Demystifying the product path

Tedi Konda (@tedi)Instructor, Curriculum Fellow, General AssemblyExecutive Director, Technology, Unison

The idea is not nearly enough

Neither is just the technology

The special sauce lies in execution and ability to get the product in the

hands of your audience

…however the idea is a good first step

Find one job to guide your purpose and focus

The more focused you are at trying to solve one problem, the higher the

chances of succeeding

Founder

Lesson 1: truly understand your purpose

1. Market analysis2. Audience research3. Competitive research

Research

Researcher

Lesson 2: understand demand, competition, and audience

User personas: think through the eyes of your audience

Researcher

Humanize your product

Lesson 3: use empathy to guide your product design

Break down business rules to user stories to guide your product development

Researcher

Sketch out product taxonomy

Build out wireframes

Wireframes = blueprints

UX Designer

WireframeResearch

Design the user interface…essentially the paint job

Designer

WireframeResearch User Interface

Build the damn thing!

Developer

WireframeResearch User Interface Build

What’s involved in the build?What methods of delivery does your

product need to launch with?

Technology Stack

Front-end dev

Back-end dev

iOS dev Android devObjective-C

Swift

Java

HTMLCSS

Javascript

RubyPython MySQLServers

Testing

Quality assurance

QAResearcher

User testing

Lesson 4: always get validation

…but wait, we forgot two important roles

Product manager: the glue to all these rolesPM

Marketing: just because you build it, doesn’t mean they will comeMarketer

Tweak RepeatMeasure

So what’s the secret sauce?

Be nimble

Be transparent

Open all lines of communication in the project

Involve people often and early

This is a lot of people for my little idea

FounderResearcher

UX Designer

Designer

Developer

Back-end dev

iOS dev

Front-end dev

Android dev

QA

PM

Marketer

Do I need all these roles?

Founder

Res

UX

Designer

Developer

Back-

iOS

Front

Andr

QA

PM

Marketer

Next steps? 3 options to get a MVP (minimum viable product) off the ground:

Teach yourself and do all the heavy lifting solo

Play to your skills: hire where you are lacking

Hire external agency

Last words

Implement the start-up model of always measuring growth wherever possible

Always analyze market

Build everything with your audience in mind

Have a good plan of communication and transparency

Thank you!

Tedi Konda (@tedi)Instructor, Curriculum Fellow, General AssemblyExecutive Director, Technology, Unison