IIP-130: Redesign of Product Onboarding Process - Jan 2022

Status: Proposed Author(s): Product Working Group Created: 24th January 2022 Discussions to: https://gov.indexcoop.com/t/iip-130-redesign-of-product-onboarding-process-jan-2022/3749 Quorum: 109,069

Simple Summary

As our product team takes more ownership of our roadmap it is unnecessary and adds additional overhead to have two Decision Dates. This process was necessary when Index Coop first launched to ensure it devoted effort on products the community thought would be successful. The new PWG onboarding process provides a higher degree of confidence that the products being built will help IC achieve its organizational goals. Because of this, we request that the DG1 step be eliminated from the onboarding process.

In some circumstances a batch of products may be put through this process if things like market opportunity, technical requirements and launch parameters are similar. An example of this would be the FLI products.

Abstract

When Index Cooperative launched it didn’t have a robust product department performing standard functions such as:

• Managing a roadmap and backlog of product ideas
• Brainstorming product ideas
• Performing market research
• Developing a long-term strategy (eg which products should we focus in 3, 6, and 12 months)
• Analyzing underlying liquidity for feasibility
• Performing in-depth technical analysis to develop product solutions
• Engaging with external protocols to build innovative products
• Maintaining Profit & Loss (P&L) metrics
  • This is a new capability we’re spinning up to ensure each product has a profitability roadmap.
  • For reference, at DPI’s currently AUM it would take ~7 years to recuperate operational cost required to grow the product

Motivation

As we take more ownership of our onboarding process we have a higher degree of certainty over the success of each product. We also don’t have as many financial negotiations (fee split, capital spend, etc.) that varied drastically and required community feedback.

In order to streamline the onboarding process we’d like to remove some of the overhead required to get products out the door. Each product will still go through a rigorous review but most of this work will now be completed prior to being presented to the IC community.

Rationale

Our pod and PWG team have gained the skills and have set up the process necessary to ensure the highest quality products make it to market.

Some functions that might have required additional community approval, such as liquidity spend and fee splits, have been largely taken out of the product process. The liquidity pod now manages the capital spend necessary to launch products. The Compensation Framework also outlines the standard fee split to individuals working directly on each product. The only negotiation piece is the fee split with branding partners, which we would also like to standardize.

Removing DG1 allows the team to spend more time focusing on the critical pieces of the onboarding process rather than supporting two decision gates by the community.

Specification

The original onboarding process was necessary because we needed a way to vet product ideas before considerable effort is being spent to develop each product. When an external methodologist would approach us with a product idea, we had no idea how successful a potential product would be in our portfolio.

DG1 was a way to approve or reject a product idea before all aspects of development were researched. PWG was on the hook for all work pre- and post-DG1

The old onboarding process looks as follows

• Agree on Commercials with methodologist to establish the fee split, where to launch, how much capital is required to launch and how much to spend on incentives

1. Final Work Team Assessment completed by third-party team to provide an overall ‘success score’ based on final PRD and Financials
2. DG2 - signifying whether the community thinks EWG should build the product given the technical requirements, commercials/financials and success score
3. If DG2 is passed EWG begins building the product

Step	Name	Description	Shared
1	Receive product idea	External methodological approaches us with a product idea	Internally
2	Initial review	PWG does an initial review for obvious challenges with the product	Internally
3	Forum Post	Methodologist post the product idea to the forums	Publicly
4	Community Call	methodologist can introduce themselves and describe their methodology	Publicly
5	Work Team Assessment	Initial Work Team Assessment (WTA) completed by third-party team to provide an overall ‘success score’	Publicly
6	DG1	Community votes on whether PWG should commit more time to this idea	Publicly
7	Product Requirements Document	Develop PRD to outline all technical requirements EWG would need to build the product	Publicly
8	Commercials	Agree on Commercials with methodologist to establish the fee split, where to launch, how much capital is required to launch and how much to spend on incentives	Publicly
9	Work Team Assessment	WTA completed by third-party team to provide an overall ‘success score’ based on final PRD and Financials	Publicly
10	DG2	Community votes on whether they think EWG should build the product given the technical requirements, commercials/financials and success score	Publicly
11	Build & launch product	Work with GTM Manager and EWG to build the product	Publicly

By PWG taking control of the roadmap they will have a much better understanding of market opportunity (success score), profitability (financials/commercials) and technical requirements (PRD) prior to announcing it to the community.

The new onboarding process I’m recommending looks like:

Step	Name	Description	Shared
1	Product ideas prioritized on product backlog	Brainstorm product ideas as a pod and perform market validation. Prioritize based on market opportunity	Internally
2	Research high priority product ideas	Initial smoke test performed on products deemed to have a high market opportunity. This includes a review of underlying liquidity and technical overview (eg are all tokens in the sector ERC-20, or another token we don’t yet support)	Internally
3	Develop initial composition	Once product ideas pass the above steps the product designer works with the Quant to develop an initial composition and share it with the community	Publicly
4a	Develop PRD	Product designer and Quant work with external protocols and EWG to develop the PRD. This provides an estimate for development	Publicly
4b	Find Branding Partner	Pod works to find a branding partner that meets the narrative of this new product. This may require some negotiation depending on the partner but fee splits should largely be set	Publicly
4c	Internal Fee splits	Unnecessary as those are predetermined	Pod Comp Framework
5	Work Team Assessment	Work Team Assessment completed by third-party to provide and unbiased success score	Publicly
6	Request DG/IIP	Request approval from community to build	Publicly
7	Build and launch product	Work with GTM Manager and EWG to build the product	Publicly

Vote

For

• Remove DG1 from product onboarding process

Against

• Keep DG1 from product onboarding process