Modern product development is witnessing a drastic shift. Disruptive ideas and ambiguous businesses conditions have changed the way that products are developed. Product development is no longer guided by existing processes or predefined frameworks. Delivering on time is a baseline metric, as is software quality. Today, businesses are competing to innovate. They are willing to invest in groundbreaking products with cutting-edge technology. Cost is no longer the constraint—execution is. Can product managers then continue to rely upon processes and practices aimed at traditional ways of product building? How do we ensure that software product builders look at the bigger picture and do not tie themselves to engineering practices and technology viability alone? Understanding the business and customer context is essential for creating valuable products.
This chapter addresses the following topics:
- Defining our business model and unique value proposition
- Deriving inputs for product development
- Understanding key business outcomes
- Defining our Impact Driven Product
Honeycombs are an engineering marvel. The hexagonal shape of honeycombs is optimized to reduce the amount of wax needed to construct the hive, while maximizing the storage capacity. However, building wonderfully crafted honeycombs isn't the raison d'être of the bees. The goal of their existence is to maximize their chances of survival, to keep their lineage alive. Every bee activity is centered around this.
The need to maximize chances of survival is true for nearly every living species, but that does not mean that the queen of the ants should ask her ant army to construct ant hills with wax in hexagonal tubes. It doesn't work that way. Every species has an integral DNA that defines what it eats, how it socializes, how it defends or attacks, how it adapts, and how it survives.
The engineering that went into the honeycomb contributes to a specific way of life that is suited to the bees. It is important to realize that the very first bees didn't initially build wax hexagonal tubes. They iterated over many generations and responded to feedback from nature (which is often harsh and can result in extinction). Bees have pivoted to this model and it seems to have worked rather well for them. Heck, they've even managed to find channel partners in humans!
In the product world, understanding outcomes and user goals is essential to building successful products. A product's success always relates to the end goals it meets. Engineering in isolation adds no business value. The same can be said about marketing or sales. Business functions acting in isolation, without the context of business outcomes or creating value to the customer, are not sustainable. The sooner we define end goals, the better for the business as a whole. After all, we don't want to end up building honeycombs for ants.