Technological and Product Commitment

There comes a time in any explorative learning phase where a team has to make a serious commitment to a chosen technology. Every day spent working with web programming exposes me to a few new libraries, frameworks, and languages. I could literally spend the rest of my life learning about web technology without shipping a product, but successful people ship! I will work towards a position where at least a portion of my work schedule is free for learning new tech.

In the interest of delivering a valuable product before the ferris wheel stops I need to actively refuse learning new translations or implementations, at least for a limited time. Every development team has a half life to build and ship a product. This is true even in the best case scenario where a prototype catches on like wildfire and a full business is built in the wake of a breakthrough. Key lead tech members will move on to other interesting opportunities at some point in the cycle, and the product pattern has to be handed off to other technical curators. For example, it’s a lot more exciting for me to help develop the first or second version of a new tool, as opposed to optimizing the 12th generation. But both of these stages of a product are important to customers and critical to businesses.

If like myself, you find web technology fascinating and constantly shifting, don’t forget to force hard deadlines on specific products and technologies. Otherwise in your quest to initiate and connect new islands of opportunity you may find yourself surrounded by nothing but open sea. A balance must be struck between perceiving potential patterns, and realizing the value of a single product through iteration and execution.

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  • http://arnoldwaldstein.com awaldstein

    Hi Mark

    The product is the thing….

    A product frame of mind is about focus to solve a problem, making a choice and moving forward.

    Everything will change but moving forward is the criteria that drives everything else.

    Not belitling the choice of course…

  • http://www.victusspiritus.com/ Mark Essel

    It's amazing to me that “the thing” can scale where my effort and hours cannot. A great many people can leverage a product I nurture into existence while I can only spend my time once. It makes all the effort that goes into product exploration and design worth while.

    Plus if done right, others can build on or with that product and invent new valuable products that were beyond my thoughts.

  • http://arnoldwaldstein.com awaldstein

    I don't think of it that way….

    You scale through what you build–a team or company. A method. A brand. Or a product that takes on a life of its own. Or a family.

    What we create and add to the world are what makes the creative process so unique and so personal.

    Very few get to actually build something greater than themselves.

  • http://www.iamronen.com iamronen

    I enjoyed this short interplay between the two of you.

    The first thought it led me to was that there is a (false!) capitalist-based myth-idea that freedom (at least the economical kind) can be achieved by “leveraging others”. I believe this is a false myth and leads to abuse (of the self and of others). It is masked with appealing and reasonable philosophies – but if you pursue it a bit further you arrive at some highly abusive and dellusional (and popular) “business models” – such as multi-level-marketing schemes.

    Then the thought moved past objection into something else. There is a movement towards better – “You scale through what you build” – the better you build the better you scale. When you do this you aturally attract and gravitate towards like-spirited people (which is the flipside expression of the capitalist abuse coin). This is dharma.

    Capitalist (ie money-value dominated) thinking seems to push us into a pursuit of “more”. This often (way too often) comes at the expense of pursuing better.

  • http://www.victusspiritus.com/ Mark Essel

    You confirm my steadfast belief that there is great value in designing and building tools which empower users, instead of taxing their attention.

  • http://arnoldwaldstein.com awaldstein

    In my view of the social web and social design, you actually build in concert with the community that will determine the value and the economics of the product or service.

    This is a tangible approach to development and value and business model in a world where your community (or customers) defines your brand and your value.

    If you can't attract adopters or community, its a non starter. If you can, the process defines itself.

    The big issue of course is the first step…which most start-ups don't achieve…and that is getting something functioning that can attract those adopters.

    I'm a believer that Mark will do just that!

  • Leland

    Perhaps instead of optimizing the 12th version, developers should be given the freedom to try new things on that 12th version instead? :)

  • http://www.iamronen.com iamronen

    Unless you get more specific about who you are “users” are (and find a better name for them then users!) your assumption that they “want to be empowered” has no basis for even debate let alone a product.

    The greatest trap of the word “user” amongst development-teams is that unless you make more specific choices about it, you will always fall back to your own preferences – and most members of development-teams are usually not indicative – and mostly counter-indicative to “real users”.

    Which is one of the reasons why Facebook has 400 million people who don't even know what you mean by … ahum … empowering them!#!@$ and why you are here talking about empowering!

    If you are consciously aiming for people like yourself – then you are creating a development platform for developers not an end-user product. In that case you need to ask yourself what those developers want and what you want to give them. You also need to realize that since you are NOT committing to an end-user product – that you are passing the burden of doing that on to your developer-customers… and I have a feeling that will turn them off!

  • http://www.victusspiritus.com/ Mark Essel

    Passionate and well thought Ronen.

    I want work on tools that help me and other folks. You're right users
    is too vague and incorrect: fellow value creators may be a better
    description but is a little long. If I describe the person who would
    benefit maybe you can help me come up with a more appropriate term?

    The folks I'd like to create tools for should be comfortable with web
    browsers and interactive GUIs, but don't need to have a strong web
    programming or design background. There are too many hoops to go from
    that point of understanding to sharing and customizing the look of
    content from a personally moderated source.

    For example: Even modifying WordPress themes is tricky until you
    understand where all the divs are for that particular one. If I can
    see the surface or view of a web page, I should be able to manipulate
    it easily without spending hours learning details that will likely be
    depricated in periodic updates (I've lost a few tweaks to theme
    updating).

  • http://www.victusspiritus.com/ Mark Essel

    Thanks Arnold, your support means alot!

    So much to take in and synthesize while learning the ropes. You nailed it with your description. It's about building something folks can gravitate around and selling a vision. Wild and fun exploration :)

  • http://www.victusspiritus.com/ Mark Essel

    I concede to this wisdom. Very much in line with Google's 20%. I like
    self motivated engines of collaborative creation, make it 100% worker
    driven effort. Self organizing workforces…

  • http://arnoldwaldstein.com awaldstein

    Mark..have I thanked you lately for these online conversations. They are an important part of the day.

    Thanks!

  • Leland

    Hmm Disqus won't let me directly reply to ronen, so I will post here. I don't completely agree with what Ronen said about just developing for what customers want.

    I disagree with him because true innovation always comes off a TANGENT from what customers say they want. If you give customers exactly what they want, you will end up in an endless slow-iteration process such as what Microsoft and the other big companies are stuck in. Endlessly pushing tiny improvements and “features” to fix complaints that users have.

    To create something innovative and game-changing, developers have to inflect by themselves, keeping in mind current and past knowledge from outside sources of course. Through this inflection, new and innovative ideas on how processes can be dramatically changed and/or altered can be formulated.

    My conclusion: It is important to examine what the end-user wants, but directly creating the system based on those wants is not the way towards innovation. Self-inflection and idea propagation combined with end-user feedback and research is where the sweet spot lies.

  • http://www.iamronen.com iamronen

    re: “The folks I'd like to create tools for should be… “

    – The folks need to be not only technically capable but also motivated and in line with what you want to achieve.
    – The folks need to have the time and resources to transform your “framework” into good and reliable end-user tools (an effort that goes way beyond a, for example, WordPress plugin)
    – The folks need to have the ability to design a good end-user product – this is not a given when it comes to programmers.
    – Assuming they have the time and resources – they need to be able to get their products to market.
    – The folks need to feel a balance between their efforts and the fruits of their work.

    Most importantly – the folks should either be people that exist in the world, or alternately – you need to acknowledge what “folks” are actually out there and then see fi you can build a bridge into their lives with your “framework”. If you don't see the bridge – there's going to be a deep chasm keeping your “framework” from coming to fruition.