MOIA Ridesharing (Volkswagen Group): Product Team Assessment & Workshops

The Client: MOIA

MOIA is a mobility company operating in Northern Germany. Its most popular service is similar to Uber Pool with the difference that the drivers are on the company’s payroll and get customer-facing training. The shuttles are custom-made by Volkswagen, and a large part of the fleet is electric. It is a subsidiary of the Volkswagen Group. MOIA's services also include:

1. Ridesharing Shuttles: MOIA operates ride-sharing services that are typically more convenient and environmentally friendly than traditional taxi services. They often use electric vehicles and offer shared rides to reduce congestion and emissions in urban areas.
2. Microtransit: MOIA also offers microtransit solutions, which involve using smaller vehicles to provide on-demand, flexible transportation services within a specific urban area. This can help fill gaps in public transportation and provide convenient options for commuters.
3. Mobility as a Service (MaaS): MOIA aims to integrate various forms of transportation services into a single, easy-to-use platform. This includes public transit, ride-sharing, bike-sharing, and more, allowing users to plan and pay for their journeys seamlessly.

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The Mission: Interim Product Manager

At the time of our engagement, the client had just revamped their internal organizational structure, was setting up new teams, and resisting the ways of working. The CPO envisioned a product-led organization, where the product team drives strong commercial and user outcomes.

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Our Main Quest: Coaching & Workshops

Solved for the Client

MOIA recognized several challenges that led to the need for an assessment of its product team and the introduction of product discovery workshops:

• Highly Competitive Landscape: The mobility services sector has been saturated for a while now, making it imperative for the company to differentiate itself.
• Speed to Market: Discovery is important and PMs need to figure out how much is enough to reduce time-to-market for new capabilities and to adapt to changing conditions (e.g. COVID).
• Commercial Leadership: The client was ahead of their time in prioritizing commercial success while other market players were still running the “growth at all costs” playbook. PMs have usually the biggest leverage to impact that.

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Initiative 1 - Appraise the Product Team; The Right Person in the Righ Seat

The Product People Trio conducted a comprehensive evaluation of MOIA’s product team, considering factors such as skills, the area they were serving (PMs handling Internal Tooling need different skills than those running growth), and alignment with personal and client goals.

For this assessment, we conducted 1:1 Interviews, and 360° feedback, and appraised the product area (B2C, B2B, Internal Tooling, Data, etc.) in which they were operating. We matched these in our recommendations.

One thing that stood out throughout our assessment was the great company culture and team drive toward the mission to “remove 1,000,000 cars from the street”

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Initiative 2 - Product Discovery Workshops

After assessing the Product Team, we customized and ran a series of Product Discovery Workshops with 5-6 Product Managers and Product Leaders at a time.

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Mission Achievements: Delivered Outcomes

💡 CPO and Product Leadership appreciated the sanity check on team setup, and team members felt heard.

💡 Product Leadership increased internal buy-in. Engineering & other stakeholders were happy to see the training and that they were included in the 360° reviews.

💡 The workshops gave Product Leaders and Senior PMs airtime to share principles and views on Product Management. Juniors enjoyed the templates and frameworks.

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