How to create Solutions
Solutions help you to capture and prioritize ideas or concepts for new features, products, and services. This guide explains how to make the most out of solutions in TheyDo.
After you understand what Solutions are and why it’s important to map them, it’s time to start creating Solutions yourself. In this guide we will cover:
Creating solutions
Defining solutions
Adding solutions to journeys
Creating solutions
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You can create solutions in two ways:
In any Journey, create a solution lane. From there, click in the solution lane under any step to add an opportunity to that step.
In the Solution repository, click on ‘create new’ to create a new solution. You can add any solution to any journey.
Solutions can be linked anywhere
After you create a solution, you can link it to any other journey, even in journeys in different frameworks. That way you create an overview of how your products, services and content are linked to the customer journeys. Solutions can often be used across multiple journeys, as the example below demonstrates.
A solution such as ‘waiting time estimator app’ in an airport can be applicable to multiple journeys such as checking in, going through baggage checks, and waiting in an airport lounge.
For an overview of all solutions that have been created in your organization, go to the solution repository.
Defining solutions
Click on any solution card to open the Solution canvas. The more detail you add to your solutions, the more inspiring and useful they will be. Let’s break down each of the elements of a solution and what they do.
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Basic properties
These elements help you to define a solution and show how things are linked.
Title – Giving a simple recognizable name
Header image – use a quick visual so people can scan the solution
Description – add a description of what this solution does
Insights – add factual insights such as quotes, observations and data points, or interpreted insights like needs, jobs, pains, and gains.
Creator – TheyDo timestamps creation of a solution
Opportunity – TheyDo automatically adds solutions linked to opportunities
Journeys – TheyDo automatically adds solutions linked to journey steps
Comments – use these at the bottom to @mention or comment
Rating – using the Design Thinking methodology each solution has a 5-point scale for Desirability, Feasibility and Viability.
Extra properties
Using the grey menu on the right column, you can add more custom properties to the solution. These are optional.
Goals – Give a visual goal or metric to define success
Attachments – upload files or research docs that are relevant
Linked solutions – If multiple solutions have a relationship, you can connect the dots
Links – external URLs
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Categorization
These properties are used to connect, filter and view solutions together in the repository. Also, they are visually represented on the cards in journeys. This helps you keep overview and prevents duplicates.
Owner – Who is responsible for this Solution?
Integrations – Link it to Epics, Stories or Tasks in your Product management tool
Status – What is the current status (or synced from your pm tool)
Group – What group in the organization or product is this solution part of
Type – What kind of Solution it is
Tags – Add global tags you can search for later on or add to other entities like Personas and Journeys
If you want to learn more on how to categorize properties, have a look at the repository guide.
Commenting on Solutions
There are 2 ways to comment on solutions:
Any comment you make on the solution canvas, the Solution owner gets notified. But you can of course @mention people so they also get the message.
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If you are working on a journey and rather like to comment on the solution in context of a journey, you can add a comment to the card. Note that journey owners get notified, as well as the solution owner.
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Mapping existing solutions
The most obvious way to use solutions is to note down new, potential solutions that might improve your journeys. However, you can also use TheyDo to map solutions that are under development or already implemented. Using the status indicator you can label your solutions accordingly. This can help you to link your backlog to the journeys where they have impact, helping you to connect your backlog to your customer experience.
Adding solutions to journeys
After adding a solution to a journey, it is represented as a card in a journey lane.)
Solution Card
Once you have defined a solution, the solution card is the linking pin between journeys and journey steps.
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Solution cards show a quick overview of:
Image – a quick thumbnail of the header
Title – the solution name
Type – in the example above ‘Event’ is the solution type
Rating – Average score from the rating filled in
Integration – Linked to Jira in this case
Status – All status is color coded and the ‘L’ refers to Live in this case
Owner – The avatar in the bottom right
You can add the solution to the steps in your customer journeys that the customer interacts with this solution.
For example, when the solution is a feature, you want to link all steps when people use that feature. When it is an email, for instance, it’s useful to know at which step of what journey this email is sent to a customer. Because solutions are defined once, unlike post-its on your whiteboard, you can start linking things together.
Co-founder Martin Palamarz gives you a quick run-down of why the triple diamond is essential in scaling service design for your organization.
FAQ
Why map solutions in TheyDo, when I already have a ticketing tool like Jira or Azure Devops for my own backlog?
TheyDo’s solutions don’t aim to replace ticketing tools. They are rather meant to work in sync with them. As opposed to ticketing tools, solutions in TheyDo can be linked to the exact place in your customer experience where they have an impact. This gives product teams much more insight into the context of why they are building what they’re building. Furthermore, whereas ticketing tools often only capture already prioritized features and epics, solutions in TheyDo are meant as a global inventory of all possible ideas. Lastly, ticketing tools are often only accessible to product teams. TheyDo solutions are accessible to anyone in the organization, helping anyone to be inspired by solutions that other teams have come up with.
How can I add metrics and live data to my solution?
We are bringing your favorite data tools for CX and transactional metrics to TheyDo. See the Qualtrics integration.
What is the best way to define types and groups?
The easiest way to do this is map the status types to the agile / project management tools teams are already familiar with. In the Solution repository guide, we’ll talk about this in more detail.
Can I integrate solutions with our product management tool?
Yes, TheyDo offers deep integration with Jira and DevOps. Are you using something else? Let our team know!
Can I change the different properties like Type and Status?
Only admins can set and change the properties themselves. Editors in TheyDo can use and set these to Solutions, but cannot change the properties.
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