Ideas for software projects can come from anywhere and at any time, but for the vast majority of the time, the ideas are inspired by a need to solve problems that organizations will invariably have from time to time throughout their lifetimes. The two main categories of problems are addressing an inefficiency and creating an opportunity for itself in the market via creating a competing product that is better than (that is, differentiated from) those of its competitors. Stated in other terms, software projects can often be viewed as either being an efficient play or a competitive advantage play. Solving these two types of problems are the needs that every growing organization will have at some point, or at many points, in time throughout its existence.

So, how was Listing Carousel conceived? Having been a real estate salesperson in a previous life, turned IT pro, it was easy for me to think of a way to develop a better way for real estate agents to spread the word of their new listings (that is, properties for sale) to their social media circles, and to showcase their listings in a more informative way than the other primary options currently available to them. While there are several ways a real estate agent can market their listings, I found they lacked two basic things:

• A way to easily spread the word of their listings to their social media circles (that is, Instagram and Facebook)
• A way to present the properties in a slightly more engaging way, while also better describing the properties at the same time

So, the problem I had was that I had to create a software product that was markedly differentiated from other software services. The solution was to think of the two product differentiators listed previously and to assume that I can get access to the technology required to make it happen. Thus, for Listing Carousel, you can say that the software project was conceived as a competitive advantage play.

Great! I had a potential software project to work on! What's next? Well, as mentioned at the start of this section, the next stage was to do a feasibility study. Recall that the purpose of conducting a feasibility study on the product concept is to vet the ROI for the project, and to also do the research to see whether the required technology was readily available—or, if not, can it be created? Let's briefly look at this next.