Customer-Focused Roadmaps with Chisel: A Conversation with Praful Chavda
Curious about building customer-focused roadmaps?
Let’s dive into a conversation between Shyvee Shi and Praful Chavda, the founder of Chisel, which has made innovation through AI and seamless team alignment a dream come true.
Praful’s Journey to Founding Chisel
Praful’s voyage to introduce Chisel was inspired by his twenty-three years of product management expertise.
During his tenure at Microsoft, he acquired key responsibilities like Head of Product for the Office 365 team, created the Windows/Phone App Store, and developed the HD playback engine for Xbox.
Following Microsoft, he founded Bryght.ai, specializing in natural language processing and artificial intelligence.
Post-Bryght.ai, Praful focused on closing a notable disparity he observed in the product management scene, which resulted in the founding of Chisel.
The Inspiration Behind Chisel
Shyvee asked What has inspired you to create Chisel?
Praful responded by emphasizing how his long career showed a constant and common problem: there aren’t enough good tools for product management. Spreadsheets, slides, and general project management tools were the only tools that product managers had access to.
These tools caused data to become fragmented, output to drop, and time to be spent. They were especially bad at getting feedback from outside customers and combining it with data from the roadmap.
It wasn’t easy for product managers to use new AI and other technologies to get ahead of the competition and better fix customer problems with the tools that were already available.
This hole in the market, along with his own problems and experiences, drove Praful to make Chisel, a tool that changed the way product managers do their jobs.
Solving Key Problems with Chisel
Shyvee asked What key problems does Chisel solve?
Praful responded I’ve talked to many product leaders, and a common frustration that I’ve heard from them is that their team’s product roadmaps aren’t deeply connected to outcomes like increased revenue and customer adoption
Chisel was made to fill in this gap and make sure that product teams can make and illustrate these hyperlinks.
The software is a complete tool for managing products that lets teams get feedback from all sides of a product and create feedback-connected, highly focused roadmaps.
In this way Chisel helps increase sales and adds feedback to all stages of the product development process by acting as a smart link between the product and revenue.
When building Chisel, the main goals were to make it easier to get feedback, better at putting feedback together, and to show the whole team how feedback directly affects the product development process and results.
The Importance of Feedback-Connected Roadmaps
One great thing about Chisel is that it can deeply connect feedback with roadmaps. Praful stressed that making sure that product plans are in line with consumer desires and business goals is possible with a roadmap that is based on useful feedback.
This method not only makes the product strategy more focused and successful, but it also helps people make better choices and set priorities.
Chisel is a tool that combines making roadmaps, getting feedback on products, and coordinating teams all into one.
Customer portals and built-in surveys make it easier to get feedback. The Idea Box organizes and tracks all product feedback and links it directly to the roadmap.
Flexible score-based roadmaps make sure that only the most important, profitable features are provided by adapting to each team’s unique way of setting priorities.
Leveraging AI for Productivity and Insight
Shyvee asked Can you discuss any AI/ML capabilities you’ve implemented or plan to implement in Chisel?
Praful responded AI is only as useful as the underlying data powering it. Because Chisel provides a system of record for all the data that PMs need to do their most important work (including customer feedback data, roadmap prioritization data, and internal team data) it can enable AI to do powerful work that would previously have been impossible through human effort alone.
Praful discussed how AI could change the way product management is executed. Chisel uses AI to quickly sort and put together large amounts of suggestions.
Let’s say that every two weeks, a bank gets thousands of pieces of input. It would be very hard to go through all of this information manually and find the most important ideas.
But Chisel’s AI can instantly tag this feedback with the right categories, organize product insights in seconds, and make sense of thousands of feedback tickets into distinct ideas.
Additionally, Chisel’s AI can instantly create Product Requirement Documents (PRDs) based on comments from customers. Product managers no longer have to wait days or even weeks to do things that can now be done in seconds.
Chisel increases output by automating these tasks. This frees up product managers to work on more important tasks and make big decisions.
Enhancing Team Alignment and Collaboration
Chisel is also great at getting teams to work together. The tool called “Alignment Matrix” makes it easy to see where the team agrees on setting priorities and where they disagree.
Even when discussions aren’t happening, this tool makes sure that everyone is working toward the same goals and understanding what needs to be done.
Praful said that roadmaps are important, but they’re not the only thing that a product manager does.
In a larger sense, product management is about making sure that the company gets a Explore customer-focused product roadmaps with Chisel’s Praful Chavda. Learn strategies for aligning teams and delivering value-driven outcomes.
by connecting market and customer needs to choices about products and engineering.
This link is possible thanks to Chisel’s all-around method for combining customer feedback with product decisions.
Key Features that Differentiate Chisel
Shyvee asked curiously Tell us more about the core features that differentiate Chisel in the market.
Praful talked about a few of the most important things that make Chisel stand out in the market. Other product management tools only let you make roadmaps.
Chisel, on the other hand, has built-in, high-quality tools for gathering feedback, organizing it, and putting it all together.
This combination makes sure that everyone on the team can see how feedback affects the process and results of product development.
Additionally, Chisel uses new developments in AI and other technologies to improve the daily work of a product manager.
Chisel gives product managers more time to do more strategic work by automatically making PM papers like PRDs and progress reports and sorting and putting together customer feedback using AI.
Closing Thoughts
At the end of the conversation, Praful stressed how important it is to show value to the company.
“How does the company get the best return on investment (ROI) for every dollar spent on product management? How can we make things better? We must focus on coordinating first and then fixing problems for customer flows accordingly.”
In the end, customers should be the most important thing for product managers. They can improve business value by directing tools, priorities, and group alignment.
Because technology is always changing, people have to keep working to improve their skills and find new ways to solve problems. Product management can make a big difference by focusing on the needs of users. This will ensure that users’ interests are always being pursued, which is important in today’s fast-paced world.
Conclusion
Praful Chavda’s insights into the creation and capabilities of Chisel offer a compelling vision for the future of product management.
By integrating feedback deeply into roadmaps, leveraging AI for productivity and insight, and enhancing team alignment, Chisel provides a powerful tool for product managers looking to drive meaningful business outcomes.
As technology continues to evolve, tools like Chisel will be instrumental in helping product managers navigate the complexities of their roles and deliver greater value to their organizations.