Читать книгу From Vision to Version - Step by step guide for crafting and aligning your product vision, strategy and roadmap - Daniel Thulfaut - Страница 5

Introduction

Have you ever wondered why some products or services just felt right to you? How do some companies spark constant excitement with each new release and product? Often this is attributed to the charismatic visionary that is the face of the company. Think of Steve Jobs or Elon Musk. The truth is, success is not coming from an earth-shattering vision or from being charismatic. Success in product development and product management is about connecting the dots and translating the right vision into the right product.

3.328. That is the number of startups that fail per day - out of 3.698 startups founded per day. That is a 90% failure rate. Since you have opened this book, three teams with great motivation, ambitions and a vision have failed and closed their business. If you are a fast reader only a 250 more will have shut their doors forever and buried their dream when finishing this book.

The good news is, bringing a great vision to life and drastically changing the odds of product success is something you can learn, and that can be repeated. In this book, I will teach you all the steps you need to connect the dots between vision and version and enable teams to build products users love and buy.

Most of the teams I work with suffer from one of two problems.

- They have a strong vision. A significant purpose and notion of the desired future. But they fail to translate this into their daily software development and into each release.

- They are outstanding in shipping features fast. Even features requested by customers recently. But they have no idea where they are headed in the long run.

Both problems will ultimately lead to product failure.

There is no foolproof recipe for product strategy. The one strategy to dominate the market. But there is a process that enables you to craft your unique strategy. A constant rhythm of product management that guides you both in daily business decisions and on your long journey towards realizing your overarching vision. I will lay out the complete process with templates and checklists and give you everything you need to be a product strategy rockstar.

This process stays valid in all maturity phases of your product. This is not the n-th book on product discovery and how to develop your minimum viable product. Product teams think they can rest once they have found product-market fit.

Honestly, that is when the hard work is actually starting. That is the moment your initial vision and marketing fluff can’t carry you any further. It is the moment when good products die or become great products. The process laid out in this book will help you make a move towards a great product and keep disrupting yourself and your industry.

We begin by crafting the product vision. I will show you how to cut the management and marketing fluff and create a unique value proposition that acts as your guiding Northstar. Then we will build a battle-proof strategy that guides your team and makes sure you stay true on your chartered course. A strategy that actually helps you make decisions and anticipate market movement, competition and exploitable opportunities. The third artifact of the holy trinity is the product roadmap. I will show you how to stop wasting time on ever-changing lists of features and manage your product with outcome-based, agile roadmaps.

Make no mistake, creating and managing a rockstar digital product is hard work and only a few product managers put in the effort to get it right. So take this book as your blueprint and personal consultant. You will receive clear advice on what to do, how to structure your thoughts and how to communicate them to your team, your customers and other stakeholders.

These tools have been battle-proofed by companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft and most of the startups you actually heard of. Think of them as a best-of-mixtape of product management practices put together in a unique, coherent package and process.

Personally, I can look back on over 15 years of software development and product management and have made all the mistakes you can make along the journey. But I made sure to never make the same mistake twice and to learn from them. I have worked with startups, SMEs and some of the biggest corporates of the world - ranging across almost all industries.

As of writing, I am heading the innovation lab at Interactive Pioneers, an award-winning German agency with more than a thousand customer projects under the belt. I help clients form their vague idea or problem into a valuable product vision and guide them through all the stages and artifacts presented in this book.

People usually describe me as „as pragmatic as they get“ and „not the most diplomatic“. I suppose that is true. It has been so much easier to write the upcoming chapters and pour my knowledge and experience into written words than marketing them in this introduction.

This pragmatism runs through everything I do - from innovation consulting and my podcast to my marriage and parenting (much to my wife’s chagrin from time to time …). So if you are looking for concise, tangible advice and knowledge, look no further.

I am happy to be part of your journey as a product manager, and I would be thrilled to make a difference for you, your team, your company and your product. I sincerely hope to spare you from a lot of the mistakes I made and give you the opportunity to fast-track your career to a point where you can take all my findings and strategies and develop them even further.