Using Skyjed
      Back to home
      1. Knowledge Centre
      2. Using Skyjed

      Skyjed User Manual

      Learn how to master and achieve excellence using Skyjed

      What is Skyjed

      Skyjed is the future of Product Lifecycle management.

      Skyjed is fundamentally different. Skyjed provides an end-to-end view of your product health and risk status, allowing you to run product governance as a simple, effective and collaborative framework. Collaborate as a virtual team, set and validate your product design, monitor your product lifecycle health, identify your target markets and compliance needs, ensure good governance and offer quick and easy access to information using Skyjed’s Product Management and Governance framework.

      Your Skyjed Dashboard

      Your Skyjed Dashboard is the first screen you see when you sign in to Skyjed.

      Your dashboard contains the following areas:

      • My Products: a list of your in-progress products
      • My Actions: a list of actions allocated to you
      • Comments: a list of recent comments made by collaborators

      Your Product Workspace

      Your Product Workspace is made up of design, audit, domain and driver information. It is an at-a-glance representation of Product Strategy Summaries, Actions and Comments.

      Product Lifecycle Management.

      Skyjed offers a flexible, collaborative method to manage product lifecycles.

      With Skyjed, product strategy and design is set and frequently monitored, assessed and then re-evaluated – by default weekly, monthly and quarterly.  Skyjed takes a 360 degree view of product health – not just financial metrics. We use five domains of product health to help you conduct your product review and then publish your product assessment containing your calculated product health score and risk profile.  Skyjed lets you monitor growth initiatives together with risk and compliance and set and track improvement actions.

      The Skyjed Product Management approach is based around the following components:

      • Design
      • Audit
      • Product domain
      • Product drivers
      • Health check
      • Actions: strategy and risk mitigation
      • Customised virtual team
      • Continuous monitoring

      Product Design

      A Skyjed Product Design is a tool to help you create and validate your product design assumptions.  The product design is used to create, validate and test your design ideas in a data driven manner.  You can also set important regulatory obligations in the design phase. To get started quickly in Skyjed, click through to our Skyjed Quick Guide. 

       

      Product Audit

      A Skyjed Product Audit is a tool to help you create and monitor your product strategy, then make a forward-looking assessment about it. The product audit is used to set your product strategy, target market, budgeting metrics, competitive intelligence, important regulatory obligations and reporting. To get started quickly in Skyjed, click through to our Skyjed Quick Guide.

      Once you conduct your product audit, you will publish a product assessment containing your calculated product health score and risk profile.

      Domains

      A domain is an area of product health.  Skyjed domains give you a 360-degree view of your product health so you can take more effective actions.  Domains cover both strategic and operational areas of product management.  Skyjed has five domains of product success:

      1. Revenue
      2. Value
      3. Customer experience
      4. Innovation and strategy
      5. Regulation

      Driver

      A driver is a prompt for information or rating. Each of the five domains in Skyjed has a library of drivers within it. 

      Product Health Check

      A Skyjed product health-check is a process to review and assess your product. Regular health checks can identify any early signs of risks or opportunities. The health check is a structured assessment across the 5 domains of product health, performed by the product owner with collaborative input from other areas of your organisation. Product executives use these health checks to regularly assess their product strategy, plans and risks.

      The Skyjed product health check is used to generate your product health check score which is presented in visual format with colour-coded percentage ratings. Colours are:

      • Green: High positive growth potential
      • Amber: Neutral growth potential
      • Red: Negative or highly negative growth

      Action

      A Skyjed action is a detailed plan outlining actions required to reach your product vision and metrics. It is the step by step plan needed for your product strategy to succeed. Setting an action plan can help your product executives turn their visions into reality and increase efficiency and accountability in your organisation.

      Action encompass both strategic actions and risk based actions.  Actions include information such as:

      • What is the action
      • Who will carry out the action
      • When is it due

      as well as providing communication throughout the team about what is happening. Regular follow-ups allow you track the status or completeness of the actions.

      Customised Virtual Product team

      Skyjed is all about collaboration. Your product management is most effective when you align with other teams or functions of your organisation.  Skyjed allows you to create a virtual team made up of different areas of expertise such as development, support, finance, marketing to collaborate on your product. This virtual product team can then contribute to product strategy, operations, health-checks, add comments and be assigned actions.

      Continuous Product Monitoring Cycle

      Continuous monitoring and auditing of your product enables product executives to continually review the product strategy, set actions and improve. Skyjed contains a unique continuous monitoring process that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to help you find growth opportunities and detect compliance and risk issues.

      You can adopt Skyjed with rhythms based around different cadences: 

      • Strategic – Skyjed health checks input into longer term strategy process with 2-5+ year horizon and annual updates to senior executives and Board members while your collaborate from anywhere in the world
      • Tactical – use Skyjed with tactical cadence for shorter term 90 day reviews for teams (90 day review) so you can tie your product strategy to quarterly borders. You can look at quarterly performance and to the long term
      • Operational – use Skyjed for tracking results, initiatives and risks – a weekly review
      • Performance – monthly review of product success metrics to understand patterns.

      While different organizations schedule different cadences for product lifecycle management, it is important that product managers ensure that they are communicating effectively with the executive team and organisation teams. 

      Knowledge Centre

      Collaboration requires information to be available.  Skyjed is designed to be a collaborative workspace or product community in your organisation so you can work remotely from anywhere, at anytime.  By aggregating all your product knowledge in a single online repository, Skyjed helps you to create, share, store, search and filter all your important product lifecycle history. This knowledge centre prevents information becoming stuck in email, peoples’ minds, PowerPoint decks and other disparate systems.  Instead of pushing in solo directions - everyone is aligned and moving rapidly ahead.

      Content ranges from your product strategy, target market, product operations, regulatory obligations, reports and insights to your action plans and health-checks.

      Understanding domains, drivers and health-checks

      In order to grow and achieve your organisations vision, you need to be able to communicate a product strategy and plan that unites everyone.  Without clear milestones and plans your vision is just a dream.

      The real power of a product health-check is to make it easy for you to set action-plans, so you know where you are going to deliver growth, manage risk and what resources you need to get there.

      Domains

      Skyjed’s five domains of product health are:

      1. Revenue –external factors in your market and competitors
      2. Value –your cost areas including customer costs, operational costs and product costs
      3. Customer Experience –your customer experience and engagement
      4. Innovation & strategy –your innovation plans and monitoring of disruption
      5. Regulatory –meeting your regulatory and legal obligations for your target customers

      Revenue Domain

      The revenue domain captures external forces on your product strategy.  It helps you factor in trends in the market, understand your target market, customer persona and competitor analysis.  It helps define who your direct and indirect competitors are.  You can assess the strengths and weakness of your rivals – their products, sales and marketing strategies.  Find situations which are likely to become a threat to your product growth.  Most importantly take note of how they are unlocking growth in our fast-changing market so you can be one step ahead.

      Value Domain

      The value domain captures the areas of product profitability so you can compare the revenue from your product versus the amount it costs to make the sales.  Sales and revenue are important but profit is what matters to the business.  Start by identifying and segmenting costs in order to get a grasp on what influences your planned versus actual costs and product margins.  The value domain helps you identify the costs of your product and keep tabs on your competitors.  This is an ongoing process throughout your product lifecycle.

      Customer Experience Domain

      The customer experience domain captures how you deliver to your customer. Products or services are what you deliver but you need to understand how you deliver. Once you observe all the touch points a customer experiences, from awareness to resolving an issue, you can understand this through your customer’s eyes. Its critical to map the end to end experience from a customer perspective rather than your internal structures or business units.  The key to improving customer engagement and loyalty is by tracking metrics that help you improve

      Innovation and Strategy Domain

      The innovation domain captures the areas you need to assess to create future value for your customers and the resources you will need to successfully implement.  It’s important to set out innovation plans and understand the trade-off and investment required to implement those plans.  Product innovation never stands still and therefore you must have a routine to monitor, update and evolve your plans.

      Regulatory Domain

      The regulatory domain captures the areas that are important for product compliance and customer trust.  Product trust is an important area for product managers.  We recommend you set your target market for the product.  Next, define regulatory obligations and monitor and set action plans to improve and manage any risks.  Compliance to regulatory and legal obligations for your product requires you to monitor where and how your product is sold.  This section includes emerging areas like climate-related risk and modern slavery obligations in your product supply chain.  Collaboration with your legal, regulatory and risk teams is critical to successfully maintain regulatory compliance.

      Drivers

      Each Skyjed domain has a pre-populated list of drivers available to it. These drivers are a request for information to assist you with completing a product strategy.  

      Some of the drivers available in your initial Skyjed implementation are:

      Revenue:

      • Description & Pricing
      • Target Market Segments
      • Unique Value Proposition
      • Channel Analysis & Performance
      • Competitor Profile
      • Competitor Market Map
      • Competitor Intelligence
      • Product Market Share
      • Revenue plan/actual
      • Marketing Plan
      • Sales Plan
      • Sales Buyer Persona

      Value:

      • Drivers of Cost
      • Costs of Goods Sold Analysis
      • Cost Actual
      • Cost Actual/Plan
      • Margin Actual/Plan
      • Competitor Margin Insight
      • Supplier Management
      • Sales Productivity
      • Cost Effectiveness Plan
      • Supplier Action Plan
      • Supply Chain/Logistics

      Customer experience:

      • Customer Journey Map
      • Product Experience Pain Points
      • Product Experience Break Points
      • Product Experience Metrics
      • Product Experience Action Plan
      • Warranty & Support

      Innovation and strategy:

      • Technology & Disruptive Trends
      • Substitute Product/Adjacent Products
      • Competitive Strategies
      • Roadmap – new features, new products
      • Growth Initiatives
      • Innovation Initiatives
      • Investment Plan
      • Exit Plan
      • Product SWOT
      • Industry Dynamics

      Regulatory:

      • Regulatory Trends
      • Product Obligations
      • Design Requirements
      • Negative Target Market
      • Launch-ready checklist
      • Modern Slavery

      Skyjed Product Health Checks

      The Product Health Check is a product review.  It is a forward-looking assessment of your product at a point in time. This assessment provides you with a calculated product health score and risk profile.

      Skyjed presents your Product health check score in a simple, visual format with a percentage rating and a colour coded meter to show positive and negative growth potential.

      Getting Started with Skyjed

      For information on how to get going with Skyjed, please see [Skyjed Quick Guide].

      Your Dashboard

      To enter your Skyjed dashboard:

      1. Sign in to your Skyjed account

      Once in the dashboard, you can drill down to an individual product by simply clicking the product name.

      You can return to the Dashboard at any time by clicking the Skyjed logo

       

      Your User Profile

      Your user profile is accessible from your Dashboard (see next section).  Click the “Settings” icon at the bottom left of the screen to perform user-based functions.

      Changing your password

      A password is required for your Skyjed account.  You may wish to change the password initially set.

      To change your password:

      1. Sign in to your Skyjed dashboard
      2. Click the “Settings” icon
      3. Select “Password”
      4. Fill in your current password, followed by your new password and confirm your new password in the allocated box.
      5. Click “CHANGE PASSWORD”

      Updating your details

      To change your name or email address:

      1. Sign in to your Skyjed dashboard
      2. Click the “Settings” icon
      3. Modify any of the information displayed
      4. Click “UPDATE DETAILS”

      Adding a new user

      To invite a user to collaborate on your product, you need to add them:

      1. Sign in to your Skyjed dashboard
      2. Click the “Settings” icon
      3. Select “Users”
      4. Click the “INVITE USER” button
      5. Enter the users email address
      6. Select the required Role from the drop-down list
        For more information on user Roles, see [Skyjed Roles and Permissions link to doc]
      7. Click “CREATE”

      Adding a team

      To create a new Skyjed team:

      1. Sign in to your Skyjed dashboard
      2. Click the “Settings” icon
      3. Select “Teams”
      4. Click the “CREATE TEAM” button
      5. Enter the name and description of your new team
      6. Click “ADD MEMBERS” to allocate users to your team
      7. Click “CREATE” to save your team

      Adding a portfolio

      To add a new Portfolio:

      1. Sign in to your Skyjed dashboard
      2. Click the “Settings” icon
      3. Select “Portfolios”
      4. Click the “CREATE PORTFOLIO” button
      5. Enter the name and description of your new portfolio
      6. Click “CREATE” to save your portfolio

      Product Workspace

      The Product Workspace allows team-based oversight of a product or portfolio.

      It is a workspace from which to conduct a health-check of a product, create strategy and risk actions and when published, presents a Product Health Index and Reports.

      To open your Product Workspace:

      1. Sign in to your Skyjed dashboard
      2. Click the name of the product you wish to view

      Once in the Product Workspace, you will be able to view information on design, audit, insights, actions, comments and access reports.

      Product Design

      The Skyjed product Design is a product concept validation and design tool.  This is where you create a product strategy, design and set your target market and any product regulatory obligations.  

      To view a product design:

      1. Sign into your Skyjed dashboard

      2. Select your product strategy

      3. Open your Design workspace

      4. Browse and select your Drivers to add information to your design.

      Product Audit

      The Skyjed product Audit is a product monitoring and assessment tool.  This is where you create and review your product strategy and then make a forward-looking assessment about it.

      To view the current state of your product Audit:

      1. Sign in to your Skyjed dashboard
      2. Open your Product Workspace
      3. Browse and select Domains and Drivers to add information to your audit

      Insights

      Skyjed contains an automated product insights dashboard to analyse trends across your product strategy.  Skyjed contains an essential set of product insights based on real-time analytics of your domain and driver information.

      To view your product Insights:

      1. Sign in to your Skyjed dashboard
      2. Open your Product Workspace
      3. Select the “INSIGHTS” tab at the top of your screen

       

      Actions

      Skyjed allows you to identify actions and risk profiles so you can create a plan to achieve your product goals. Actions are categorised into one of two types:

      • Risk mitigation
      • Strategic

      Risk Mitigation actions are plans to prepare for or lessen the adverse impacts and long term sustainability of your product health. A Risk Mitigation action requires you to perform a qualitative assessment of the risk in your product strategy implementation. A Risk Assessment includes three areas:

      1. Likelihood: The probability of occurrence, expressed as a rating
      2. Impact: An estimate of the potential losses and consequences associated with an identified risk
      3. Calculated risk rating: a rating of the likelihood of the risk arising and the severity of the impact, calculated by the Skyjed software

      There are five likelihood ratings:

      • Almost Certain
      • Likely
      • Possible
      • Unlikely
      • Rare

      There are also five impact ratings:

      • Severe
      • Major
      • Moderate
      • Minor
      • negligible 

      Your calculated risk rating will be expressed as one of four ratings:

      • Very High
      • High
      • Medium
      • Low

      Strategic actions and risk mitigation are actions to meet your product objectives and strategy.

      To view the list of actions for your product:

      1. Sign in to your Skyjed dashboard
      2. Open your Product Workspace
      3. Select the “ACTIONS” tab at the top of your screen

      Comments

      Skyjed contains collaboration tools so you can be closely aligned with the right teams across your organisation.  In the comments section you can view any comments made along with the date entered and who made the comment.

      To view the comments for your product:

      1. Sign in to your Skyjed dashboard
      2. Open your Product Workspace
      3. Select the “COMMENTS” tab at the top of your screen

      Reports

      Once a product health assessment has been completed for a product, Skyjed generates an essential set of product reports. The reports are supported by the detailed assessments in your product domains, drivers and action plans.  The reports are generated when you hit the “PUBLISH” button in your Product Health Check.

      To view the available reports:

      1. Sign in to your Skyjed dashboard
      2. Click the “Reports” icon
      3. Select a report from the list to view in detail

      Starting a product audit

      When you create a new product in Skyjed, your product is automatically set to start an Initial Audit and flagged with a status of “In Progress”. As you go through your product definition, your product will logically move through four stages. These stages are:

      1. Draft:
        Monitoring has commenced. The product review is in a draft state.  You can add information and edit.  All information entered is auto-saved and you can view your data in the product insights.
      2. Review:
        Almost all of your information has been captured. You have completed your ratings in product health assessment.  Your team members commence reviewing and challenging the information and ratings.
      3. Ready to Publish:
        A product health assessment has been completed and is ready for publishing to release as accurate point in time assessment.
      4. Published:
        Your product health assessment has been completed and reports generated.
        You are no longer able to edit information in this report.

      After your review is complete, you will have a baseline for where you want to take your product. It is important to set a cadence for reviewing your product (see section “Continuous Product Monitoring Cycle”).

      Once your product is ready for market, you will want to take your product out of the “Planning” stage. Each product in Skyjed has a lifecycle status.  There are seven lifecycle status options:

      1. Planning: Product concept to solve a customer problem
      2. Development: Product design to meet the target customer needs
      3. Launched: Product recently released into market for customers to use or purchase
      4. Mature: Product is no longer experiencing year on year growth
      5. Exiting: Decision made to exit the product from the market and project plan in place
      6. Closed: Product strategy decommissioned
      7. Archive: Product information sent to storage but retrievable at a later date

      To move your product to the next stage of it’s Product Lifecycle:

      1. Sign in to your Skyjed dashboard
      2. Click the “Products icon
      3. Click the corresponding “More” icon
      4. Select the new “Status” option from the list
      5. Click “SAVE”

      Creating an action

      Skyjed provides a simple approach to setting actions with steps, ratings and tips. Action are associated with Drivers and Domains.

      To create an action:

      1. Sign in to your Skyjed dashboard
      2. Open your Product Workspace
      3. Select the Product Driver you wish to create an action for
      4. Set the “Action Type” (See section “Action” for a description of action types)
      5. Provide a summary of the action, it’s objective and detailed description.
      6. For a Risk Mitigation base action, also choose Likelihood and Impact ratings to generate your Calculated Risk Rating
      7. Assign an owner and delegate the action to a team member.
      8. Set your Target Date and Due date
      9. Click “CREATE”

      Seeking review and feedback

      Once you have entered all available information into the Product Workspace, you will need to seek review from your team members.

      To set your Product lifecycle to “Review” status:

      1. Sign in to your Skyjed dashboard
      2. Open your Product Workspace
      3. Click the “REVIEW” button

      Team members may now view and provide feedback on your Domain Drivers and Actions.

      Creating a comment

      Whilst reviewing the Domain and Driver data you have created, reviewers may add collaborative comments.  Comments are associated with Drivers and can be viewed from the Dashboard, the Product Workspace and also by selecting the “Comments”
      icon from the purple side bar. 

      To create a new comment:

      1. Sign in to your Skyjed dashboard
      2. Open your Product Workspace
      3. Browse to the specific driver you wish to add feedback on
      4. Click the “Add Comment” button in the Comment pane
      5. Type your comment in the provided box
      6. Click “CREATE” to save your comment

      Monitoring actions

      Actions can be viewed from the Product Workspace and also by selecting the “Actions” icon  from the purple side bar.

      In order to moderate actions pertaining to specific products, people or due dates, the list of actions may be sorted by any header field by clicking the header text. Sorted actions may be displayed in ascending or descending order.

      By default, sections displayed in the Action summary screen are:

      • Status (Done/Not Done)
      • Type (Risk, Strategy)
      • Summary
      • Risk Rating
      • Driver
      • Owner
      • Assignee
      • Due Date
      • Priority

      Further information about an action may displayed by clicking the “Expand” icon  to the left of the action line.

      Clicking an action name will take you to the corresponding driver section of the Product Workspace.

      Actions may be modified directly from this list by clicking the “More” icon  at the right of the action line.

      Completing your Product Review

      Once you have completed your review and any association actions, you need to update your product’s status:

      1. Sign in to your Skyjed dashboard
      2. Open your Product Workspace
      3. Click the “COMPLETE” button

      Sharing reports

      To create reports for sharing, you will need to Publish your Product Review:

      1. Sign in to your Skyjed dashboard
      2. Open your Product Workspace
      3. Click the “PUBLISH” button

      Once your Product Review has been published, you may share reports via one of the following methods:

      1. Email a report: From the Reports screen (see section Reports), choose the report you wish to share and click the “Share” icon.  Fill in the recipients email address and an optional message, then click “Send”.
      2. Share a workspace: From the Product Workspace, copy the URL displayed in your browser and paste into your email.

      Starting your next product review

      Congratulations! You have completed your first Skyjed Product Review and your product is on its way to success.

      In order to keep your product improving, you will want to continually plan, change and review it.  To begin your next product review:

      1. Sign in to your Skyjed dashboard
      2. Open your Product Workspace
      3. Click the “START NEXT AUDIT” button
      4. Name your new Health-Check
      5. Click “START”

      Your new Health-Check is created and shown in the Health-Check list.

      You may view historical data from previous Health-Checks using the Health-Check list:

      1. Sign in to your Skyjed dashboard
      2. Open your Product Workspace
      3. Choose the audit point in time you wish to view from the Product Audit drop-down list
      4. Browse your domain drivers.

      You will not be able to add information to a
      previously published Audit.

      Customising Drivers

      Should you need the ability to tightly couple the drivers to your business, Skyjed Premium and Enterprise customers may add new or modify existing driver definitions.

      To view the current driver library:

      1. Sign in to your Skyjed dashboard
      2. Click the “Settings” icon
      3. Select “Domain Driver Library”

      You can browse the existing library by expanding the domain headings to see the applicable drivers.

      To search for a specific driver:

      1. Sign in to your Skyjed dashboard
      2. Click the “Settings” icon
      3. Select “Domain Driver Library”
      4. Enter the text you wish to search for in the search window

      The list of drivers displayed will become
      more specific as you type.

      Adding a Driver

      To add a new driver:

      1. Sign in to your Skyjed dashboard
      2. Click the “Settings” icon
      3. Select “Domain Driver Library”
      4. Click the “NEW DRIVER” button
      5. Choose the category of driver from the drop down list
        (See section “Domains” for more information)
      6. Enter a unique system ID for your driver
      7. Enter the name of your driver
      8. Enter a description for your driver
      9. Choose whether to allow multiple entries or only a single entry for this driver
      10. Click “CREATE”

      Your driver will be created with a status of “DRAFT”

      A driver has properties attached to it.  These properties help define the specific information you are seeking for input into your Health Check and to drive your product definition.

      A property will also help to shape the information entered by requiring user input in a specified way.  The input types available are:

      • Singleline: A single line of text
      • Calculated: A calculated total of any currency properties listed prior to this one
      • Multiline: Multiple lines of text
      • Date: A date entry for timing of actions
      • Currency: A dollar value
      • Rating: A scale to rate strength, defined by you, based on a scale of 1=worst and 5=best. 0 is usually reserved for unknown
      • Select: A drop-down list, defined by you, for the user to select from. Can be as simple as Yes/No or a detailed list of choices
      • Percentage: Non-calculated percentage entry

      To define the properties of your driver:

      1. Sign in to your Skyjed dashboard
      2. Click the “Settings” icon
      3. Select “Domain Driver Library”
      4. Select your new driver and ensure the information is displayed on your screen.
      5. Click the “ADD PROPERTY” button
      6. Enter the name of this driver
      7. In the label section, enter a description to help users enter their information correctly eg: “Yes or No”, “Enter a percentage rate%”
      8. Select the correct Input Type from the drop-down list
      9. Set a “Flex” rating to choose how wide your columns display
      10. Click the “CREATE” button
      11. Repeat this process until you have all your required properties entered.

      You can control the order of the properties list by simply dragging and dropping drivers to the order required.

      Publishing a Driver

      Once your driver has been created and all required properties have been defined, you will need to make the driver available to your products.

      To Publish a driver:

      1. Sign in to your Skyjed dashboard
      2. Click the “Settings” icon
      3. Select “Domain Driver Library”
      4. Select your new driver and ensure the information is displayed on your screen.
      5. Click the “More” button next to the Status of your driver
      6. Choose “Publish”

      Editing a Driver

      To change the name of a driver, you will need to edit the driver:

      1. Sign in to your Skyjed dashboard
      2. Click the “Settings” icon
      3. Select “Domain Driver Library”
      4. Select your new driver and ensure the information is displayed on your screen.
      5. Click the “More” button next to the Status of your driver
      6. Choose “Edit”
      7. Modify the entries required
      8. Click the “UPDATE” button

      ! Note you cannot modify the Key for a driver.

      In some cases you may need to remove a driver.  Any driver in DRAFT status can be deleted.  Once a driver has been published, it needs to be archived to remove it from future use. Products with entries referencing the archived driver will continue to display the data but cannot be modified.

      To delete or archive a driver:

      1. Sign in to your Skyjed dashboard
      2. Click the “Settings” icon
      3. Select “Domain Driver Library”
      4. Select your new driver and ensure the information is displayed on your screen.
      5. Click the “More” button next to the Status of your driver
      6. Choose “Delete” or “Archive”
      7. Click “YES” when asked to confirm

      Adding a driver KPI measure

      More information:

      Skyjed Roles & Permissions 

      Skyjed terms you need to know 

      Skyjed Best Practice