crucial to secure each stage of the lifecycle.

Origin and definition of the Product Requirements Document

The PRD originated in Anglo-Saxon product management approaches to formalize the functional expectations of a digital product. It serves as a detailed roadmap for development and design teams.

Unlike a simple wish list, the PRD structures the product vision, clearly defines the functional scope, and prioritizes features. It encompasses objectives, user stories, acceptance criteria, constraints, and success metrics.

This document promotes transparency and collaboration among stakeholders by preventing misunderstandings and ad hoc solutions. It is updated regularly to reflect learnings and strategic adjustments.

Position of the PRD in the product lifecycle

During the design phase, the PRD formalizes business requirements before development begins. It comes after the market study and positioning definition (MRD).

During development, it guides sprints and backlog reviews. Each feature is described with a goal, acceptance criteria and, if needed, mockups or wireframes.

In the validation and testing phase, the PRD serves as a reference to verify deliverable compliance. It enables quick identification of discrepancies and prioritization of fixes before deployment.

Swiss Example: Centralizing an internal schedule via a PRD

An industrial SME based in French-speaking Switzerland was using multiple Excel workbooks to plan its product launches. Versions multiplied, responsibilities were unclear, and validation cycles lengthened.

Implementing a single PRD consolidated all business, technical, and UX information into one shared document. Teams could track functional and technical progress in real time.

Result: feedback loops were reduced by 40%, functional consistency improved, and time-to-market was shortened by two weeks.

Comparison between PRD, BRD, SRD and MRD and their specificities

Set the right comparisons between MRD, BRD, PRD and SRD. Clarify each role and avoid redundant documentation.

Differences between MRD, BRD, PRD and SRD

The Market Requirements Document (MRD) focuses on market research, customer needs, and the value proposition. It defines strategic directions and target segments.

The Business Requirements Document (BRD) outlines general business needs aligned with overall strategy, without diving into functional details. It covers organizational and financial stakes.

The System Requirements Document (SRD), meanwhile, specifies technical requirements, the target architecture, and expected performance. It is often written for infrastructure and operations teams.

Assignment of Responsibilities

The PRD is typically led by the Product Manager or Product Owner, in close collaboration with the technical architect, UX designer, and IT project managers.

Each stakeholder contributes expertise: marketing on use cases, IT on technical constraints, executive management on ROI indicators, and design on user experience.

This collaborative effort ensures information consistency and stakeholder buy-in. The steering committee then validates the document before the development team adopts it.

Benefits of Terminology Clarity

A shared nomenclature prevents confusion between strategic and operational documents. Each actor knows which deliverable to consult based on their role.

This clarity shortens validation cycles, improves anticipation of dependencies, and provides greater visibility on key project milestones.

It also strengthens decision traceability and simplifies requirement updates when context or strategic direction changes.

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PRD Structure and Templates

This section presents the typical structure and essential contents of a PRD. It also offers a framework adaptable to any business or technical context.

Essential Sections of a PRD

The PRD begins with an executive summary that recalls the product vision, strategic objectives, and key performance indicators (KPIs).

Next are the user personas and user stories: they describe user profiles, their needs, and the expected value through concrete scenarios.

A section dedicated to technical use cases and acceptance criteria details the expected features, supplemented by wireframes or mockups to illustrate the UX.

Writing Clear Objectives and User Stories

Each objective must be SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound. This facilitates project success evaluation.

User stories follow the format “As a …, I want …, so that …”. They should include detailed acceptance criteria to avoid ambiguous interpretations.

A good PRD favors action verbs and quantitative indicators: target conversion rate, response time, supported data volume, etc.

Integrating User Experience and Design

The design system or graphic guidelines should be referenced to ensure visual and interactive consistency. Include main UI components and their variants.

Wireframes, prototypes, or interactive mockups provide a tangible vision of the product. They streamline decision-making and validate the experience before development.

Collaboration between the Product Owner and UX designer is essential to tailor the PRD content to real user needs and avoid endless revisions.

Assumptions, Constraints, and Dependencies

Assumptions list unverified points or those subject to validation (availability of a third-party API, projected traffic volumes, internal resources).

Technical constraints (browser compatibility, security standards, GDPR, server performance) must be clearly identified to secure feasibility.

Finally, cross-dependencies (interfaces with an ERP, a CRM, the IT department, or external vendors) are mapped to anticipate deadlines and potential bottlenecks.

Example: A logistics company based in Zurich included dependencies on its WMS and GDPR restrictions in the PRD from the outset. This foresight enabled them to deliver a prototype in six weeks instead of the initially planned three months, with no compliance risk.

How to Properly Write Your Product Requirements Document?

Using the templates and tools provided in this section, you will be able to write your PRD more easily. Common challenges are also identified, and Agile solutions are shared.

Tools and Templates for Writing a PRD

Open-source templates (Notion, Confluence, Markdown) are available to structure key sections: table of contents, user personas, user stories, use cases, and KPIs.

Jira or Azure DevOps plugins can be configured to link each backlog user story to the PRD, ensuring real-time tracking of changes.

Rapid prototyping tools like Figma, Adobe XD, or Balsamiq facilitate wireframe creation and integration into the document without overcomplicating the process.

Main Challenges and Best Practices

The main challenge is maintaining relevant detail without falling into over-documentation. Granularity should be balanced according to project criticality and maturity.

Another pitfall is resistance to change: involving key contributors from the start of PRD writing speeds up adoption and limits late revisions.

Continuous alignment with business and technical stakeholders through regular check-ins (backlog reviews, demos) ensures the PRD remains a living tool, not a frozen PDF.

Maintaining and Updating the PRD in an Agile Context

In an Agile context, the PRD evolves sprint by sprint: each iteration must be documented with adjustments, new priorities, and user feedback.

Asynchronous management via a wiki or dedicated Slack channel provides traceability and smooth exchanges, preventing silos and centralizing comments.

Monthly backlog reviews allow updating the PRD, re-evaluating dependencies, and realigning strategic objectives according to the overall roadmap.

Optimize Your Product Strategy with an Effective PRD

The PRD is the cornerstone of a structured product approach: it clarifies the vision, prioritizes features, anticipates risks, and unites teams around measurable goals. By combining an adaptable structure, precise user stories, thoughtful UX integration, and iterative Agile management, you maximize delivered value and reduce uncertainty.

Regardless of your digital maturity level, our experts support you in defining or optimizing your PRD, choosing the right tools, and establishing an effective, iterative process aligned with your business challenges.

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Integrating inclusion from the outset of a digital product’s design is not merely a moral or regulatory imperative. Above all, it is a performance lever that boosts adoption, optimizes the user experience, and extends the lifespan of your solutions. In a context where audience diversity, devices, and skill levels continue to grow, inclusive design becomes a strategic advantage: it anticipates barriers, reduces support costs, and broadens potential markets. This article explores the foundations of inclusive design, its business and technological benefits, the frictions it prevents, and the concrete gains observed, illustrated by anonymized Swiss case studies.

What is inclusive design?

Inclusive design seeks to create accessible, understandable experiences for all, regardless of abilities, contexts, or cultures. It relies on user-centered methods and proven standards to ensure optimal accessibility.

Fundamental principles of inclusive design

Inclusive design rests on acknowledging the diversity of needs and usage scenarios. It requires avoiding assumptions about users’ abilities or preferences and considering a wide spectrum of profiles from the earliest sketches. The goal is to minimize barriers—whether visual, motor, cognitive, or cultural—and to create self-explanatory interfaces.

To achieve this, designers adopt an iterative approach in which each feature is tested and validated by a representative panel. This proactive process avoids costly late-stage adaptations and ensures lasting functional clarity. Feedback from these tests continuously enriches the design foundation.

Moreover, inclusive design promotes flexibility: choosing legible fonts, ensuring sufficient contrast, maintaining coherent navigation, and providing informative micro-interactions. This level of rigor becomes part of UX governance, ensuring that every update or extension meets the same accessibility criteria.

User-centered approach

At the heart of inclusive design lies user research. It involves identifying the expectations, frustrations, and behaviors of diverse groups through interviews, workshops, and testing sessions. These qualitative and quantitative insights guide the creation of diverse personas, including profiles with visual, auditory, cognitive, or age-related impairments.

Designing usage scenarios helps simulate extreme contexts: low-vision users navigating under bright sunlight on an entry-level smartphone, seniors using an interface for the first time, or expatriates unfamiliar with the language. These cases highlight potential friction points and feed the product roadmap.

Next, high-fidelity mockups incorporate adaptive solutions: alternative text, voice commands, keyboard navigation, contextual guides, and multilingual support. Each component is documented in a design-system library, ensuring reusability and consistency of best practices.

Standards and reference frameworks for compliant inclusive design

To guarantee a proven level of accessibility, teams refer to the WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines). These standards cover all technical and ergonomic criteria required for optimal compliance, with levels A, AA, or AAA depending on needs and resources.

Beyond WCAG, more specific frameworks may apply—such as the European EN 301 549 standard for public solutions or internal directives in sensitive sectors. Adopting these benchmarks structures the development cycle, from scoping to final QA.

Finally, a combination of manual and automated accessibility audits measures the gap between the current state and set objectives. It identifies blocking points and proposes pragmatic action plans, prioritized by user impact and implementation effort.

Example: a Swiss financial institution implemented an accessible design system from the start of its digital redesign. Thanks to a unified library, it cut accessibility anomalies by 40% during testing phases and accelerated the delivery of new features.

Why integrate inclusion from the design phase?

Embedding inclusion at the earliest stages enhances functional clarity, reduces product debt, and strengthens experience consistency. Early iterations limit the risk of major redesigns and optimize return on investment.

Improved user adoption

An interface designed for everyone produces a faster learning curve. Users locate information and features more readily, increasing satisfaction and trust. This fluidity translates into quicker scaling during large-scale rollouts.

Key metrics—task completion rate, average session time, error rate—show significant gains at launch. Onboarding flows and adaptive tutorials reinforce best practices and reduce resistance to change, especially among less tech-savvy profiles.

For example, a major Swiss industrial group saw a 25% increase in its internal platform’s adoption rate after introducing inclusive design elements: keyboard-only form inputs and a “reading mode.”

Reduction of product debt

Any accessibility improvements made at a project’s end usually require corrective development work and additional testing phases. Integrating these requirements from the design phase limits technical complexity and anticipates edge cases, avoiding unnecessary maintenance overhead.

Documenting accessible components and maintaining a design system ensures reliable reuse. Developers save time by not having to invent or patch ad-hoc solutions. Over time, the software architecture remains more modular and maintainable.

For instance, in a client portal project, our audit revealed that 60% of accessibility gaps could be addressed upfront without affecting the initial timeline. The QA cycle savings freed up two weeks of development on a three-month sprint.

Enhanced compliance and reputation

In an increasingly stringent regulatory environment—particularly for public services and critical platforms—designing for accessibility from the start avoids penalties and negative publicity. Compliance thus becomes a competitive advantage.

Beyond legal requirements, companies demonstrating an inclusive commitment improve their brand image. This attracts not only customers who value these principles but also talent seeking a responsible, innovative workplace.

A Swiss insurance company leveraged its WCAG AA certification to promote its new mobile app, strengthening its CSR positioning and driving a 15% increase in downloads within three months of launch.

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How does the inclusive approach anticipate late-stage friction?

An inclusive process identifies and resolves obstacles early—whether related to user diversity, device variety, or skill levels—thereby preventing cost overruns and production delays.

Aging audience

With demographic aging, more users require tailored interfaces: adjustable text, enhanced contrast, and simplified controls. Ignoring this reality often leads to a surge in support tickets or premature abandonment.

A dedicated test phase with senior users reveals blocking issues—such as too-small touch targets or ambiguous labels—and drives targeted improvements before the first beta release.

A Swiss energy services provider added a “high-visibility” mode to its app, resulting in a 30% drop in readability-related support calls.

Device variety and usage contexts

Today’s users access services on a broad range of devices: entry-level smartphones, tablets, legacy PCs, or niche terminals. Each context exposes interfaces to different technical and ergonomic constraints.

Testing prototypes on a representative device panel uncovers loading delays, layout issues, or invisible elements. These insights guide the choice of modular, hybrid, and scalable architectures tailored to real-world performance.

For example, a public authority reduced technical disruptions by 80% after decomposing its interface into microservices and optimizing requests on outdated government terminals.

Cultural differences and tech proficiency

Usage patterns vary across cultures, languages, and previous experiences. Icons or metaphors can be interpreted differently, causing misunderstandings or navigation errors.

Collecting multilingual and multicultural feedback during design allows you to adjust vocabulary, information structure, and user flows. Adding clear, neutral microcopy prevents misinterpretation.

A B2B platform serving international subsidiaries of a Swiss group halved functional issues reported by its Asian branch after harmonizing translations and simplifying the menu hierarchy.

Concrete examples of gains from inclusive digital product design

Inclusive design delivers measurable outcomes: improved retention, lower support costs, expanded audiences, and enhanced brand value.

Better retention and loyalty

When users quickly find what they need, engagement rises. Thirty-day retention rates are often 10%–20% higher for an accessible interface compared to a standard version.

Personalization features—such as text-size adjustments or a dark-mode switch—create a sense of control and belonging. Users return more frequently, fostering upsell and cross-sell opportunities.

For example, a digital services provider saw an 18% increase in recurring sessions after introducing interface personalization options and an integrated voice assistant.

Reduction in support and training costs

An intuitive, predictable interface reduces reliance on tutorials and customer support. FAQs become leaner and support tickets drop, allowing teams to focus on higher-value tasks.

Over the long term, ongoing maintenance is simplified: accessibility-related bug fixes virtually disappear, QA efforts decrease, and deployment cycles accelerate.

A large Swiss manufacturer reported a 35% reduction in helpdesk calls after its inclusive intranet redesign for over 5,000 employees.

Expanded audience and brand enhancement

An inclusive solution appeals to a broader audience: people with disabilities, seniors, non-native speakers, or less tech-savvy employees. Each additional segment represents growth potential.

An inclusive commitment also elevates brand perception as responsible and socially engaged. Media coverage and accessibility certifications build trust with partners and institutional clients.

A nationwide Swiss retailer saw a 12% increase in online traffic after highlighting its accessibility label and customization options, clearly differentiating itself from competitors.

Make inclusion a driver of performance and sustainability

Inclusive design is not an extra cost but a strategic investment that accelerates adoption, reduces product debt, and elevates brand value. By anticipating diverse profiles, devices, and contexts, you limit redesigns, control time-to-market, and optimize resources.

Our expert teams design hybrid, modular, open-source ecosystems—free of vendor lock-in and aligned with your business needs. They support you in UX auditing, adaptive design implementation, microcopy development, and selecting sustainable technological solutions.

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In a context where strategic decisions hinge on a deep understanding of user behaviors and expectations, the focus group stands out as a qualitative method that goes beyond mere numbers. It enables in-depth exploration of participants’ perceptions and motivations, uncovering insights often absent from analytics and A/B tests. This article unpacks the available formats, the essential steps to structure a discussion group, and the best practices to turn customer feedback into actionable guidance for your digital projects.

Why the focus group complements your quantitative methods

The focus group provides a nuanced understanding of user behaviors and emotions. It bridges the gap between raw data and product or marketing decisions.

Define objectives and method complementarity

Before organizing a session, clearly define the questions your focus group will address: understanding a use case, validating a concept, or exploring adoption barriers. This preparatory phase guides your choice of format and participant profile.

Unlike online surveys, a guided discussion lets you follow up on participants’ remarks, probe specific points, or clarify intentions. The qualitative insights gained enrich conversion metrics and usage indicators.

This complementarity makes focus groups particularly effective for contextualizing trends spotted on dashboards, adding depth and meaning to the numbers.

Delve into users’ motivations and barriers

By facilitating user-to-user exchanges, focus groups reveal implicit motivations, psychological barriers, or misconceptions about the service—elements often invisible in quantitative analyses.

A cohesive moderator encourages participants to build on each other’s comments, generating interactions that yield unexpected learnings. Moderators can then adjust the discussion flow to explore emergent themes in greater detail.

The richness of spoken testimony provides precise verbatim quotes, essential for crafting more targeted marketing messages or refining the user experience.

Use case: Swiss SME in financial services

A Swiss SME specializing in mobile payment solutions convened ten professional users for a two-hour session. Participants from various sectors (retail, hospitality, healthcare) discussed transaction flows and notification perceptions.

The session revealed a major obstacle: ambiguous confirmation labels. Thanks to direct user suggestions, the product team reworded key terms, reducing support requests related to the refund process by 25%.

This qualitative feedback complemented usage analytics and uncovered an emotional dimension (trust and clarity) unattainable through quantitative tools alone.

Focus group formats and their suitability by objective

Several group formats exist to meet specific needs. Your choice depends on size, duration, and topic sensitivity.

The classic format for in-depth discussions

A traditional focus group typically gathers 6 to 10 participants for 90 to 120 minutes. It fosters collective interaction and covers multiple aspects of the topic using a pre-established guide.

Having all stakeholders present simultaneously ensures a group dynamic where ideas spark off one another, revealing more contrasted opinions.

This format remains the go-to when you aim to obtain a comprehensive overview of perceptions and expectations around a new service or major update.

The duel format for comparing two concepts or prototypes

A duel focus group pits two prototypes or two competing concepts under the same conditions. Feedback focuses on each option’s strengths and weaknesses.

The moderator asks participants to evaluate both proposals in turn, then debate their perceived differences. This confrontation highlights discriminating factors.

This format is ideal for product managers who need to choose swiftly between two design paths.

The mini-focus group for quick, targeted exchanges

When the subject is highly specialized or the target population hard to mobilize, a mini-focus group of 3 to 5 people offers a pragmatic solution. Sessions can be as short as 60 minutes.

Fewer participants ensure everyone speaks freely but require a tightly structured moderation to cover essential topics.

This format is often used for preliminary studies or rapid iterations within an agile approach.

Remote focus group for geographically dispersed participants

With the rise of remote work, conducting focus groups via video platforms has become common. It eliminates logistical constraints and simplifies international participation.

Online moderation tools (virtual rooms, live polls, digital whiteboards) preserve the richness of discussions while offering native recording of interactions.

This format demands special attention to technical quality (connectivity, audio, video) and speaking-time management.

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How to structure your focus group for maximum impact

Preparation largely determines the value of your insights. Each step—from defining objectives to analyzing verbatim—must be rigorous and context-adapted.

Set clear, measurable objectives

Define precise goals: test a feature, assess offer comprehension, or identify cultural barriers. Objectives guide your discussion guide and question selection.

Each question should align with a strategic issue, whether optimizing user experience, refining marketing messaging, or prioritizing development tasks.

Measurable objectives also allow you to benchmark feedback against pre-set KPIs after the session.

Select and recruit relevant participants

Participants should match your target personas: market segments, role in the client organization, or solution usage level. A mix of novice and expert users enriches discussion.

Recruitment can leverage existing panels, customer databases, or partner networks. Aim for diverse perspectives while maintaining thematic coherence.

A qualification form will specify inclusion and exclusion criteria to ensure profile representativeness.

Prepare a structured yet flexible discussion guide

The guide outlines topics and proposes a logical question order, while leaving room for moderator improvisation. Each section starts with a discussion objective.

Combine open-ended, factual, and projective questions to capture concrete experiences and anticipate future uses. Alternate between individual questions and group debates.

A good guide also includes interactive exercises (cards, visual scales) to stimulate creativity and encourage spontaneous expression.

Moderation and logistics: ensure a smooth session

Successful moderation depends on establishing trust, prompting participants, and managing speaking time. Open follow-ups invite nuance without steering responses.

Logistical preparation (venue, note-taking materials, audio/video recording, refreshments) contributes to a professional, comfortable atmosphere.

A technical moderator handling back-office support resolves any issues swiftly, ensuring high-quality exchanges.

Use case: Industrial group in French-speaking Switzerland

An industrial player in Romandy ran a mini-focus group with four business leaders to validate a new dashboard. Participants tested an interactive prototype and suggested label refinements for indicators.

The process revealed a need for additional dynamic filters and a color-coding scheme to highlight critical data. These insights were directly incorporated into the functional roadmap.

This structured discussion phase saved several development iterations and improved end-user adoption.

Analyze and turn insights into strategic decisions

Systematic analysis of verbatim ensures key learnings are captured. Translating feedback into concrete actions delivers pragmatic ROI.

Transcription and coding of qualitative data

Audio or video recordings are fully transcribed for text-based analysis. Each comment is anonymized and timestamped for easy reference.

Coding involves tagging text segments with thematic labels (motivations, barriers, suggestions). This can be done manually or using semi-automated annotation tools.

Thorough classification sets the stage for identifying patterns and correlations among feedback.

Trend identification and prioritization

Once segments are coded, cross-analysis highlights recurring themes, contradictions, and major pain points. Occurrence counts aren’t the sole criterion: emotional intensity and business criticality also matter.

Insights are grouped by category (usability, content, communication, support) and prioritized based on their potential impact against initial objectives.

This synthesis yields a structured report with an issue map and operational recommendations. For example, you can prioritize backlog items.

Integration into product or marketing strategy

Focus group recommendations feed directly into the product roadmap, feature prioritization, and marketing positioning. They validate or invalidate analytics-driven hypotheses.

The project team can plan quick wins (minor tweaks) and strategic initiatives (journey overhauls, new module development) based on expected value.

This approach ensures decisions rely on a documented, nuanced understanding of needs rather than unsubstantiated impressions or internal consensus.

Turn your customer insights into a competitive advantage

The focus group is a powerful lever to enrich customer understanding and guide product or marketing evolution. By combining appropriate formats, rigorous preparation, and structured analysis, you can extract concrete, actionable learnings.

Edana positions itself as a strategic partner to support the planning, moderation, and exploitation of focus groups—whether ahead of a launch or during an optimization phase. Our experts help you translate qualitative feedback into solid, prioritized business directions.

Discuss your challenges with an Edana expert

In a context where digitalization has become a strategic imperative, Design Thinking proves to be an effective method for structuring innovation and avoiding the pitfalls of overly improvised workshops. This approach places the user at the heart of the process while ensuring coherence with technical constraints and business objectives. Swiss companies, facing global competition and high quality standards, find in it a framework to align all stakeholders. Through a proven methodology, it is possible to accelerate the creation of robust, scalable digital services and products tailored to the real needs of end users.

Design Thinking, a Structured Innovation Lever Beyond Brainstorming

Design Thinking is more than just a collection of ideas; it is a methodical process based on empathy and rapid testing. It brings together user, technological, and business dimensions to ensure relevant solutions.

Immersion and Empathy

The first phase focuses on gaining a deep understanding of the user context. Interviews, field observations, and active-listening workshops are organized to uncover motivations, frustrations, and latent needs. This participatory approach involves both business and IT teams from the outset, allowing multiple perspectives to intersect and preventing misunderstandings during the design phase.

Beyond standard personas, field immersions capture real usage patterns and operational constraints. The goal is not merely to collect data but to interpret subtle cues that will guide the rest of the project. This is where the relevance of the proposed digital solution is determined.

Thanks to this structured empathy, cognitive biases are minimized, allowing focus on genuine issues. The outputs of this phase are synthesized into empathy maps and user journeys, which serve as the guiding thread for all subsequent stages.

Problem Definition and Framing

After exploration, the challenge is to reformulate the problem in a precise, shared manner. The main “pain point” to be addressed is identified and measurable objectives are set. This formalization prevents scope creep and ensures clear alignment among IT teams, product management, and business units.

A structured problem definition is achieved through convergence workshops where each stakeholder validates scope and success criteria. Hypotheses are explicitly listed to steer future iterations and anticipate risks.

This stage transforms a general observation into a concrete, operational, and measurable challenge. It lays the groundwork for ideation and reduces the risk of delivering unnecessary or poorly suited features.

Ideation and Controlled Divergence

Next comes the ideation phase, where a wide range of ideas is generated without self-censorship. Sessions are paced with various techniques—from brainwriting to mind mapping—to stimulate collective creativity. The objective is to maximize the diversity of proposals.

To avoid dispersion, time and thematic constraints are imposed. Each idea is then evaluated based on technical feasibility, user value, and business impact. This prioritization matrix serves as a compass for selecting the most promising concepts.

The chosen ideas are sketched out in storyboards or low-fidelity wireframes. This mapping enables quick visualization of the future user journey and sets the stage for prototyping.

Example: A Swiss financial institution seeking to improve SME client onboarding identified a major pain point in manual data entry. Through a series of empathy and ideation workshops, it defined a new digital journey that included automatic document capture and real-time verification. This process reduced account opening time by 70% during the pilot.

Integrating Design Thinking into the Digital Strategy Process

Design Thinking structures the product journey from ideation to production, fostering interdisciplinary collaboration. It fits within an agile, modular framework to accelerate innovation cycles.

Interdisciplinary Collaborative Work

In a digital transformation context, breaking down silos between design, IT, and business is essential. Design Thinking workshops bring these profiles together to ensure every viewpoint is considered, creating a true culture of co-creation.

Roles are clearly defined: a facilitator guides the sessions, a business expert provides process knowledge, and a product owner ensures alignment with business objectives. This setup balances creativity with rigor.

This way of working boosts team buy-in, as everyone feels invested in the project. Decisions are made with full awareness, reducing resistance to change and smoothing technical implementation.

Fast Iterations and Prototyping

A key advantage of Design Thinking is rapid prototyping. Low-fidelity mockups or proofs of concept are built with open source tools to test hypotheses. This velocity quickly reveals potential blockers.

Each iteration incorporates early user feedback. Adjustments are made in days without heavy development commitments. This minimizes resource waste and optimizes time-to-market.

The methodology is ideally complemented by CI/CD pipelines, ensuring continuous integration of validated prototypes. This approach reduces development costs and paves the way for scaling up to an industrial version.

Validation and User Testing

Before any large-scale deployment, testing sessions are held with a representative panel of users. Interactive prototypes are evaluated based on usability and ergonomics criteria.

Functional or ergonomic pain points are addressed at this stage, using both qualitative and quantitative metrics. Feedback is recorded in a prioritized backlog to guide subsequent development.

This approach guarantees the final solution meets real needs and minimizes post-launch rework, avoiding extra costs and loss of trust.

Example: A Swiss pharmaceutical lab adopted this approach to redesign its internal training portal. Prototype iterations tested with employees and quality managers refined the interface and reduced IT support queries by 50% during the national rollout.

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Concrete Benefits of Design Thinking Workshops for IT, Product, and Business Leaders

A well-structured Design Thinking workshop significantly reduces project risks and accelerates time-to-market. It also boosts stakeholder engagement and prioritizes high-ROI features.

Project Risk Reduction and Stakeholder Alignment

By involving all key actors from the start, a shared vision of scope and objectives is created. Hypotheses are validated before any development, reducing the risk of scope creep and costly rework.

This clarity strengthens governance, as decisions are documented and backed by user data. Trade-offs become quicker and more transparent for steering committees.

Over time, this discipline lowers the failure rate of digital projects and improves adaptability to changing contexts or strategies.

Accelerated Time-to-Market

Rapid prototyping and short cycles facilitate early production releases. Workshop-validated features can be industrialized in parallel thanks to a modular architecture and continuous integration pipelines.

This flexibility enables launching an MVP in weeks, gathering real feedback, and adjusting the product roadmap. Companies thus gain weeks or even months on the initial schedule.

This agility is a decisive competitive advantage in fast-evolving markets.

End-User Engagement and Adoption

Including future users in workshops fosters co-creation. They feel heard and see their needs addressed. This generates buy-in and eases adoption of digital solutions.

Training materials and documentation can be developed from initial user feedback, reducing post-launch support needs and improving the onboarding experience.

In the long run, the company gains a base of ambassador users ready to promote the solution internally and externally.

Example: A Romandy-based real estate company used Design Thinking to revamp its online client portal. Agile management and user testing increased digital account activation by 30% while cutting customer service calls for interface assistance by 40%.

Informed Technology Choices and Robust Software Architecture through Design Thinking

Design Thinking guides technology choices toward modular, open source, and hybrid solutions to avoid vendor lock-in. It also steers the definition of a scalable, secure architecture.

Modular and Scalable Architecture

Mapping user journeys and features identifies critical domains to isolate into microservices. This granularity simplifies maintenance, scalability, and independent evolution of each component.

Such architecture limits the impact of incidents and streamlines version upgrades. It relies on containers and orchestrators to ensure optimal resilience and flexibility.

By adopting this modularity from ideation onward, future needs are anticipated, building a digital foundation that can evolve without a complete overhaul.

Selection of Suitable Open Source Components

Design Thinking can also include technology evaluation during ideation. Mature open source solutions with strong communities and regular updates are favored.

This approach reduces dependency on a single vendor and offers customization freedom. Libraries are chosen based on business alignment and technical compatibility.

Processes for monitoring and automated updates are implemented to ensure long-term sustainability and security of the stack.

Hybridization and Avoiding Vendor Lock-In

To meet specific constraints, existing components can be combined with from-scratch development. This hybrid approach retains the agility of off-the-shelf solutions while ensuring precise customization.

Interfaces are standardized via open APIs, making future component replacement seamless. The ecosystem remains flexible, modular, and adaptable to strategic shifts.

Clear governance over contracts, licenses, and data exchange completes this approach to control total cost of ownership and mitigate lock-in risks.

Example: A Swiss retail group re-architected its e-commerce platform through a Design Thinking approach, decoupling the product catalog, promotions engine, and payment system. This open source–based modularity enabled 200% load growth during promotional peaks without major incidents.

Design Thinking: Make It the Accelerator of Your Digital Innovation

Design Thinking provides a robust framework to ideate, prototype, and industrialize user-centered digital solutions while integrating technological and business challenges from the start. It strengthens collaboration, accelerates innovation cycles, and reduces project risk through early validation.

This method also guides architectural and technology decisions toward modular, open source, and hybrid ecosystems, ensuring solution scalability and resilience. IT, product, and business leaders thus benefit from optimal alignment and shortened time-to-market.

CIOs, CTOs, CEOs, and product managers looking to transform ideas into high-performance digital projects will find in this approach a powerful lever to maximize ROI and anticipate future developments.

At Edana, our experts are available to support you in setting up tailored Design Thinking workshops and structuring your digital innovation process.

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In an ecosystem where every design decision impacts the success of a digital product, distinguishing product design from UX design is essential for structuring a project and optimizing resources. These two disciplines, often conflated, have complementary goals: one focuses on product strategy and alignment with business objectives, the other on user experience and ergonomics. By clarifying their responsibilities and establishing clear collaboration processes, companies reduce the risk of misunderstandings and accelerate time-to-market.

Clarifying Roles: From Business Needs to User Experience

Product design defines the overall vision, positioning, and priorities of the product. UX design focuses on interactions, ergonomics, and end-user satisfaction.

Product Design: Vision and Prioritization

The product designer initiates strategic thinking by identifying market opportunities and aligning the roadmap with business objectives. Based on market research and competitive analysis, they structure features into successive phases, prioritizing those with the highest ROI impact. This approach relies on clear metrics (development cost, value delivered, technical risks).

At the core of their role, the product designer also defines the product’s positioning, unique value proposition, and target customer segments. They formalize personas and usage scenarios to guide functional decisions and prevent scope creep during development. This structuring avoids late-stage trade-offs and ensures alignment with the company’s strategy.

UX Design: User-Centered Research and Prototypes

The UX designer, for their part, adopts a user-centered approach from the initial scoping workshops. They conduct interviews, user tests, and co-creation workshops to understand needs, frustrations, and behaviors. These insights inform the creation of wireframes, user journeys, and interactive prototypes.

Each prototype is evaluated through usability testing, enabling rapid identification of friction points and interface adjustments before any heavy development. By conducting multiple short iterations, the UX designer ensures fine-tuned adaptation to real expectations and avoids producing irrelevant or misunderstood features.

Governance and Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration

To ensure seamless collaboration, product and UX designers co-create the specifications: the product designer contributes the functional vision, the UX designer the user perspective. Joint reviews and shared milestones validate both business value and interaction quality.

An agile governance, where both profiles participate in the same rituals (sprint planning, sprint reviews, retrospectives), fosters continuous exchange. Decisions are then made through a dual lens, ensuring both strategic coherence and ergonomic efficiency.

Concrete Example of Separation Between Product Designer and UX Designer

A Swiss industrial company approached us to launch a B2B spare parts ordering platform. Our product designer developed a value proposition canvas prioritizing order speed and stock transparency, while the UX designer conducted workshops with field operators to create a simplified three-step navigation flow. This coordinated approach reduced average order processing time by 30% even at the MVP stage.

Complementarity: From Ideation to Product Validation

When product design and UX design work in concert, the digital platform ensures both business relevance and user adoption. Their cross-disciplinary methodologies accelerate hypothesis validation and optimize investments.

From Product Research to User Testing

The product designer formalizes value hypotheses to test: revenue impact, adoption by key segments, potential for upmarket growth. Each hypothesis is turned into proto-hypotheses to be validated by the UX designer through qualitative and quantitative studies.

User testing (A/B testing, moderated tests, heatmaps) provides objective data to adjust the roadmap. It enables quickly discarding low-efficiency features and reinvesting in higher-value levers.

Iterative Prototyping and Continuous Feedback

A low-fidelity prototype sketches the information architecture, while a high-fidelity prototype refines visual design and micro-interactions. At each iteration, user feedback is integrated into the backlog, feeding product prioritization.

This iterative loop reduces the risk of overdevelopment and encourages the market release of progressive versions, validated at each step by a representative panel.

KPI Alignment and Usage Monitoring

To monitor impact, product and UX designers jointly define key indicators (task completion rate, Net Promoter Score, generated revenue). Analytics and session replay tools provide continuous field feedback.

Usage data guides trade-offs, ensuring the product’s evolution is performance-driven while keeping user satisfaction at the core of decisions.

Concrete Example of Complementarity Between UX Design and Product Design

A Swiss financial services group adopted this approach for its mobile portfolio management app. Product and UX designers conducted moderated session tests, revealing that 40% of testers stalled at the strong authentication step. Thanks to these insights, the team pivoted to a more elegant biometric solution and increased the service activation rate by 25%.

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Adapting Profiles to the Digital Project Lifecycle

At the MVP stage, flexibility is key: favor a product designer who can quickly validate hypotheses and a UX designer focused on lean research. During the scale phase, reinforce teams to structure growth and ensure a consistent experience across all channels.

MVP: Agility and Rapid Validation

When launching an MVP, the goal is to test key hypotheses with a minimal set of features. The product designer focuses on defining these essential features and developing a batch-based roadmap, while the UX designer conducts rapid tests (guerilla testing, paper prototyping) to validate intuitiveness.

This lean setup allows for feedback gathering within weeks and iteration without burdening the structure. Decisions are based on tangible results rather than speculation.

Scale: Structuring and Standardization

Once the MVP is validated, the challenge is to prepare for scale and ensure cross-channel consistency. The product designer broadens the product vision, refines the roadmap, and introduces governance processes (feature reviews, scoring-based prioritization). The UX designer documents UI/UX guidelines and establishes a modular component library to standardize interfaces.

Integrating design systems enhances development speed and facilitates continuous evolution while adhering to a unified visual and interaction language.

Redesign: Expertise and Controlled Transition

In a redesign, the goal is to modernize an existing solution while preserving the user base. The product designer conducts a functional audit and defines a roadmap to migrate critical features without service disruption. The UX designer maps aging journeys, identifies breakpoints, and proposes new interaction patterns.

This phased approach, supported by coordinated iterations, ensures a smooth transition and minimizes impact on satisfaction and adoption.

Aligning Product and UX Design in a Digital Agency

An experienced agency organizes its teams to provide cross-functional product leadership, from defining features to validating with users. It combines agile methodologies, open-source solutions, and a modular ecosystem to ensure performance and scalability.

Overall Scoping and Technical-Functional Roadmap

At kickoff, the agency facilitates multidisciplinary workshops where product and UX designers work with business stakeholders to formalize the vision, objectives, and project milestones. Deliverables include a prioritized backlog and a concrete action plan, aligned with business imperatives and technical constraints.

This initial scoping can be built around open-source blocks and modular microservices to minimize vendor lock-in and ensure the application’s long-term scalability and flexibility.

Prototyping, Testing, and Rapid Iterations

The agency develops interactive prototypes that integrate reusable components, then coordinates testing sessions with representative users. Each finding is documented and prioritized with the product designer to adjust the roadmap.

This iterative approach, based on concrete feedback, limits development waste and ensures functional relevance before significant cost commitments.

Scaling Up and Continuous Monitoring

During deployment, the agency structures an evolving support system: test automation, UX and business KPI monitoring, incremental updates. Product and UX designers remain involved to manage releases and ensure experience consistency as new features are added.

The modularity of the architecture and use of open-source stacks (light front-end, asynchronous APIs, containers) ensure controlled scaling and prevent future bottlenecks.

Concrete Example

An emerging Swiss services company entrusted us with a complete redesign of its B2C platform. The plan was divided into three phases: scoping, A/B-tested prototype validation, and deployment with an Angular-based design system. The iterative cycle allowed for monthly user feedback integration, reducing churn by 18% in six months while adhering to the initial schedule.

Build a High-Performing, Aligned Digital Product

By clearly distinguishing product design and UX design and orchestrating them collaboratively, you maximize business impact and user adoption. The project’s maturity levels—MVP, scale, redesign—dictate the design team’s composition and intensity, while a modular, open-source approach ensures scalability and longevity.

Whatever your context, our Edana experts are ready to support you in designing a digital solution that combines strategy, experience, and technological robustness.

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