Defective by Design - 5 ways for a better product development

MVP, is the highly misunderstood concept in the start-up world. Theoretically, it is a minimum viable product that can be released to the end customers. However, to reduce the feature set and time-to-market, key features are jeopardized and the end customer gets a product that is defective by design. Here are some key guidelines or checks that a product manager can follow to ensure that they don't end-up wasting their precious resources on a product which is defective by design.

MVP v/s POC

Proof of Concept (POC) is a small bridging task that proves that the entire product/services will work out. It is not a complete product itself. It is just a validation that assumes that all other parts of the product/services are working as expected. In most of the new product or services, the majority of innovation happens at integrating different pieces or defining bridging technology. While this is the most important part of the product/but, but not a complete product itself. The POCs should just be treated as the first step to the product development and not the complete product itself. 

While defining your MVP, always keep in mind that a MVP compromises on the features but not on the purpose of the product. The picture* below summarizes it perfectly.

Plurality of Customers

In a simplistic form of product development, the features are defined keeping the end-customer in mind. However, the complex nature of business enforces several unseen customers in the eco-system. If these unseen customers are neglected during the product definition, you may end up with a product that works pretty well with the end-customer but fails to reach them. Lets take example of a glass break detector. Thinking about the end-customer, you might have designed the aspect ratio, basic features, on-off LED sequence etc for the product, but is your product really ready for a system integrator for adding it into a security panel? Have you ensured that integration APIs are following a standard protocol? Have you considered the installation team as your customer and provided them all the details for mounting the sensor or some LED sequences to ensure that they get some feedback while configuring the sensor?

There are always more than one customer of your product. And a good product, as well as MVP, should cater all of their needs.

WTFM

A software developer is aware of a very common term, RTFM (Read The F**king Manual). Lately the complex nature of software and branching philosophy of software manual have made user-manuals so out of fashion. If you have no idea what am I talking about, try reading MSDN API guide. The rise of open-source community has also made user manuals almost extinct. The philosophy of easy design are also pushing more and more efforts on having a user-manual free product.  As a product manager/developer, if you are also planning to join the current trend and save efforts on writing a user-manual, consider the following points:

• Unlike open-source community, your product is still not available to the open public. It doesn't have the big enough user-base who can help others to 'understand' your product.
• If you are aiming at your design to do all the work and avoid user-manual altogether, you must spend enough budget on design. You are the better judge of the budget you have allocated for the design, so take a bet :)

To summarize, just Write The F**king Manual and make sure that all the developers, testers, users, sellers, distributors and support engineers understand your product. You don't need to stick to the plain old style of writing verbose documents, understand your customers and create the content accordingly. It could be a flow-chart, a presentation, a video, a document, a form or a website, but just WTFM.

 

Simple is Smart

Keeping it simple is the simplest advice for your product development. But believe me it is the most difficult one to follow. Don't create a product to out-smart your customers or impress your investors or demonstrate your superior development skills. Keep it simple because simple is the new smart. If your product is not simplifying any of the existing method/product or philosophy, you should probably not launch that product. Period.

User Interface v/s User Experience

Fortunately, our decade appreciates the importance of good design. Gone are the days, when a basic working product was more than sufficient. A good amount of efforts are spent on defining a good interface, decide the right color combination, the correct theme for the product. The overall budget on user-interface has grown multi-fold in the last decade. However, a good user interface is not a cure of the bad user experience. The overall user experience, starting from buying to getting the support, should be considered from the early stages of the product development.

Hopefully, you will find these guidelines relevant to your product development. Feel free to share your experience on avoiding a product which is defective by design.

 

*I have found this beautiful picture perfectly depicting MVP on LinkedIn but couldn't locate the original source. If you are aware of the original source, please let me know.