Customizing the Core
When you have a product and hopefully selling it to customers, it’s really tempting to start making sales contigous on customizing that product suit specific customer enhancement requests.
This is dangerous.
While going down this path may seem harmless at first, it can have some pretty bad end results. The primary one being jagged-ness. There will be all of these pieces sticking out all over the place that would have been built to statisfy one deal or another, but at the end of the day, the business has really only gained short-term cash flow and has not contributed to the strategic product development / vision, which is what’s key.
It’s important for the sales boundaries to be set up front, and it helps if these come top-down. If not selling outside of the core is baked in the culture of the organization, it makes it easier and more natural.
Of course, if there is a customizable piece that is part of the core, by all means, that should be sold (e.g., a web application where the look and feel can be pulled and stretched for the client) and developed as necessary. And if a client has a good enhancement request that can be abstracted up to meet the needs of other clients, then that’s a good thing too.
I’m sure there are plenty of good tactics out there being practiced to prevent this from becoming a pain point in an organization…
Keeping Things Simple
At a time when I am making a transition from a company that was approximately 70 people and growing to a much smaller organization, I need to remind myself to keep things simple.
As I left, the company I had worked for was approaching the need to implement middle management and start building process. “Process” can be an ugly word in a small, small company that simply needs to get things done.
While the tools and experiences I gathered while working in Toronto, now that I am in California I keep reminding myself — “yes, this is all good, but, k.i.s.s. (keep it simply stupid)”.
Off to write some docs. Yes, I’ll get back to some regular product management programming very soon.
Manager Tools
I just discovered a great new podcast called Manager Tools, and I wanted to share it here. They offer a ton of great advice, and I am in the process of downloading a whole bunch of their archives.
Thanks for all the help, guys!
