My first day at Producter was January 30, 2022. The last 11 months have taught me a lot about building a software product and company. My biggest takeaway was thinking about why and how to develop something.
The why and how parts differ from each other. In order to develop something, we must first know why we are doing it. — For today, I'd like to focus more on developing a feature than an entire product.
Feature prioritization can be challenging for several reasons. One reason is that it can be difficult to determine the value that a particular feature will bring to the business. This is because SaaS companies often serve a diverse set of customers with different needs and preferences, making it hard to predict how a particular feature will be received.
Setting a vision that understands the customers' needs is key to solving this problem. As I understand it, a vision is a determination of where a product will be in the future and what problem it will solve. For example, Figma’s vision is to make design accessible to all.
It is my belief that features that are most relevant to the vision should be prioritized first. Users may want some features more, while developers may find others easier. However, the importance of product teams in startups can be seen here. Prioritizing the features that will benefit the product and business the most. This will help the product and business succeed.
Furthermore, mastering these will help you understand the value behind the features.
- Talking with customers regularly and understanding the real problems they face.
- Analyzing market trends regularly.
- Performing competitor research and defining how to differentiate yourself from other market players.
When we think about the 'how' part, I used to think that how the job was done and the process of getting it done was the easy part. Send it to the development team for coding. That's it.
Later on, I noticed things didn't go as planned. As the feature was being developed, I had to communicate with the developers a lot, and more and more unknowns were revealed.
So I learned it's important to keep the planning part of the job very tight and detailed, but more important than that was this. Designing the feature and preparing the documents and sending them to the developers isn't enough. We should also include the development team in this part. Likewise, developers should avoid things that aren't possible or would weaken the product. Also, if there's a technically better way to do what's wanted, they should say so. The key is to always be in touch with developers during the design and document preparation process. Both sides will be happier in the later stages of feature development.
Producter is a product management tool designed to become customer-driven.
It helps you collect feedback, manage tasks, sharing product updates, creating product docs, and tracking roadmap.
