Business Savvy Software

The whole point of product development is to regurily deliver quality software to customers.    Seth Godin is always saying to spend your marketing budget on engineering and build a product that people will talk about.   

This is the basis of permission marketing: build a remarkable product, tell a story to a sneezer, they will spread the word, people will come asking for more.  This starts with building a product that’s worth remarking on, which you can do by accident or you can be intentional about.  Keep in mind that often users will ask you to copy your competitors, which isn’t very remarkable.

Understanding and managing your roadmap helps you to be intentional and ensure that you are solving the right (and most profitable) problems for the right people, so the final part of the process is simply to deliver.

One thing that always needs to be kept healthy is the back channel.  I described the roadmap as a radar, giving a point in time reference of the priorities.  The back channel is the off-the-radar stuff that just shows up and is either a no brainer or is very high value with very little effort.  There will always be quick wins that can and should by-pass the entire process and get straight into the software.  These quick wins are only possible when the rest of the process is operating smoothly, they’re the exception to the rule.

At Xero, our mantra is to release early, release often.  Delivering software into the hands of users builds momentum and satisfaction for both customers and the development team.  And don’t forget to have fun.

Read the whole series
Product Lifecycle: Part 1 – solving problems
Product Lifecycle: Part 2 – scope
Product Lifecycle: Part 3 – the roadmap
Product Lifecycle: Part 4 – delivering