Today’s article is a harvest of pointers to articles about the focus on problems. An idea farm, so to speak, with really good articles about the importance of solving problems, not just eliciting requirements.
Focus on Problems To Create Great Products
We talked about this in a couple articles:
- Product roadmaps are a plan that shows “what problems will be solved”
- Problem statements, used effectively, are very powerful
And Some great articles on this have also been written recently:
- Jeff Lash tells us to focus on understanding our market problems.
- Amar Rama shows us that understanding problems and requirements is an art and a science.
- Patrick Neeman suggests driving requirements (by understanding problems) instead of gathering requirements
- David Anderson points out that the key to lean is a focus on value (and by inference, problems).
You won’t go wrong by focusing your company, your strategy, and your products on solving valuable problems. Marry those valuable problems with some differentiated and valuable solutions, and your product will dominate your market. Keep your eye on the profitability of the product, and your company will dominate the space.
In the movie Memento, the protagonist has no short term memory, so he tattoos really important ideas on his own body so that he can re-remember them.
Remember to focus on problems!
Makes a lot of sense and great business value, especially if you are a product company trying to build something on your own.
I really like 37signals approach to this, Getting real is a great read for any product manager!
Thanks Vinodh, and welcome to Tyner Blain!
I’ll add that while of immediately obvious value to product companies, this may be more distinctly valuable as the “secret sauce” of an IT department. Ideally, a company’s IT department will be focused on enabling business capabilities – as opposed to self-defining as a cost-center that does what is needed.
When you infuse the product-centric perspective of defining problems, you enable your IT department to drive innovation, and your company to develop distinctive competencies that can make it more competitive.