“INSPIRED: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love” is a book by Marty Cagan, a thought leader in technology product management. Even though this book is primarily for Tech Product Managers, I got a lot of invaluable insights as a Software Engineer. It is mostly about establishing a strong product culture using modern product development techniques to build successful products.
The Traditional Waterfall Approach
The traditional product development process, used by most companies, follows a waterfall model as illustrated below.
This process has many flaws, which are the major causes of product failures. However, to sum them up, they include:
- Risks are being tackled at the end of the lifecycle rather than upfront. These risks are value, usability, feasibility, and business viability risks.
- Teams work in isolation, following a sequential process rather than collaborating. Each role’s decision is constrained by the preceding one i.e. Product Manager -> Design -> Engineering.
- The waterfall model is output (solution) driven rather than outcome (business results) driven.
Product Discovery and Delivery
Cagan suggests an approach of Continuous Product Discovery and Delivery to help alleviate the limitations of the waterfall model and consequently lead to a more successful product. These two activities, discovery and delivery, happen in parallel and are ongoing in a cross-functional product team.
In product discovery, the product management, UI/UX, and engineers collaborate to quickly separate good ideas from bad by answering four critical questions using experiments and prototypes:
- Will the user buy this (or choose to use it)?
- Can the user figure out how to use this?
- Can our engineers build this?
- Can our stakeholders support this?
In product delivery, after validating a product in the discovery phase, a production-quality product is built and delivered to the customer.
Throughout the book, and I would highly recommend it, the author dives deeper into product discovery and delivery techniques and touches on exciting topics such as people at scale, product vision, discovery techniques such as planning, prototyping, testing, etc, and how to establish a strong product culture.
Conclusion
Reading this book has greatly widened my understanding of product development as an engineer and made me appreciate more the collaborative effort required across different roles. I got the book as a gift from Wellthy, my former employer, and I’m incredibly grateful.