Thread by @SparklesJohnny

The business I work for has been transitioning from project-led, to product-led for the last few years.

Here are some of the things I've learnt during that time 🧵:

#product #prodmgmt #productmanagement

Our customers used to specify what they wanted and pay for the project team to deliver it. This led to an unsustainable product with numerous features just for a single customer and high maintenance costs. These specs came from the 'buyers' and not the 'users' (we are B2B).

We are making good progress but still going through the change. Doing user research has helped build confidence that we understand our customers, and some have started to relax control.

I've found that the users are more supportive of understanding the problem than the buyers. The users have usually been the victims of the buyers coming up with requirements that don't really solve their problems. They are really keen to help.

There's still some pushback. Some buyers don't really recognise that the previous situation was unsustainable and still want to dictate exactly what to build.

We are trying to tackle this by presenting them with market research and helping them understand that if we build their feature, it's going to need to be funded and licenced entirely by them. And it will not be cheap 🤑

Another issue is an aversion to incremental improvements. Because projects budgets and scope were fixed and value was only delivered at the end, there was an urge to try and build all the bells and whistles at once and not the simplest thing to solve the problem.

Having to enhance something later, even though it has been out there delivering considerable value, is seen as 'waste' to people used to project thinking.

Some of our buyers just seem to 'get it' and others don't. The thing I notice about the ones that do is that they were formally users or operational type people.

There are still some people who don't understand that software is operational. You can't just spit out a 'software' and pay for it once and use it forever. It has to be maintained and enhanced for as long as it is being used.

Generally I've found a lot of support for a product based approach from people who are in operational roles, users, or were formally users. They will often accept a simple solution that will improve their lives over one that has all the trimmings.

Testing this with a prototype and being able to show the buyers can really help here. Having data can help a lot too. If you can demonstrate that the feature helps achieve the goals set with the customer, it's a lot harder to argue with that.

Anyway, that's all I can think of at the moment. It's been a fun and interesting transition. It would be great to hear your experiences going from project-led to #product-led

#prodmgmt #productmanagement