Plan, Do, Check, and Act- Product Management
Thomas Edison, the creator of the electric bulb rightly said- If we find 10, 000 ways of something won’t work, I haven't failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.
The Deming Cycle explains the importance of PDCA.
As a product manager/owner,
Plan- Plan the product at the right time. Planning could be for the new product, enhancement in the existing product, or for the production process. Don't start without proper planning and also don't spend too much time in planning.
Do-Create a hypothesis/prototype. Get the prototype tested by your end-user/client. If you don't directly work with the actual user, get it validated in your organization. If you are into the HR business, get the prototype validated by your company HR. Try to get feedback and collect data from the customer.
If not, look out for the sales/marketing leaders in your organization who go out and interact with the actual customer.
Check- Work on the feedback and data you received from your customer. Analyze the data to measure customer satisfaction and needs. Don’t assume, if in doubt, go and ask again. Write it down or call out again and take confirmation on your observation.
Act- Implement the solution. Ensure you have a scale mindset and go out for both the present and future roadmap. When in doubt, just don't do it or call it out from the MVP. Google, when building the filter was not sure about whether to apply a default filter on the Date and/or the usage…, they just took the decision not to do in the given release. Rather they released the product and then saw their customer were highly interested in filtering by date. Next release they added a filter with default sorting on the Date.
Smaller deliverables will help you foresee the product usage and would also help you in making decisions on what to be prioritized next.
REFLECTION:
If the experiment was not successful, build another prototype, either to refine the result or try out a different approach (act).
