TLDR: project planning template for indiehackers
I see a lot of Indiehackers jumping to create a product before thoroughly thinking their idea through, probably because building is so much fun. There is nothing wrong in building a product for learning and fun; however, if you plan to make money, a little bit of planning can go a long way and save you from heartache when things don't go your way. I am guilty of this myself; however, over time, I have created a basic template that helps me decide if it is
- Worth building something
- Rough plan on how to go about it.
- Codifying assumptions.
- Documenting my vision about the product.
- Learning from and correcting mistakes by validating my assumptions
How to use this template
You should fill all the topics with brief description before starting the project. You can also add additional topics if you think something is important but not listed in template. Similarly strike down or remove the topics that are not applicable to you. Finally if your assumptions or product features change than update the document so that it acts as living document that states vision of your product.
Template
Here is my indiehackers template that i use before starting a project
Name of the project
One line description of the project
Product
- What is the product?
Describe your product
- What are the features of this product?
List main features of your product.(just one line is sufficient)
- What features will be included in MVP?
Subset of features listed above
- What would be the criteria for product market fit?
Sign-up by number of users/payment by initial customers etc.
- Who are the competitors?
List your competitors here
- How will you differentiate your product from your competitors?
price/features whatever is your differentiation
- What is the price of the product?
What would be the likely price point of this product
- Resources for product research
Links/documents/articles to refer to later that you found useful while doing product research
Marketing and Sales
- What is the ideal customer profile(ICP) for your product
Describe persona of your ideal customer including their designation if you are targeting a role in a company
- Where will you find ICP for your product?
Where does your customers hangout?Physically in conferences/specialized forums on internet/Linkedin/twitter/pinterest/reddit etc.
- What channel will be primary source of your customers?
Social media/search engine/email/phone calls/Industry meetups choose one from previous question
- How will this product be marketed?
Describe your goto market strategy here. It could be useful content for low touch sales and case studies for B2B.
- Who makes the purchase decision?
Does the product user directly makes decision or user is different from purchaser this is more relevant to B2B.
- How will you find and contact of key decision maker?
Describe your strategy to find the decision maker mention any services that can be used to help in this
- What is the sales strategy for this product?how will you acquire customers?
Is it self serve (low-touch) or you need to demo your product and create a contract(high touch)
- Resources for marketing and sales
Links/documents/articles to refer to later that you found useful while doing research
Development
- What will be marketing tech stack?(landing page+blog+docs)
Describe how landing page will be created/updated. How will team members create/update the article preferably without developer intervention(CMS/Wordpress).
- How will this product be developed?
Describe if it will be developed in house or outside agency will be hired.
- What is the technology that will be used for backend and why?
Describe backend tech stack no-code tool, language, framework, libraries etc.
- What is the technology used for frontend and why?
Describe frontend tech stack no-code tool, language, framework, libraries etc.
- What is the software architecture?
Is it Single page application, Multi-page application etc.
- What is the testing strategy?
Describe how will you ensure that features don't break between product iteration.
- What is the CI/CD strategy?
Describe how the code will be built and deployed.
- What are the integration's that would be supported by the product?
List outside services that will be used to enhance the product e.g. slack, jira, notion, twitter, google, GitHub etc.
- What software products will this project require and for what purpose?
Describe any paid product/services that will be used and their purpose
- How will the payments be handled?
what service will be used for handling payments PayPal/stripe/paddle/lemon squeezy
- Tech resources
Links/documents/articles to refer to later that you found useful while doing research
Execution
- What are the milestones for this project?
Major milestones for your MVP
- Where is the timeline for the project?
Tentative timeline for your MVP
- Prospects identified
List potential customers identified while research through direct contact/forums etc.
- Contacts for beta testing
List of people/companies who are willing to try your product before its launched.
Conclusion
Use this template before starting your project and make your indie journey less risky and more enjoyable. Here are the links for org mode and markdown formats