When this artifact was developed, I was leading Reforge’s product expansion strategy. My role was to figure out what new programs Reforge should build to grow our core target persona - mid-career product and growth professionals.

The decision to build a new program was very important for two reasons. First, these were one-way doors because of the long creation cycles, and the seasonal nature of our launch strategy. Second, programs required large investments of time, resources, and money. Wrong decisions were extremely costly for the company.

In 2021 and 2022, all of our new programs were governed by an overarching strategic framework and total addressable market.

I looked back at our most successful programs and identified the biggest sources of risk.

The first two - demand and strategic fit were obvious. We shouldn’t build a course that has very low demand among our target audience. And we shouldn’t build a course that doesn’t drive the business metrics we care about - acquisition/ retention. This varied by audience segment.

But the other two - supply and insight quality - were risks we had previously not evaluated before green lighting programs. This was a mistake because these courses had outsized impact on our ability to deliver a course on-time and for the course to actually be a “hit”.

To get high quality supply, we had to expand top of funnel sourcing, and build a tighter vetting and review process.

Insight quality was both the most fuzzy to evaluate, but also the biggest differentiator for Reforge courses. The reason members loved our courses, and told all their colleagues to take Reforge was because they offered actionable solutions to the specific problems that our members experienced. These solutions were grounded in real work our experts had done. And if our courses were not providing that insight, members were disappointed. We saw this in our data - courses that didn’t have strong insights would have high enrollment in the first run but but much lower enrollment in subsequent runs. Members who signed up for those courses would also be more likely to churn.

This was a big shift that we were proposing. This meant the timeline of roadmapping and green lighting a program would be a LOT longer than it used to be.

This led to a subsequent challenge - how would we effectively use the work we did in this phase to create some other user/ business value?

Ultimately, we ended up creating marketing content from the work done in this phase. This helped both validate the quality of insights the expert was bringing, but also generate content for our blog and SEO.

This is a read out of the first 2 courses prioritized using above framework. 2 more courses will be launched in October 2023, and will provide further data points on effectiveness of this framework.

This program was scoped using the new framework and process and performed as expected on enrollment and better than expected on satisfaction and creation costs.

This program was scoped with demand, strategic fit and supply in mind, but we didn’t have the time validate insight quality before we started development. This is probably a big reason who creation costs didn’t improve for this course.

The addressable market for marketing programs was lower than other programs, so enrollment was expected to be lower.

Fareed Mosavat

Akshita Ganesh

While leading Reforge’s product expansion strategy, I built this artifact to determine how we might grow our core target persona.

Till 2021, Reforge programs have been scoped in an opportunistic way. We might see SMEs who are a good fit (e.g., User Insights or MPM), or we see momentum towards a topic area (Product Strategy). However, this leads to us developing programs with large variability in outcomes. We have some programs that truly over-perform in both enrollment, engagement and satisfaction (or the star programs, like PS and PL), while others that have lower than expected enrollments, with average engagement satisfaction (or the tail programs, like MP/ET).

So, For Spring and Fall 2022, we took a “

” approach to program scoping, building programs based on the business goals of existing audience expansion. 

As a result, we had higher conviction in demand and strategic fit of the program, with a clear view of the overall audience portfolio and roadmap.

Programs didn’t always have high satisfaction, and failed to drive retention.

 Not all programs were differentiated from other alternatives on our market. These programs had lower NPS and satisfaction, negatively impacting subsequent cohort enrollment (poor WOM growth) and member retention.

Creation teams struggled to build good programs because either experts or their insights were low quality.

 We scoped programs using users and expert panel research to develop the drumbeat, target audience and initial list of topics. We green lit the program based on our evaluation of demand and strategic fit, and THEN identified potential SMEs. This placed all the risk on finding the right SMEs and getting high-quality insights AFTER the program was green lit, and the cohort roadmap was finalized.

The proposed prioritization framework below is aimed at addressing these challenges.

Proposed Prioritization Framework for 2023

For each program idea, we will evaluate the different risks to a successful program creation. 

There are broadly 4 risk factors that lead to programs not being successful today - demand, strategic fit, supply and insight quality.

: Will enough people take this program to make it worth the investment of building? 

Test with members: End of Program Survey, slack polls, interviews

Test with our “reach”: Retroactive reactions to blog posts, LinkedIn posts

Test with non-reach: Exploring demand testing options with Member Growth team

: Does this drive the overall business strategy and KPIs forward? 

Understand the career journey(s) within a target domain

Define segments of the target domain (based on seniority, specialization, etc.) and understand their unique set of problems

Synthesize learnings to propose a combination of overview and deep dive programs that lend itself to supporting the domain over the course of their career

Validate that it drives the business goals of acquisition/ retention for the domain

Supply: Do we have high quality experts who we can partner with to build a program? 

Volunteers from existing partner & investor network with interest in the topic

Exploratory conversations with secondary networks (intros from exec, employees, etc.)

Conviction that previous program collaborators are also experts in program topic

Insight quality: Are we able to solve the core problems with a tool, framework, or process?

To validate this, the expert conversations are focused on getting to 1-2 high quality insights even before we green light the program.

TBD: how many insights / what level of fidelity they need to be in order to ask exec for a “green light” on program development

Proposed Process Shift Based on Above Framework

Greenlight based on SMEs and Core Insight Quality.

 In addition to validating demand and strategic fit at the proposal phase, 

validate supply and insight quality in the scoping phase, and only begin program creation 

 1-2 insights have been developed with program SMEs.

Program enrollment for 2023 programs is on par with past programs

NPS and content satisfaction 2023 programs is higher than past programs

Overall person-hours for program creation for 2023 programs is lower / program creation costs drop.

This program was scoped using the new framework and process and performed as expected on enrollment and better than expected on satisfaction and creation costs. 

This program was scoped with demand, strategic fit and supply in mind, but we didn’t have the time validate insight quality before we started development

Program Prioritization Framework at Reforge

Learnings from 2022 program scoping…

Proposed Prioritization Framework for 2023

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