Product Mindset - What is a Product?
Identify and define a product with upmost clarity and uncover it's 3 core aspects.
It’s shocking when people who have been working as product managers or product owners for years, fail to identify, define, and explain their products in a structured, confident, and simple manner.
It indicates gaps in product mindset at the very foundational level. That leads to confusion between product and service, business and product, product and component, and many such critical defining aspects of product mindset and product management.
This is an effort to set some FOUNDATIONAL PRODUCT MINDSET elements right:
What is a Product?
What are the elements of a Product?
Is it a Product or a Component?
Is it a good or a service or a product?
What is Product Management?
Are PLC, PDLC, and SDLC the same thing?
What is the relationship between Business, Portfolio, and Product?
How is the Product different from the Project and Product Manager from a Project Manager?
Who is a Product Manager and what does he/she do?
What is the confusion about the role of Product Manager and Product Owner?
More such topics to strengthen product mindset…
This is the first part of this blog post series; so consider subscribing to receive these knowledge nuggets directly in your inbox.
Let’s get going with the first thing first.
What is a product?
A product is something that can be offered to a market for attention, acquisition, use, or consumption; that could satisfy a need (realized or unrealized) or leverage some opportunity. It could be in the form of a tool, a technology, a service, a good, or maybe a combination. It is created by the creator, for a target group to deliver specific value to its consumer and its creator.
The purpose of the creator of a product could vary such as to meet some strategic objectives, satisfy customer’s unmet needs, offer innovative solutions to unrealized needs, drive a change or revolution in society, capitalize by exploiting an opportunity, meet some legal or regulatory requirements, or other such purposes.
There are 3 essential aspects of any product, without which there can’t be any product.
The creator or owner - That has an objective and willingness to achieve it.
The product itself - That has a value to be realized by its consumer while supporting the creator to meet their objective.
The consumer - That has a desire, need, or opportunity to benefit from the value of the creator’s product.
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This definition creates a broad understanding of the term Product with an approach to looking at any product. Now considering the above definition; would you consider a car to be a product? If yes then is a car tyre also a product? Similarly, do you consider Amazon as a product or is Amazon S3 a product, or is AWS Professional Services a product from Amazon? More interestingly are you a product (Definitely yes from a biological perspective, but how about from a professional perspective)? Is a burger that you eat at a burger joint a product? How is a burger at McDonald’s different from a Burger sold at a 5-star restaurant from the Product point of view?
Are the above questions pushing you to think harder and you are still feeling somewhat dual-minded about some of the examples?
The answer is that all of these are Products. But, some of these could also be identified as components or portfolios as well. The rationale for the answer to these questions lies in the main definition and identification of 3 essential aspects of the product discussed above. However, to be able to analyze a product at the deepest level we need a thorough understanding of all the elements of the product.
In the upcoming posts, I will elaborate on those elements to make it easy for you to analyze any product. Identify and define a product and component and many more such foundational subjects.