Бесплатный фрагмент - Product Development

Introduction: The Philosophy of the Product Development Approach

Product development approach has taken its well-deserved place among the most effective development systems. At JetStyle, we truly believe that in the next 10 years product development approach is going to be the benchmark of management and automation.

Why so? When we develop products, we change customers’ behavior. Customers interact with your product — this product impacts their lives in a positive way — they keep using it. Thus, your business grows.

To put it in a nutshell, the product development approach aims to achieve business goals and improve customers’ experiences as well.

What is a product anyway?

The first thought is — something we find on shelves in stores. Generally, products are sources of value for those who buy them, and sources of profit for those who sell them.

When we discuss the product development approach, we will talk about digital products. Digital products change customers’ behaviour in a gradual and consistent manner. Everyone wins here, because this change is always related to getting some value. Customers interact with your product — this product impacts their lives in a positive way — they notice the change and keep using it. Thus, your business grows.

First of all, let’s line up the key features of the product development approach:

— It is data-driven.

We use data to check on a business’s growth and implement changes at early stages.

— It is fast and incremental.

The business aims to expand its grounds, win new audiences, earn more money during the least possible amount of time.

— It is iteration-based.

Instead of working for a long time and then releasing the product, we deliver value each and every sprint.

To sum up, the product development approach is a combination of three main ideas.

Incremental changes + relying on data + developing a business fast.

Product Development Approach vs Other Strategic Approaches

This book is dedicated to the product development approach and school of learning. There are other strategic schools, and we cannot ignore the fact that during different stages of business development you can make use of any of them.

The point of this book is to highlight our vision: at the early stages, the product development approach is the most relevant for IT corporate cultures.

Basically, we can speak of three core strategic groups: prescriptive, descriptive and combined ones.

It all started in 1970-es with a big group of prescriptive strategies. In short, this type means that a few decision makers brainstorm and develop a strategy the company would then have to execute. A few schools inside the group:

— School of design. Implies we are looking for a profitable combination between what we can do and what the market needs at the moment. This is where SWOT analysis originates from.

— School of planning. This one literally means that creating strategy equals to developing a company’s business plan.

— School of positioning. If you follow it, you are looking for ways to choose the right spot for your business at the market.

Descriptive schools appeared in the 1980-es. They are more flexible as they prefer concentrating on the present state of the business and are less imperative about its future.

— School of learning focuses on experiments. The main development tool is the feedback loop. “Test before you invest’ to save resources and find a way to scale profit. The structure looks the following way: at first we find a challenge, we solve it and then reflect on this experience to make a conclusion on whether we take it as a best practice. The more loops we make, the faster we grow.

This is the strategy method we use when we implement the product development approach. It helps us move forward faster.

— School of entrepreneurship. When you work on a product, you fulfill a mission or a vision. Developing a company’s strategy is executing an entrepreneur’s desire to change the world.

The two schools of strategic thought — the learning and entrepreneurship ones — are sometimes in conflict with each other. It happens that an entrepreneur is not specific with delivering their vision and its value, so it doesn’t turn out successfully.

The learning school is a way to correct this misunderstanding. If you experiment a lot, you most likely will not waste resources to create something the market does not even need.

Having an idea is still important, as it motivates the team and gives the sense of meaningfulness. In my vision, combining the visionary and learning approaches is a way to success for a startup.

— There’s also a cognitive school. It claims that the strategy is what’s going on inside a strategist’s head. The most important skill is to model activity and view a business as a changeable system.

— School of power — claims that the key skill to succeed is the ability to form alliances to reach the maximum profit.

— Cultural school will strive to develop an internal culture that executes the entrepreneur’s vision.

— A good example of a combined school will be the environmental school that pictures the business as a system consisting of “food chains’. A change in any component will alter the whole system, so all factors need to be accounted for when a strategy is built.

Coming back to the product development process. We advocate for the learning school as it is reliable and fast. This type of strategy is self-educating, while it also educates you in the process. This approach helps entrepreneurs find traction with the market. It will ensure a quick start. However, it’s crucial to remember that it will not bring the big idea into your business. Nor will it build a culture capable of maintaining the changes you implement into your business.

Learning strategic school is a way to adapt your desire to create a business to the world’s needs, find your market niche and start optimization processes.

***

If you want to go deeper into the review of strategic schools, be sure to read the book by Henry Mintzberg: “Strategy Safari: A Guided Tour Through The Wilds of Strategic Management’. This is a meta-study that will give you a comprehensive understanding of the existing strategies and approaches.

Developing a Product: Is It Worth The Trouble?

Entrepreneurs are creators, dreamers, innovators, visioners. In their heads they are always in the process of fighting with reality and looking for ways to change the world for the better.

This is how new products appear in the markets. According to the product development approach, an entrepreneur needs to ask themselves a lot of critical questions, mainly concerning the value this product can bring to the world.

The product development approach states that a new product is supposed to change people’s behavior positively. This process should already exist, and your product is supposed to improve it and make it more effective. A series of questions arise at this point:

— Why would people want to change their behavior?

— What prevented them from changing previously?

— How many people are engaged in this activity in general?