The Clever PM (PN)

Tips, tricks, and hacks that help you to be a better, more clever, Product Manager.

Incremental Improvement – Why You Need to Change the Wheels While the Bus is Moving

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There have been numerous situations in my career as a Product Manager where I’ve come into a project or product that’s so established and critical to client success that there’s a strong hesitancy on the part of anyone to dig in and muck with what’s “working”, even if it’s not really “working” in the eyes of the customer or user. This is, sadly, the fate of many B2B applications that have been in place for more than 5 years or so — B2B systems tend to be designed to meet specific goals and specific purposes, then have additional capabilities “bolted on” afterward, with little or no attention paid to how everything works together or what the overall user experience is.

And, what you wind up with in those cases is a runaway bus that needs to have the engine tuned, the wheels changed, the outside painted, and the upholstery redone — all while the bus remains in transit, and while it’s entirely full of passengers.

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Dropbox: The Most MVP of All MVPs

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It’s constantly surprising to me that people seem to have such widely different ideas of what the term “MVP” or “Minimally Viable Product” really means.  Perhaps it’s a result of the term becoming an industry buzzword, or perhaps it’s because it’s used in some very different contexts, but it always baffles me that people focus on the “minimal” part of the term and completely forget the “viable” and “product” side of things.  To me, you don’t have an MVP unless you meet all three criteria:

  • You have identified the minimum set of features necessary to engage your users and to solve their valuable problem;
  • You have identified a way to ensure that your solution is scalable enough, stable enough, and valuable enough that you can confirm your product hypothesis; and
  • You actually have something that you can sell, market, or test.

Whenever I think of what MVP means to me, I think of Dropbox, the cloud-based file-sharing system that pretty much encapsulates everything that an MVP should be.

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The Myth of the “Faster Horse”

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I’m sure you’ve heard of the allegorical story that, when asked why he built his cars the way he did, Henry Ford is alleged to say, “If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”  Unfortunately, there’s no evidence that supports the claim that he is to have said it — though it certainly sounds like something that Ford would say.  After all, he was the one who said that his customers could have their Model T in any color they wanted…so long as it was black.

The popularity of this quote, however, persists beyond all proof that it was never actually spoken by someone so famous.  Is it because there’s some kernel of universal truth to be found in it, or is it because it gives us license to do what we want, when we want it, and to rationalize it by saying that customers don’t know what they want?  The truth, actually, lies somewhere in between.

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