Collaborating with the World Health Organization (WHO) to Launch a High Impact MVP in 5 Months

The Client: World Health Organization (WHO)

World Health Organization (WHO), established in 1948, is an organization of the United Nations that links countries, partners, and individuals to advance health, ensure global security, and assist the most vulnerable people so that everyone can enjoy the best possible level of health.

WHO is in charge of advancing universal health care internationally. When there is a health emergency, the WHO organizes and leads the global response. Moreover, it encourages better lifestyles from prenatal care through old age. With the help of science-based policies and programs, their Triple Billion objectives set forth an ambitious plan for the globe to achieve universally excellent health.

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

The Mission: Product Manager for MVP Launch

We joined to support the team at WHO to work on a tool aimed at assisting countries in making progress toward achieving universal health coverage. The tool supports users in developing medical packages that best fit the country's needs and is based on a powerful database of health services.

Our goal was to hit the ground running and unpack the complex requirements around the existing, manual solution in place. We were tasked with defining the scope for the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to decrease the time to market with the resources that were available. To do this, we had to define an efficient product development process that would enable us to hit our deadlines without compromising on quality.

During the mission, we launched the platform MVP and continued adding features incrementally, addressing the users’ pain points. We helped WHO team members to improve the delivery process. We drove delivery for several new features that will provide the country's users a rapid one-stop access to resource requirements to deliver health services and a selection tool to guide package decision-making processes.

Our Main Quest

Introducing the Scrum Ceremonies

Our goal was to find the sweet spot between the number of scheduled meetings versus implementing a process where we encouraged transparency and communication across the team. We set up the following meetings:

  • Daily Stand-Up: For the team to review goals, help them understand whether they are within the project timeline and any potential blockers they may be experiencing.
  • Backlog Refinement: For the team to refine the backlog and estimate the tasks within it.
  • Sprint Planning: For the team to review the refined backlog and decide what items to prioritize for the upcoming sprint.
  • Design Meeting: For the team to prioritize and discuss the upcoming features with the designers.
  • Retrospective: For the team to reflect on what went well, what did not, and how to improve the process for the next sprint.

After setting up all the scrum rituals with the team members, we developed a delivery process with the development team regarding different work items such as epics, user stories, bugs, and tasks.As an outcome, tasks required fewer stakeholder interactions and were revised and prepared for development more quickly. The effectiveness of the team was improved via proper procedures and higher-quality output.

In addition, we introduced story point estimation within the process to allow for a more calculated approach toward planning.  Story points helped the team represent the complexity and effort needed to implement a ticket.

Stakeholder Management

We involved stakeholders at every stage of the mission to reduce unknown risks. During discussions on product requirements or constraints, uncovering such risks and discussing strategies to mitigate them with the stakeholders dramatically increased the mission's success.We were able to engage with stakeholders effectively as a product team by identifying each stakeholder and their specific requirements. This resulted in satisfied customers, productive team members, coordinated efforts aimed at shared goals, and better outcomes.

Pre-MVP

First Deliverables

  • User-Centric Flow: We built a user flow better to understand the user’s experience with the product. The user flow outlined the journey through the product, detailing every action a user will perform, from the initial access point to the last interaction, along with the system responses.
User Centric Flow for WHO
  • Data Mapping: The previous database consisted of 150 data sheets that needed to be synthesized, each containing millions of data points that originated from input received from 50 different WHO programs which needed to be migrated to the platform. To create a schema covering our intended use cases, we mapped the information from the data sheets to product requirements to better understand where each data point will be used and what complexity is associated with it.
Data Sheets for WHO

Within ~5 months, we launched the MVP, which changed the way healthcare coverage was managed between WHO and the countries receiving it. Within 2022, the platform was tested with 100+ users from different countries through a limited rollout for feedback.

Post-MVP

Several requests were coming in from various sources, so we created a feature roadmap with the stakeholders to develop methods for prioritizing so that we could devote attention to the most important features first and concentrate on lower-priority topics afterward.

The stakeholder collaboration was crucial in this process, as it helped the team gain a deeper understanding of the various factors that influenced the prioritization process. Through this collaboration, the team was able to identify the most important features that needed to be developed first and allocate the necessary resources to ensure their successful delivery.

To develop methods for prioritizing, we had to consider several factors. We needed to understand the customer needs, business goals, and team constraints to determine which features would provide the most value. We also had to consider technical feasibility and resource availability to ensure that we could deliver the features within the desired timelines.

Some of the Features Delivered

  • Effortless Navigation (Separate “Views” for the Platform): To help the user navigate the platform easily while configuring their medical packages.
  • Context-specific outputs (Export Feature): To help the user to download the data from the platform in the form of excel sheets if they wanted to engage in discussion with stakeholders outside of the platform.
  • Management feature for users from all UN Member States (Different User Roles): To help WHO manage all users' access and level of responsibility on the tool.
  • Collaboration Feature (Comments): To improve communication and collaboration on the platform enabling users to drop questions and concerns in the form of comments on the platform.

Delivered Outcomes

💡 Developed and launched the MVP within a remarkably short timeframe of just five months, thanks to our strategic prioritization of key features and incremental development approach that helped us reduce time to market.
💡 Boosted our team's efficiency by implementing scrum ceremonies, which helped estimate better and streamline the development process and achieve better results.
💡 Prioritized user feedback throughout the project, consistently delivering new features that enhance the user experience and keep the product ahead of the curve.
💡 Collaborated effectively with stakeholders to establish trust and maintain relevance for the product, ensuring that we were always on track to meet our goals and deliver a top-notch product.

In the Client's Own Words

Space Crew of this Mission

Product Management Consultant
Senior Product Management Consultant
VP/Director/Head of Product

For Clients: When to Hire Us

You can hire us as an Interim/Freelance Product Manager or Product Owner

It takes, on average, three to nine months to find the right Product Manager to hire as a full-time employee. In the meantime, someone needs to fill in the void: drive cross-functional initiatives, decide what is worth building, and help the development team deliver the best outcomes.
If you're looking for a great Product Manager / Product Owner to join your team ASAP, Product People is a good plug-and-play solution to bridge the gap.