the 4 dimensions to consider when building a product and Do you do that?

Enterprise software is often built without looking at all dimensions involved. The selling approach unfortunately reinforces this approach and as a result a lot of buyers do not consider all the dimensions involved in making a complete well thought out decision.

Product companies tend to build products without profiling their target customer segments well. This means that Products are built without knowing the size of the end customer, the nature of transactions, the competitive players in that segment and the unfulfilled needs. Often products built to do X end up trying to meet the needs of 3X or worse Y. Bespoke development being repackaged as a product offering often short changes this critical step. Unfortunately we have too many cases of products simply not fitting the bill and the failed projects around the same result in huge costs and opportunity losses. Profiling target customers is never too late and will only serve as a useful indicator of what is expected from the product architects! Periodic updates of these as markets change or as the product morphs to target different customer segments will only help in serving as a useful baselining of expectations.

What are these dimensions and what do they entail? Enterprise software needs to address the following 4 broad dimensions: Architecture, Functionality Implementation, and Maintenance.

A well defined architecture would meet the non functional requirements of the profiled target customer segment and these include expectations around Performance, Security, Extensibility, Scalability, Compatibility, Developer Productivity, Cost of ownership, etc..

Functionality is typically a huge focus for the product company but there are caveats. However often Product owners do not explicitly identify features that really differentiate their offering from competition, features that will help extract more dollars from existing customers. Often balancing the needs of existing customers with that of the prospects is not achieved. .

Implementation considerations are another opportunity that proactive Product owners within a company do no capitalize enough. Experiences from the last few implementations do not seem to influence the product roadmap. Any customer would give an arm and a leg for a risk free and quick implementation (Often these are very high in the customer priority list but not given the due weightage proactively).

Product maintenance creates a whole new set of considerations that can be addressed proactively at the time of building the product. Often product owners do not apply a 80/20 analysis on support issues of the earlier releases and take steps to eliminate some support issues or providing sufficient diagnostics to improve the turnaround time.

Product owners do have a tough time trying to balance multiple priorities of various stakeholders. The current framework throws in another variable wherein they now need to balance the short term with the medium term which adds to the richness of the job!