Is the Product Development stack broken in the Post Covid world?

Question

Until just a couple of years ago, most of the companies were marketing driven, or sales driven. Now everytime a recession (or a slowdown) hits, enterprise becomes scrappy. 

Sometimes, that can cause a systemic shift that stays. 
Like self serve restaurants (from Great Depression if 1930s).

In the hyper-connected digital world of today, the thing that will get affected the most is how Software gets built.

Old Way: Most teams relay on bug tracking, or task management. Specs are hardly ever written down, experimentation and A/B testing are seldom followed. While marketing and sales teams have a gazillion products to choose from to optimise their workflow.

New Way: Most product teams will bother about business impact of the features they build. Even the smaller ones. Most teams will need to get organised better to ship great products. Collecting customer feedback, prioritising features, writing down the specs and measuring metrics will become as common as numbers are to Sales teams.

What do you guys think?

---

The Plug : 

I share my views to promote LightCat.io, Spec'ing and Roadmapping for product teams. 
It's shameless.
I don't care :-)

Peter Pezaris · Accepted Answer

We're trying to help solve the same problems, but attacking a different part of it. I think the development process is broken: in 2020, with messaging apps for literally everything, why are developers still copying & pasting code from their IDE into slack to ask a question about how it works? I am old enough to remember when we copied and pasted text from MS Word to email to talk about it -- that sucked.

CodeStream brings all of the collaboration to where it belongs, into your favorite IDE. You can talk about code, request and perform a review, and even grab a ticket or push a PR. All without leaving the environment you're used to.

Oh, and we happen to have launched on PH today :)
Also shameless :)

kush · Answer

@peter_pezaris Just upvoted CodeStream. Looks dope. In my teams, we don't do a lot of code review, but when we do, it's a pain. Ideally I like to sit with the dev - easier to collaborate - which is impossible in remote environs.

"Meet the team" in the post -  Dope !

Also shamelessness is the name of the game :-)

kush · Answer

@ralphilius It's true that it has been around for quite some time. "Product led Growth" has been a popular term for quite a while now. But companies that did it were indeed in the minority. I have been a scrappy (and cheap) founder (well, Indians), and have sometimes questioned if I was being theoretical and impractical in being Product Led.

Ralph Ngo · Answer

In my experience, the new way was there even long before Covid-19 and its effects. I've seen this since 2012 when I first started as PM. Maybe it's just minority of companies doing the "new way" during my career?

Ronak Jain · Answer

Wonderful thought process, this is definitely a good direction, but a lot of early team lacks resources to actively measure the success of their feature.

Joost Okkinga · Answer

Hi Kush, I agree with you. I also checked your fremium product. Looks useful though the paid version looks steeply priced. Good luck though!

Andy Dent · Answer

@okkingaj @kush_apoorva Agree strongly with "free product seems too suspect" which is why I published Touchgram's monetisation strategy even though the first thing we will charge for is a good month out.

Andy Dent · Answer

@peter_pezaris @kush_apoorva CodeStream looks fairly impressive - have a few issues so will post more on the PH page

Andy Dent · Answer

I agree that many dev teams had drifted too much into being "whiteboard-driven" supposedly agile collections relying on teams being co-located. I loathe that approach because I have never had a great memory so I like being able to look back at some trace of discussions. Even before smartphones, I was the guy taking photos of the whiteboard (which others quietly appreciated later.)

I do think there's room for something to more easily link decision making to product features. I've been a proponent of a simple Design Decisions Diary approach for over 20 years.

I don't think culture changes as easily or quickly as you think. I also don't think the current forcing functions directly cause as radical a shift as the self-serve example you mention.

As I 'm fascinated by how systems change, I did a couple of minutes "breakfast browsing" and it seems there were a bunch of other factors including the rise of car ownership and refrigeration. So even that big change wasn't simply a reaction to crisis.

https://books.google.com.au/books?id=VBljswTLaIEC&pg=PA421&lpg=PA421&dq=self-serve+restaurants+great+depression&source=bl&ots=bXqvMJrVV_&sig=ACfU3U1e24Fof-epfPY77V0M55gb0MK5HA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiZwKL99KXqAhVvzDgGHeh5AIcQ6AEwDHoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=self-serve%20restaurants%20great%20depression&f=false

Peter Pezaris · Answer

@kush_apoorva thanks Kush much appreciated!

Nenad Golubović · Answer

Thanks for sharing your peace of mind Kush. I personally don't think it's broken (some things are though), looking at this community and around me, I think I'm seeing post-traumatic growth. So many people working on so many things, it's just amazing.

kush · Answer

@okkingaj Aha. Sent you a mail asking what ticked you off a while back :-). The pricing isn't decided yet. I wanted to put something up so that it's clear we will charge eventually - a free product seems too suspect these days. Have got this feedback from others as well - will change it soon.

Viraj Patel · Answer

Change is the only constant.

When I first heard the news of the outbreak it was normal. No one had ever seen such an incident in their life. But then things slowly got worse and all the countries around the globe started to lockdown their nations. Restaurants & malls started to close, eventually all the businesses. In no time we were locked in our homes without any idea how things were going to end.

First 1 week was easily passed, watching Movies & Series not to mention all the devastating news. By the end of the second week thoughts began to run. What will be the time after lockdown ? How will the business change ? What will be the new change in printing & packaging ? Then came the idea of Online Custom packaging. Organising the large & informal packaging market.

Increasing Demand for Custom Packaging (Vocal for Local)
Due to the rise in small and local businesses around the globe demand for custom packaging is increasing day by day. This is because customers still expect the same level of attractive and Beautiful packaging proved by the multinational companies. More number of business owners are creating their own brand identity. Packaging helps those small companies market their product easily. It also helped businesses beat the competition from those multinational corporations.

Barrier to Custom Packaging
Getting custom packaging for a business is really tough. This is because there are some limitations to it. Businesses have to work on the Cost, Quantity and availability for packaging. Finding the right supplier which strikes a perfect balance is very difficult. So offer low quantity but the price is high. As low quantity is generally printed on digital. Due to which there are limited printing options also. If someone offers premium printing like metallic box or emboss UV labels then the minimum quantity is high which increases the investment. But there was no proper organised business which could cater to these businesses.

Online Custom Packaging 
Since the last few years we have seen the waste growth of online printing companies in vistaprint, printvenue, moo , etc. They have reduced the middleman, reduced cost, and shorten the process of ordering maining stationery items like Business cards, Letterheads, posters, flyers, etc. But when it comes to packaging custom boxes, labels or paperbags. Things get different that's mainly due to various reasons. One of the most important factors is size. In case of stationary products size remains the same but in packaging it changes. Due to that cost calculation gets difficult. Also manufacturing gets tuff. Due to that reason very few companies have the option of online ordering packaging.

That’s why we are starting Printzogo, Create Custom packaging online with full customisations, Instant Quoting  and faster deliveries. The idea was to make custom packaging for small and medium. Which is easily available, Have Attractive printing options, fast delivery, Low quantity and of course keeping in mind the cost effectiveness. Due to the increase in digitalisation there was a need to take custom packaging industry online. So that more people can get advantage and if more people order then the cost reduces further. The idea was very simple: there were many companies who offered visiting cards, letterhead, and all those stationery items online. But there was no company who offered online custom packaging service for business before.

Conclusion
Improvise don’t Predict the unseen situation. The time after Covid will change to a lot of extent but we must be prepared for the situation and not waste our time on predicting it. We must oil our machines, fill the inks and be ready to get set go.

kush · Answer

@ronak_jain Agreed Ronak. The lack of resources has two parts though - the lack knowledge on what to measure and how, and the inability to afford tools. Which one do you think is steeper and should be solved for?

Is the Product Development stack broken in the Post Covid world?

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