Aristotle had once said, “Humans are social animals”. True, it is our basic nature. We can’t survive outside society. To fulfill our different needs, we have different people in our society? The role based arrangement is well constructed. We deal with colleagues at office while we share our emotions with our friends, families. We need [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Product Management’
Product Management I: Supply Creates The Demand
Posted By Nitesh Ambuj on February 11th, 2011
Most of the innovative solutions start with supply, followed by demand. A problem occurred to somebody. He tried to solve it. He got the solution. Bingo. It could be a problem for somebody else as well. Let me build a product. This is one of the scenarios as how the supply process starts. Second scenario could be. I have an idea. It can transform many lives. Or, it can help others to do their work effectively. Let me try to build a generic solution. Great. It really works.
There are multiple such examples where an innovative product created a huge market, a market which nobody would have thought earlier.
Let’s take a real-time example. Twitter. Was there a demand for a micro-blogging service like Twitter before it came? No. The demand was created after we had a supply.
Did we demand an email service before Hotmail started providing this? No. We felt the need when the service was available.
Crux of the story is – if your product is good, it will create its market. And, if the product is excellent, it would definitely discover its big blue ocean.
Product Development : Importance of STOP
Posted By Nitesh Ambuj on June 14th, 2010
To create something new, to create something unique, requires passion. Passion, which can drive us to build remarkable things. Product Development is one of such passionate activities. It requires 100% of your effort, 100% of your zeal, and 100% of your passion. But sometimes when we are passionate we forget to realize the importance of a STOP. We keep on working, improving and adding new things. Our entire focus remains on the product which we start treating like our baby. We don’t like to see a single defect in that product. We don’t like to get a single flow in it. This, in result, increases the complexity. Completion becomes tough. We strive for perfection and that creates a never ending journey.
On a similar note, Getting Real talks about the importance of Done.
Decisions are temporary so make the call and move on
Done. Start to think of it as a magical word. When you get to done it means something’s been accomplished. A decision has been made and you can move on. Done means you’re building momentum.
But wait, what if you screw up and make the wrong call? It’s ok. This isn’t brain surgery, it’s a web app. As we keep saying, you’ll likely have to revisit features and ideas multiple times during the process anyway. No matter how much you plan you’re likely to get half wrong anyway. So don’t do the “paralyis through analysis” thing. That only slows progress and saps morale.
Doing it correctly at first go is important, but strive to make it perfect, adds extra burden. The importance question is – do we really need to make it perfect? Can we ever achieve zero defect stage in our product development life cycle? If not – then why to prolong our normal flow to consummate that extra piece of quality?
When things are looking like a never-ending-process, we need to think. We need to revisit our plan and see whether it is really required to continue? Or, we can consider a logical end and move on. Sometimes, theoretically or rather say emotionally it doesn’t look like a good solution but it actually works. STOP at a logical end and START working on other modules always helps in a long run.
Product Development is a journey which requires STOP n START multiple times. We just need to understand when is the time to call them.
