My colleague Joel Harrison is good at encapsulating learnings from his experience. In 2006, while I was visiting him at his startup company, Abrevity, he said, “You can’t justify a new product based on a cost analysis of the first-generation product. You have to have a vision.” Joel and I had experienced the frustration of […]
Shifting the focus to longer term
January 26, 2008
Startup organizations are typically unsustainable and barely stable, because: 1. The pressures to develop and market a first product require taking some expedient shortcuts, such as hiring the most capable, but not necessarily the most team-oriented individuals; placing all priority on getting a workable product out the door, rather than building the product for maintainability […]
Is your software on fire?
January 26, 2008
The spectacle of Dell laptops on fire in the summer of 2006 due to Sony battery problems has prodded me to think about product failures. There is nothing so attention-getting as a fire in a conference room. Few people who see this sort of failure will forget what they have seen. Software failures may not […]
What is Product Marketing’s role in development?
January 26, 2008
A colleague asked, “Do you believe Product Marketing could be the bridge between the Engineering and R&D organizations? It seems to me that market requirements are the other piece to incorporate there and Product Marketing could add that to R&D’s specs before working with Engineering to determine what’s feasible and on what time schedule… What […]
Development Process Stability
January 26, 2008
After shipping a first product, successful companies face a number of challenging problems in product development, including lack of development process stability as development work scales up. Here are some responses that have worked well in the computer, software, storage and consumer electronics industries. Why process selection matters now As Product Development scales up to […]