Welcome back to the Monthly Method podcast. I want to kickstart this new season of the podcast with a great concept that I've learned from being a product manager. And this concept is the Happy Path. Let's go. 

Happy path concept comes from software development. And this is how it works in software development or in product management. First of all, you focus on the happy path, and by the happy path, we mean the path that a user of our product is taking, assuming everything works as it's supposed to.  

Let's take the example of uploading a picture on Instagram. As a product manager of Instagram, you would take this journey, and you would first focus on the happy path. So a user logs in assuming that he has all his or her credentials entered correctly. Then the user proceeds to the homepage, clicks on the desired button, uploads a picture and the picture is of the right format of the right size.

Then the user proceeds to the next screen. They put in some captions, hashtags. tThey click publish. The wifi is working. Everything is great. Then they have this "Your post is uploaded" message and everyone is happy. That's the end of their journey. So this is the happy path. Again, it is the path that the user takes when everything works.

And then once you are done building for the happy path, you can focus on accounting for all the things that can go wrong. Let's start with the login information. What happens if the user doesn't enter the right credentials? Okay. So you can reset the password. So you build this journey then. Okay. What if wifi doesn't work? What message should we show then? Okay. Like what if the image that they're uploading is too large or too small? Okay. We build for that. And so it goes, but the idea is, when you build a new product, the initial, let's say, feedback that you can get from a lot. Engineers people from other teams. Is that okay?

That's all great. But what if, what if this thing happens? What if there is no wifi? What if they forget their password? And as a product manager, it's quite hard to account for all of those things and kind of satisfy them all. In the first go in the first print. The first iteration of a product. And in order to avoid this frustration and overwhelm, what you can do as a product manager.

And that's what my manager told me, she taught me is that you first build the product that is for the happy path. So you build the.  user journey where everything is perfect and the users are doing what you want them to do. And you can build it in a very short period of time, because you are only focusing on a selected set of features and you can ship it very quickly.

And after that, you can actually start tackling all the. Use cases where things don't work as they're expected,

and you can treat the happy path as a skeleton of a project, or as an outline saying that, okay, this is the skeleton. And then things that can go wrong, will be attached to the skeleton later on. And this was such a transformational concept for me, because again, 

it's very easy as a product manager to get overwhelmed by all the feedback that you get on your product ideas or on your product proposals. And there is nothing wrong with this feedback it's valuable, but most of the time, it kind of falls into the category of what F and even though it's valuable feedback,  it shouldn't affect the main skeleton of your project.

So the main happy path that you're working towards, it's something that can improve the product. Yes, for sure. But it shouldn't overblow the scope of the project from the very,  and when applying. Idea to your personal life. I think it can be a very useful concept for managing your to-do list. I think as adults, as people who have different projects and different areas of our lives, our to-do list can be quite overwhelming and. Lawn,  right.

So when you're planning a wedding,  it can be quite overwhelming and you need to account for all the, all if scenarios, what if it rains? What if this person doesn't show up?   It can be very overwhelming. And so if you apply the concept of the happy path to your, project management, And to-do list management.

What you can do is kind of divide the to-do list into different section. And the first one should always be the happy path. Okay. What should be there, for the wedding, if yes, you, everyone shows up. If the weather is great, if all the guests showed up on time and if the food is there, everything is.

And so all of a sudden your to-do list kind of narrows down to a very manageable number of tasks and you focus on those for the first print for two sprints, for three sprints, however long it takes. And then after you're done with the happy path, then you can, well, first of all, you have this feeling of accomplishment that you've  done a big chunk of work towards  planning your event, then you're like, okay, now we have some time to actually think about the, what if scenarios and let's start with the most likely scenario.

Maybe it's the weather maybe.  it's something else, but , you then start tackling, all this. What if scenario in order of their probability of happening?



Okay.

And what's really amazing about this particular concept is that I found it to be amazing at accepting feedback and kind of maybe even managing criticism.  Because without this concept, when you hear back from, again, as a product manager, when you hear back from other members saying like, well, what if this happens I don't know if it's just me or not, but my first reaction was like, oh, they're criticizing me and my idea.

 But now with the happy path concept, I can say, yeah, that's a legit  feedback, but it doesn't mean I have to account for it immediate. Like right now, we are focusing on building the happy path and once it's done, we can actually focus on tackling  all the, what ifs and all the criticism.

So I think it made it really easy for me to, not take all the criticism so seriously and not make it feel like I need to address it right now. So I think it's easier to look at it as a potential to-do list and phase two of the project once the happy path face is done, and then you, we can focus on all the.

little things, but for now it's not a priority. I can listen to this feedback. I can write it down, but then it doesn't mean that I have to plan for it and do it this friend. Okay.

. So that's what I wanted to share with you. I think it's a very helpful  concept. If you have A daunting project, where there are too many moving pieces and you need to account for different scenarios.

Again, planning an event, doing some projects at work, maybe building a side hustle or a, a blog or a YouTube channel sometime like any personal project that has this kind of complex structure.  I suggest you use the happy path concept to ease the process and manage this overwhelming to-do list. Figure out what's the ideal scenario  when everything works perfectly, when everyone shows up on time, when people are happy, you are happy.

Everyone is doing what they're supposed to do. How does this journey look?

then focus solely on doing the tasks that are connected to building this happy path scenario. So what do you need to have in place? Is it a website? Is it a way for people to place an order? Is it the way for people to download whatever you are producing? So what needs to be there?  when people are excited about what you do when they want to participate.

And they just say, yes, I am ready to do whatever you want me to do. And then  focus on building these things. And the beauty of it is that if you ignore the, all the, what if scenarios for a little while, and just focus solely on this happy path tasks you can be done with. Path within a printer too, because you are really limiting your tasks and focus on only the ones that will get you there.

And then when you have this skeleton build up, when you have this base, you can start addressing all the what if scenarios, I'm not saying ignore them. I'm just.  don't do all of it at once. Don't build the skeleton of the project and also address all the war. If potential things that might go wrong, these things should be done separately.

And once you have the skeleton of the project, the happy path you can address. All the, what if scenarios and you might find out that you don't need to address all of them and just address the ones that are most likely to happen. So yeah. I hope you enjoy this, new concept, new idea.

I hope you're having a great summer and looking forward to the back to school season, even though I'm not in school, I still enjoy the season of life.

I think it kind of gives you this feeling of a fresh.

the crazy busy summer activities are almost over. So you get time to focus on yourself, build some new habits and start working on some of the projects that you wanted to tackle. So I really like. The season that is coming upon us. If you want to join me for September back to school, monthly sprint, head out to the monthly method.com/enroll.

 We do have spots available for the group membership and private one-on-one coaching.  So in case you don't know, in this three weeks prints, we use agile principles to work on personal or professional goals and projects one month at a time.  if you've been wanting to start doing something, maybe it's a new hobby.

Maybe it's a side hustle. Maybe it's organizing the most amazing family trip. Come join us. It goes by very quickly when we are supporting each other and celebrating  the small daily wins. If you want to learn more about the structure dates, deadlines prices, again, head over to monthly method.com/enroll, the link us and the show notes.

I will be thrilled to see you join us for September sprint, but if. No problem. I will talk to you next week in another monthly method podcast episode. Have a good week, everyone. Cheers.