If you’ve uncovered a big problem that many users share, you’ve completed the most important step of your product definition process. More important, you’re on the road to helping a lot of people in a meaningful way! These criteria — real, big, and shared — probably seem obvious, but more often than not, teams ignore them. They also form the

Your strategy is a rough plan to win over your target customers given the unique assets of your company and the pressure from your competitors. That’s it.

a good rule of thumb is to optimize for usability and solve the abuse problems when they become real. I’ve rarely seen this approach fail, and I have seen products stumble by trying to solve abuse problems that might never occur.

To remove some of the arbitrariness from this stage of the project, I check to ensure that the team feels proud. Your team must be proud of the software they build, and the bugs you have in the product shouldn’t embarrass you.

teams.

THE NEXT STEP OF the shipping process is making your product idea understandable and specific.

Shipping software is unlike most other kinds of jobs because it requires precision technical communication, deep knowledge across a host of disciplines, and fortitude.

When all the major work on a project is done and the team is almost exclusively fixing bugs, I stop using the schedule. Instead, I use the bug list and a bug burndown chart.

THE USER EXPERIENCE IS not just what your product looks like, it’s how it works, too.