Product
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The product that you are providing is not simply the item or service in and of itself; it can be divided into three parts: the Core Product, the Service Surrounding Product, and the Intangibles Surround Product.
Product Design Philosophy
Questions to ask
Quoting David Law (SpeckDesign)
- What's your development objective?
- Who is the target audience?
- What makes the product different from the competition's?
- What are your customers' pain points?
- How will the product benefit your customers?
- How will you measure results?
Product Specification
When converting a "market need" into a sellable product, the biggest and best High Technology Companies typically follow a two staep process. Step 1 records the needs and wants in a Market Requirements Specification (MRS) document. Step 2 converts these high level requirements into a detailed Engineering Requirements Specification (ERS) document for R&D staff to act on.
Product Managers (Marketing staff) capture needs and wants from representative "prospects". These needs and wants are documented in the MRS - typically in non-technical language - and used as the primary "feed" into R&D (that's when the fighting and ridicule begins :-). R&D architects and Marketing colleagues will then work "in partnership" to convert the MRS into quantitative product requirements in the ERS. Together they will agree what will be "made" and what will be "bought" (or Open Sourced). They will agree the product roadmap. Project Managers will engage to then develop the product generation plan that estimates the scope, schedule and resources needed to specify, design, develop, make, test, qualify,and ship the --whole product--.[Project Management needs a section in it's own right - later]
Start-up's face the dilemma that all this still needs to be done, but with insufficient people, little working capital and no end of other stuff to do.So, if you subscribe to the adage: "to fail to plan is to plan to fail", then the following advice is for you...
- Create a summary MRD
- Summarise and then prioritise each Requirement from a "Customer" viewpoint - i.e. Will pay - "Must Have" (1), Probably pay - "Have Later" (2), Might pay - "Nice to have" (3)
- Construct your Product Roadmap showing when you will stage the "value" into your core product (product version v product features)
- Package the Requirements into the version 1 "minimum viable product" i.e. the simplest product that you can generate that your prospects will buy
- Create the product Requirements Specification for the "minimum viable product" (below)
- Charge customers for a Support and Update service to get access to future incremental releases
Don't miss any opportunities to get the Customer to pay you for this work!
Create an Excel (or equivalent) workbook with one spreadsheet per heading below:
Requirements Specification
- Functionality : text,
- Usability : text (One Requirement Specification I was given a few years ago said "The product shall be usable" - not too helpful :-)
- Reliability : text
- Performance : text
- Supportability : text
Further Reading
- Jeff Hawkins (Handspring, palmOne): "Designing Successful Products" in Stanford Entrepreneurial Thought Leader Lectures (video)
- Louth County Enterprise Board: Marketing the Product or Service Guide, June 2008 (pdf) - reproduced according to PSI License to Re-Use Public Sector Information Regulations
