In Love with Building products

Why in Love and Why this Series?

Two nights ago until one of my first colleagues wished me, I did not realise that I had been working on typically the same job profile for close to 11 yrs - that is building products. The variable components being nature of work - entrepreneurial / intrapreneurial / employment, job titles, size & complexity of the product, and of course the money :-). For someone who likes to do a lot of different things and dreads the mundane and the banal, if I have sustained to do this from the beginning of my career until now - mind you, not by accident - but by choice, it has to be undoubtedly because of the love I have for doing this. Also, product management is not a one-trick pony, but a role that requires a lot of multi-tasking and understanding of a myriad of things. Given that a decade is something that I can at least pat my back on, I thought now might not be a bad time to put down my experiences in this journey with products. May be some of these thoughts will make you go "Hey - I get the feeling", or "I didn't think of it that way", or even "hell.. you are so wrong".

Given that this is the very first post of this series (I hope..), I would like to start with how my personal philosophy connects with my philosophy behind building products.

"Be better than what you were yesterday"

This simple one-liner is what I base my entire life on.

Every morning when I wake up, I mentally map a few things that are lined-up for the day that I need to accomplish and also make a note of things where I can better myself than yesterday. This could be as simple as making my room tidier than what it was yesterday, to cooking up a new recipe, or doing a better presentation, or treating somebody well, to managing my temper, to anything. This is all about the "knowns" and the "whats" of the day.

We all know that everyday we see things that may or may not go our way. As the day progresses, we come across various things which one wouldn't have anticipated to happen that day. And of course there are the other things where I end up making a mistake.

As I unwind for the day, I spend a few minutes going through what went right - which is a no brainer. The more important things though are the ones where I tried or failed. The learnings are bigger here, and these are perhaps the goals for tomorrow.

Parallel Universe

Now in my parallel universe where I am building products, I translate the same philosophy within the product paradigm. As a product manager, I look at ways and means that would lead me to a place, that would enable me build a feature that makes the product better than what it was yesterday; a product that makes my customer's life better than what it was yesterday.

I read this tip by Box's Senior Executive Jeetu Patel's last week on LinkedIn. Quoting him, "For those starting out in product, here's a tip: Design, Defaults, Documentation, Details and Delivery really matter in software." While I have been modelling my product management/delivery methods on these lines nevertheless, the 5-Ds so succinctly capture how we don't miss out on these aspects. As a product manager, one needs to be multi-dimensional and keep a tab on these, and also drive them to customer success.

Every little move towards bettering in at least one aspect everyday in any of these Ds is an amazing goal that one can set-up for a decent Product Management process. Of course there is more to products, than setting these goals, which I hope to cover in these small bite-sized articles.

Would love to hear from you on what motivates you to build your products and your own philosophy that drives your methods - Do drop a line in the comments below.