Thursday, April 26th, 2007
A philosophy to product management
Charlie Wood at his Moonwatcher blog presents his
ruthless product management philosophy in his blog post
Spanning: Ruthless Product Management.
- Version 1 of a product should crawl. This means it should do the bare
minimum to be recognizable as what it's intended to be. If it's supposed to be a foo, and someone could
look at version 1 and say, "That's a foo," you're done. Ship it.
- Version 2 should walk. This is where you add enough functionality that the
product is useful in day-to-day life. This is not the time for polish. Basically, it's just adding the
things that most people insisted should have been in version 1, because without them, they said, the
product is completely useless. They were wrong then, but they're right now.
- Version 3 should run. This is where the product hits its stride. What it
does it should do well. It should be comfortable to use. It should be strong, polished, and effective.
- Version 4 should fly. This is where the, "Oh man, wouldn't it be awesome
if..." features get added. This is where you start implementing things that aren't necessarily useful now,
but have a lot of possibility.
