Enis Džolović
Product Manager
“When enhancing a software solution as a Product, you always have to keep in mind that your main objective is to “digitalize existing Business process and make it as simple as possible”. Simply told, the end goal is to make somebody’s life easier.”
Magical journey of ZIRA Products – Part 2
In the first part of this blog, we talked about shaping grounds for a Product. We talked about how to enhance well established processes and make them easy and applicable for the end User. Those features are baseline of a Product, and with them we make sure that the core Business Processes are there. But even though it is easy to say that the “four wheels and an engine” constitute a car, at this particular moment we do not know what car it will eventually turn out to be. Is it a city car, a truck, race car – or a luxury business sedan that will provide all possible features for easy and smooth ride. This is a moment when new ideas come into the play.
Digitalize existing Business process and make it as simple as possible
Remember how we mentioned that ZIRA is human-oriented company? Well, the main weapon of this philosophy is “listening”. Yes, listen to your customer. That is the first lesson that we have to follow. Best ideas come from an engineer’s mind, but the inspiration always comes from the outside – in this case market needs. When enhancing a software solution as a Product, you always have to keep in mind that your main objective is to “digitalize existing Business process and make it as simple as possible”. Simply told, the end goal is to make somebody’s life easier.
But when is a new idea sufficiently matured to go into the Product roadmap?
From Idea to Part of A Product Baseline
When can we decide that one new idea (from this moment on let’s refer to it as a new feature) can become part of Product baseline? Well, this is the tricky part, and there are few ways of steering new features’ lifepath. The feature has to be graded internally so it can be decided will it be the next innovative selling point. Of course, it has to be Validated, Implemented and Packaged. After that, same feature has to be presented to the Customers in one of the new releases, preferably with a short demo.
But what is the key here? Two things. First, feature has to have a clear purpose with underlying benefits. Second, feature has to fit in existing Product baseline without disrupting existing product guideline. For example, if I were to pitch a new feature, I have to know what my targeted audience is. Furthermore, I need to know how to position this new feature with existing features of product ecosystem for the audience. Again, here is another tricky part. Remember how we mentioned earlier that Customers always want to do what they are good at – without new things? Here we have to ensure them that this new feature is for them – and not some other team – and that it will be a great new asset that will help them with daily jobs.
But how to make sure that your Product has “that something” that makes is better than the rest? We’ll cover this in our next and final part of the blog.
