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.

Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

What do you say?

One for the low fuel LED!

You are never too busy to refuel your car. Fortunately there is a low fuel indicator in your car. However in a start-up, there are no such clear indicators. You may end up facing an unexpected halt in your journey if you fail to observe any of the following key indicators. You may be too busy to look at these blinking LEDs, but keep an eye on these indicators before they halt or delay your journey unexpectedly.

Hiring delays

Imagine a situation when your start-up has bagged new customer orders. Your initial product has got good response in the market. There is some budget to get couple of guys on board, but you and your team members are fully overloaded with work. You should utilize this opportunity at the earliest. Plan to get some good guys on board. Most of the rock-star performers (including you) are solo contributors and get scared with the idea of assigning a crucial piece of task to someone new. They don't trust anyone to do the critical job. Some of them are just too busy to lead the lengthy hiring process. Yes, the hiring process is a tedious one and often leaves one frustrated. But there is no substitute to this method. To grow, you will need to increase the team size. Delegate your work to someone, prepare your back-up and most importantly trust other people. Get out of this hiring fear before you loose the opportunity. 

The hiring process should be kicked-off immediately. You should always be in the hiring mode and keep looking for good candidates. Unless you prepare to grow, the chances are bleak that your dream of growth will ever succeed.

Too busy for team meeting

Imagine another situation, you have got a team of talented people to complete the project in the limited time and resource. Every one is super motivated enough to work sincerely. There is no need of micro-managing your team. Moreover, you are too busy running from one customer/investor meeting to another to develop strategy or meet new customers. In all this frenzy, it is easy to assume that the work keeps going on even without a sync-up. Obviously, everyone understands the need of the hour and is capable of handling it.

It is a fatal assumption that can derail your growth prospects. A regular, may be weekly or monthly, sync-up is needed within as well as across the teams. In the fast changing dynamics of a start-up, things change frequently, priorities are revised and expectations are redefined. Develop and maintain a mechanism to have regular sync-ups at all levels to ensure an aligned growth. Without clear direction all your efforts may go waste.

Overlooking quality & documentation

Finding critical bugs in a product requires testing hundreds of test conditions. Every bug fixing triggers another round of testing. In most of the cases, up to 40% of the product development time goes into quality control. Apart from allocating time in your product launch plan, you need to allocate some budget for test set-ups, bug tracking tool and dedicated testing team. In a cash starved start-up, this budget is very hard to justify. However, you can not afford to have unhappy customers. Setting up a separate quality process, bug tracking tool and testing team go long way in securing satisfied customers. To start with, define a minimum quality guidelines and adhere to these guidelines.

Apart from bug tracking and quality guidelines, documentation is another way to improve quality of your process and products. In a rush of creating MVP, documentation is generally overlooked. As the product evolves, some pieces of code/features just stick with the design because no body remembers the logic behind it. The small piece of code written for a quick PoC soon becomes a messy architecture with several loop holes. Testing such product becomes a mammoth task. The testing and development iterations keep delaying the product launch and ultimately you end up having frustration across all the teams. It is very important to maintain proper documentation at all the stages.

Postponing unproductive chores

Having sufficient support staff is a luxury that generally no start-up can afford, at least in the initial days. While you are assigned to develop a critical product, you also need to worry about several other unproductive chores. Setting up networking, fixing wiring/networking issues, paying bills, collecting payments, clearing bills, buying office stationary/furniture/grocery, maintaining lab, buying tools, book keeping, scheduling interviews, appraisal etc. The list is quite long. Your to-do list of unproductive chores have the tendency to getting filled very fast. You are over qualified to do most of these tasks. However, there is no way to keep pushing them under the carpet.

The best way to handle these unproductive tasks are to clear them regularly. Keep you desk uncluttered. Never let those unnecessary bills piled up on your desk. Find a slot in your schedule to complete these tasks on frequent days. Delegating these tasks to your team is another way to share burden as well as responsibility.

Ultimately it doesn't matter what car you drive or where do you want to reach, you can't keep ignoring that blinking low fuel LED...

*Image courtesy of supakitmod at FreeDigitalPhotos.net 

One for the Aging Stars!

Unlike a stable organization, dynamics of a start-up work culture keep changing. Product development strategy, hiring strategy, operational objectives etc are revised as a start-up moves from a single customer to more numbers of customers. Like any other transition, this transition may cause friction between internal teams & employees. The proper internal alignment as well as calibration in work-culture are required as a start-up moves from 3P stage to 4P stage*. Here is one example based on the observation on a growing organization.

We have been working with a small company for past couple of years. Its progress has been spectacular over the years. Recently we have started collaborating on a new project. Our joint customer was very happy with the first presentation by our partner company, however the situation was completely different in the second presentation. The main difference between these two presentation was that the founder of the company was coordinator in the first meeting, whereas the second meeting was coordinated by one senior employee. The senior employee couldn't handle the assignment as effectively as the company founder could have. 

You may see similar examples in your growing start-up. A employee or co-founder who has played very critical role in wining the first customer or making the PoC of the product, may not be playing the same kind of role when the customer base has changed. What should you do with the star performer of your company who is not able to cop-up with the changes? Should you fire the person or wait for him to adapt the new culture? 

The literature on start-up cultures suggests on slow hiring and fast firing. Before you take the ultimate decision of letting go your aging star, try the following tricks.

Communication, Communication, Communication:

A proper communication channel is the holy grail of smooth transition from one stage to another. As you grow, maintain a communication channel with your employees, customers and all other stakeholders. Due to the changing dynamics company policies, focus and objectives may change. It is very important that the internal team is at least aware of these changes. Organizing a monthly all-hands meeting or sending out a monthly status email can be very handy way to set the right expectation all across.

As for the star performer who is not performing up to the mark now, talk to him in person. Try to explain the new role and change in the work culture. Listen to his concerns and then decide the next course of action.

Measurable KPIs:

This otherwise obvious fact remains neglected in case of the hectic life of a start-up. Letting everyone know about your yard-stick is essential for others to meet the performance criteria. In a small scale operation, you and your team may focus on completing the MVP or PoC at any cost. You don't have time to define KPIs for your team members, however when you grow, these KPIs are very much needed to ensure that everyone understands the new process & expectations.  

Investment in People:

The best investment one can make is in the real persons. Your core technology, product features, product development strategy, customer base and business priorities may change from time to time, but most of the time, you will be working with the same set of people. These employees have put faith in your organization and have been given their best since joining. If you see any gap in the performance, try to find out the new tools/courses etc that can give them adequate opportunity to learn and excel in their field. Their excellence is the true measure of the success of your start-up.

Reorganization for new business priorities:

In the early stage, there are no clear work boundaries. Your software developer may be directly interacting with the customer or the sales person may be creating the marketing collateral. Let them freely work & focus on the getting MVP out and acquiring the first few customers. As the company grows, you may also want to shuffle roles of your employees. Understand their strengths, weakness and career aspirations and change the job description if needed.

Exposure to Customer Interaction:

There is no better teacher than a real customer. A hands-on experience is always the best learning tool. Keep exposing your key talents to the customer. Give them the role to understand the change in customer demands, hence the change in company policy. They will be able to appreciate the changes in the company policies, as they will experience the reasons behind the changes. You may not be able to assign every employee of the company to interact with the customers. In this case, monthly all-hands or status emails can have summary of customer interactions.

After trying all these options and giving enough time, if your early employees are not able to cop-up with the changing dynamics of the company, you may consider the last option. Even so, handle it very professionally. 

Notes:
* Please refer my last blog-post on 4P theory of start-up
http://howstartupworks.blogspot.in/2015/02/4p-theory-of-start-up.html

4P Theory of a Start-up

The four major parameters of a start-up equation are founder(s), employees, customers & product(s). The other components of the ecosystems are partners, vendors, investors and VCs. Seed capital & funding amount also play critical role in the start-up dynamics. However it is all about people (founders), people (employees), people (customers) and the product when it comes to measuring the potentials of an organization.

Based on these parameters, a start-up can be classified into one of these three stages:

• 2P Stage: It is the early stage of an start-up. The product is still in the idea form & the only set of people associated with it is the founding team.
• 3P Stage: Some employees have joined on-board and are slogging towards making the first prototype of the product.
• 4P Stage: The prototype of the product or MVP (Minimal Viable Product) has been exposed to customers. There is some customer base using and evaluating the product.

After successfully surviving the 4P stage, a start-up gets success in terms of bigger customer base, higher revenues and/or adequate funding.

Lets compare these stages based on the following criteria.

Criteria	2P Stage	3P Stage	4P Stage
Entry Criteria	Commitment to start. It can be started without a clear product idea. Commitment is the only key here.	1. Clarity on idea 2. At least one employee	1. Pilot of the product 2. At least one anchor customer
Objective(s)	1. Fine tuning the idea 2. Evaluate potential of the idea 3. Finding Co-founder(s)	1. Pilot of the product 2. Getting first few guys on board 3. Finding anchor customer for the product	1. Capture feedback from the customer(s) 2. Refine product features 3. Bring order in product development
Operational Focus	Survive while networking	Sell while building	Build while selling
Product Development Strategy	PoC by any mean. Big bang model	Small scale/duration pilots. Rapid Prototyping.	Improvise based on customer feedback. Agile development.
Priority list for spending money	1. Networking 2. Setting-up a bare-minimum platform for developing PoC	1. Setting-up an office for some number of employees 2. Hiring extreme end-roles, i.e. either a hands-on CTO to lead/create the design or a fresher if you are taking care of design	1. Fine tuning the product to the customer's need 2. Hiring some mid-level roles
Priority list for NOT spending money	1. Buying/renting out office space/accessories 2. Hiring specific roles like developers, HR, designers	1. Hiring mid-level roles 2. Establishing hierarchy 3. Buying/renting out fancy office accessories (Yes, printer can be considered a fancy office accessory, if you can work without it)	1. Getting expensive talent on board
Exit Criteria	1. Clarity in idea 2. PoC being accepted	1. One or series of pilots 2. Strong core team identified & retained	1. One or series of products 2. Customer base

One for the Bumpy Ride!

The only certainty about running or working in a start-up is that one finds an uncertain situation round the corner very often.  When people say that ideas are worth only 1% and remaining 99% of the success relies heavily on the execution, unfortunately they are true. So if you think that you have a very good idea that can make the next Google, Flipkart, Amazon or Facebook, consider that it's just the beginning of a bumpy ride. What else one should have, apart from having a good idea, to create a good product? Lets explore.

In the quest for survival, a start-up faces several types of issues. The most of them are not directly related to the basic skill sets of the employees of the company. It requires one to think out of box or apply some quick fix. In my past 5 years of experience at a start-up, I have observed that the problems of one type or another keep popping up.  For example, initially we struggled to create an attractive GUI. Our product was good and feature sets were attracting all the right customer base, but we were failing at a good GUI. Once the GUI part was controlled by outsourcing the design part, other challenges popped up. These challenges were mainly related to product aesthetics, stability, customer support, finding bigger office, selecting manufacturing unit, cash-flow, vendor management and so on. Every time, we zeroed in on one key issue to fix, we got a new one. We always remained (and still is :) ) in the fire-fighting mode. Unfortunately, there is no generic solution that can be applied to all the problems. The frustrating rule of 3 is applicable on all types of start-ups. Everything is either three times more or three times longer - either one needs three times more capital than one planned for it, or it will take three times longer to reach the milestones, or it will take three times more sweat & tears that one is prepared for.

However one strong pattern has emerged. A start-up can survive - not just on good technology, huge cash pile, good product or strong customer base, but only by the never-say-never attitude of its employees & founders. Being one of the first employees of the company, I have the opportunity to work with many employees, and everyone has contributed in a unique fashion. People pushing the limits, solving a tough looking problem in a simple way, trying very hard and failing, doing everything to make it work. Most of them are still part of the company, and some have left, but the culture remains intact. We deal every problem with the same passion. Team work wins over hard times.

A start-up is defined by its founders & employees. Apart from the obvious focus on developing your product or service, you should also pay attention to your work culture. Always be cautious on hiring a new person and don't hesitate to let one go, if he/she doesn't fit into. Keep looking for diverse skill sets and fresh ideas to welcome on board. As you grow, make sure that your employees also grow and the culture of solving a difficult problem remains intact, because as one has rightly said success is a journey and not a destination. And the journey to convert your good idea into a good product is not possible without passionate team members.

Reference:

• 'The frustrating rule of 3' - Ganesh Krishnan, founder of Tutorvista.com
• Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The very first brand!

The biggest irony of a start-up eco-system is that everybody wants to go to heaven but no body wants to die. It all sounds very exciting to work at a challenging place, but sacrificing the current salary from the stable job is not easy. The features of the new product sounds too appealing and fitting ones requirements, but most of the customers are not very comfortable with risking hard-earned money on some geeks. Even the investors face the same dilemma of choosing the potential start-up from the huge list of funding applications they get on the daily basis.

Apart from building the dream product or service in limited budget, all the founders have to manage the daunting situation of attracting their first few employees, the first set of customers and the first angle investors. Most of the founders consider their business idea to be the first major brand that attracts the attention. However, the fact is that the very first brand a start-up has is its founders. 

The potential employees, customers and investors look out for the trust-worthy founders who can actually make the idea work. There is always a fine line between genius and insanity, and in a way, the traits of the founders tell a lot about the future of a start-up. Here are some pseudo v/s real traits of this first brand.

• Academic record v/s Street Smartness

To larger extend, no educational system measures street smartness very accurately. Don't get carried away with the multiple degrees or academic records a founder has. Always look for the basic street smartness that is needed to stir the company from the initial garage days to a successful company.

• Experienced v/s novice

Age is another deceiving factor when it comes to evaluating the capability of the founders. One school of thought supports energetic, young, fresh out of college guys while other vouches for the experienced lot. A good founder is always ready to learn yet confident enough to articulate his/her ideas to the world. Listen to the founder to know more about this.

• Speaker v/s Listener

Founders are generally full of ideas and always ready to pitch in the unique business idea that they are having. However the real trait is to have good listening capability. An idea goes through lots of improvisation on the execution lane. Unless the founders are good listener to customer needs, market demands and technical challenges, they may probably fail to make necessary amendments to their ideas.  

• Dreamer v/s Visionary 

Most of the literature on start-ups and the celebrity founders advocate dreamers. However, being a dreamer doesn't take anyone closer to success. The real difference comes from converting a dream into a vision. A clear vision that can lead set of people to make thing happen. Ultimately it's not just about thinking big, it's about making it work on a grand scale.

• Business sense v/s Common Sense

Many revolutionary start-ups are not actually built on contemporary business sense. Let it be the product features, pricing, payment models or customer interactions most of the successful start-up's business models could not have made perfect business sense initially. By sticking to the common sense, they have made all the differences. The same is true for a founder. It doesn't require an MBA degree to establish a good business, but common sense will do just fine.

• Creator v/s Destroyer

Creativity & entrepreneurship are generally considered similar. A person who is good at creating a product or service is treated as a good candidate for a successful start-up founder. In a start-up journey, failure is the only constant companion one has. One may require to scrap the idea and start afresh or look for an alternative. While evaluating a founder, always look for his or her ability to destroy something that he or she has created. Moving on is the only survival instinct that keeps a start-up floating in the initial days.

• Junoon v/s Jugad

Junoon or passion is another misleading trait that is connected with a potential founder, however the key trait is to have Jugad or resourcefulness. More than 50% of the hurdles one comes across in running a start-up is non-technical and not related to the central business idea. Be it hiring or finding a suitable office space, the most time consuming problems of a start-up require deep out-of-the box and quick thinking. Passion alone is not helpful here. One needs to be extremely resourceful to make it work.

For a very long time, the founders of a start-up remain the only brand of the company. Gradually the products and services start speaking for the company and the founders become mere brand ambassadors. The transition from being the only brand of the company to be one of the brand ambassadors of the company is the true measurement of the success of a founder.