Team should embrace the Product Mindset

Your team’s culture, attitude and the mindset is an important factor to succeed in the product space. Below are some traits important to cultivate in your teams.

Continuous Validation

Software products just like any other product, exist in a marketplace. Market forces as you know are dynamic by nature. If you embrace this principle and adopt the product market-fit and technology, you can be sustainable in the marketplace while gaining a higher ROI.

Research

Ability to explore any product subject matter to find what’s suitable for the problem domain within a reasonable time frame.

Ownership

You and your team must have the total ownership of the product to ensure you provide your full commitment to make it successful. Many startups fail due to issues within the team. One main issue being the team not taking ownership for delivery excellence. Increase the ownership of the product by aligning career progression with the purpose of the product roadmap. Be responsible enough to take care of different aspects of the product and measure it against the outcome.

Innovation Accounting

A Product needs to dynamically respond to markets and create value early on. A good example is how a startup works by minimizing the cost and trying to fit to the market needs. For software products, traditional matrices are not suitable. You need to measure the value creation that was brought on by software products considering the product lifecycle it goes through. Eg: during the early phase of the product life cycle there may not be enough customers to justify typical metrics. However, it’s possible to show customer engagement and the level of feedback your team has to align the product towards the market. This in turn, brings additional revenue. An innovation accounting mindset within the Winning Product model keeps the whole journey towards success in check. Your team must articulate and rally around key strategies of the product and leading indicators for success, from inception.

Agility

Practice the philosophy of minimizing waste that’s deeply rooted in TPS (Toyota Production System). It promotes how best to respond to the market dynamics and operational dynamics while reducing waste.