The Caspian The Caspian has its realms of sand, Its other realm of sea; Without the sterile perquisite No Caspian could be. Emily Dickinson, The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson beautybalance
Duality All existence seemed to be based on duality, on contrast. Either one was a man or one was a woman, either a wanderer or a sedentary burgher, either a thinking person or a feeling person – no one could breathe in at the same time as he breathed out, be a man as well as a woman, experience freedom as well as order, combine instinct and mind. One always had to pay for the one with the loss of the other, and one thing was always just as important and desirable as the other. Herman Hesse, Narcissus and Goldmund balance
Research, empathy, simplicity, speed An Article by Matthew Ström matthewstrom.com As Nosrat provides a simple list of essential ingredients for any great meal, can we describe a simple list of essential components for digital products? Here are four elements that I believe are the foundation of great digital products: Research, Empathy, Simplicity and Speed. Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat designsoftwareproductsbalance
Product vs. Feature Teams An Article by Marty Cagan svpg.com This article is certain to upset many people. Empowered product teamsViability, usablity, feasibilityWhat went wrong? featuressoftwareagile
Empowered product teams When I wrote about the virtues of empowered product teams, I was referring to what I’ll continue to call here as product teams. Specifically, they are cross-functional (product, design and engineering); they are focused on and measured by outcomes (rather than output); and they are empowered to figure out the best way to solve the problems they’ve been asked to solve.
Viability, usablity, feasibility In an empowered product team, the product manager is explicitly responsible for ensuring value and viability; the designer is responsible for ensuring usability; and the tech lead is responsible for ensuring feasibility. The team does this by truly collaborating in an intense, give and take, in order to discover a solution that work for all of us. However, in a feature team, you still (hopefully) have a designer to ensure usability, and you have engineers to ensure feasibility, but, and this is critical to understand: the value and business viability are the responsibility of the stakeholder or executive that requested the feature on the roadmap. What went wrong? teamwork
What went wrong? If something ships from one of the companies I advise, and it is virtually unusable because of poor design (which as we all know occasionally does happen), you can bet I go directly to the designer and ask how this happened? It is absolutely on the designer to ensure this does not happen, so something went wrong. Similarly, if the product ships and performance is terrible you can bet I go directly to the tech lead with the same question. And most frequently of all, if something ships and the analytics show that it’s either not being bought or not being used, or it turns out that it violates some business constraint like compliance or privacy, you can bet I go right to the product manager with that question. Viability, usablity, feasibility