INSPIRED: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love (Silicon Valley Product Group)

It's amazing how far you can get by focusing on meeting the needs of some early customers.

second was captured by HP's tagline of that era: “When performance is measured by results.” The idea here is that you can release all the features you want, but if it doesn't solve the underlying business problem, you haven't really solved anything.

first can easily be summed up with the famous General George Patton quote I mentioned earlier: “Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do, and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.”

Focus on one target market or persona at a time. Don't try to please everyone in a single release. Focus on one new target market, or one new target persona, for each release. You'll find that the product will still likely be useful to others, but at least it will be loved by some, and that's key.

“First deliver critical rating and reviews functionality to developers building e‐commerce applications; next, leverage the data generated from this use to create a database of consumer product sentiment; and then leverage these data for advanced product recommendations.”

It is all about outcome rather than output.

Second, the team is not off the hook just by delivering a requested feature or project. The feature must solve the business problem (as measured by the key results); otherwise, the team needs to try a different approach to the solution.

Before we jump into the alternative, however, we need to remind ourselves that roadmaps have existed for so long because they serve two purposes, and these needs don't go away: The first purpose is because the management of the company wants to make sure that teams are working on the highest‐business‐value items first. The second purpose is because

First, the teams are much more motivated when they are free to solve the problem the best way they see fit. It's the missionary versus mercenary thing again. Moreover, the teams are designed to be in the best position to solve these problems.