

Are You Building The Right Product? - SmilingRob
http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/11/are-you-building-the-right-product/
"what would happen to the company if the entire product development team took a month off and went on vacation? The sales staff would keep signing up new customers. The website would continue to get new traffic from word of mouth. Could they be sure that they wouldn’t—as a business—be making just as much “progress” as they claim to be making now?"
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cturner
Great point. Paint shop pro comes to mind. People who weren't serious about
graphic design who wanted pixel editing loved the early versions, and it
became far less useful as time went on.

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kanamekun
<< We divided our customers into cohorts, looking at the new customers who
joined each day as a distinct group. Then we could ask, “How did today’s
customers compare to yesterday’s?” And, much to our frustration, the
conversion rates were almost exactly the same. It was easy to get
conspiratorial. It felt like each group had set up a conference call with the
previous group. “How many of you bought the product? One out of a hundred? OK,
good, we’ll do that, too.” >>

This is so true. I've seen similar user behavior at almost every website I've
worked on or built.

The good news is that it's hard to screw up your own website with new
features. Also that despite how hard it is, many competing websites will add
so many new (bad) features that eventually they will succeed in screwing up
their website.

Sometimes I wonder if this is why Craigslist has "won" for so many years. Not
_in spite_ of having so many competitors adding new features, but _because_
they have had so many competitors adding so many new (bad) features.

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InclinedPlane
Never ignore the meta-features, the basic _characteristics_ of your product.
Performance, usability, robustness, security, etc. Consider how many real-
world products are differentiated entirely on such features, the same is true
in every domain, including software. An Audi does not typically have any stand
out special gimmick at getting from point-A to point-B better than a Kia, but
it differentiates itself through performance, luxury, reliability, image, etc.

Or consider an even simpler product: chef's knives. Does a higher end chef's
knife have more features? Does it have a bottle opener, a pair of scissors, a
little pocket for a foldable cutting board to fit in, or a tiny countdown
clock to tell you when you should get your knife resharpened? No, it's just a
hunk of metal attached to a handle and shaped correctly. And yet there is
still such an enormous variety of designs, styles, and methods of construction
as knife makers pursue perfection and try to compete against each other.

~~~
shimonamit
Elegantly put. I like the term "meta-features".

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revorad
Can someone please summarise the main methods of the Lean Startup Methodology?
I keep reading a lot of high level posts like these, which sound like common
sense to me, but I guess it's not, otherwise Eric wouldn't be writing a book.

I have pre-ordered his book, but if someone can explain the nuts and bolts of
a few methods, that would help me appreciate the whole movement a lot more.

It's probably my ignorance, but right now, my personal Lean philosophy is
simply "you make what you measure". For example, this month I really need to
get a specific amount of recurring revenue coming in. So I have a nice big
chart of revenue on my wall.

~~~
kanamekun
Eric has a slide presentation on Lean here... the slides you want start around
page 26:
[http://www.slideshare.net/startuplessonslearned/2010-02-19-t...](http://www.slideshare.net/startuplessonslearned/2010-02-19-the-
lean-startup-webstock-2010)

It's hard to summarize all this in just a few bullet points, but I've found
that it's helpful to understand the history of Lean when digging into lean
startups. The Lean Startup methodology has its roots in Lean Manufacturing:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_manufacturing#Overview>

Basically, both lean startups and lean manufacturing focus on eliminating
waste. For lean manufacturing, it's usually assumed that you're making
something that people want... so the focus is on making that product with a
minimum of waste. For lean startups, it's often much less clear what you're
supposed to make. So the lean startup methodology focuses on helping you make
software that people actually want. Making software that people don't want =
"waste" in the Lean verbiage.

"You make what you measure" is a useful first step towards embracing Lean. But
as Eric points out, sometimes metrics go up regardless of what you do. How do
you know if you're measuring the right metrics, and making software that
people want? That's a core focus of the Lean Startup methodology.

~~~
revorad
Thanks for the slides, they are a bit more specific. I'm aware of the
background philosophy. I'm just looking for specific answers to "How do you
know if you're measuring the right metrics, and making software that people
want?" spelled out, instead of the same underlying rhetoric again and again.

I know it's not as simple as just listing bullet points, but if we are talking
Science, then it would be nice to see for example, how Bayes Theorem is
applied, rather than repeating how important statistics are.

To be crude, because of all the constant theoretical chatter, I am skeptical
of the Lean methodology, which is irnoic given it's supposed emphasis on
experimentation.

I also feel it subtly instills more fear into developers by not letting you
try crazy things which have a high risk of breaking stuff but also the biggest
payoff.

In short, my hunch is that you can get an IMVU from lean, but you will never
get a Facebook.

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egiva
>> Most product teams don’t know if they are making their product better or
worse; that’s why customers feel a twinge of fear every time they have to
update or upgrade.

CORRECTION: that's why most PRODUCT TEAMS also feel a twinge of fear when they
update or upgrade. We get over that by committing small changes regularly,
instead of waiting for major changes to be thrown down all at once and disrupt
our users. Also, all new UI or design features we launch in an A/B testing
environment, which tells us right away if something is wrong.

