Bar the Door (to new features)

In the rapid pace of software development, product teams soften have to answer to both prospective clients or customers and the sales team trying to generate revenue. Those pressures usually come in the form of requests for more functions, new features and otherwise add-one to the original concept.

It’s hard for product managers to control the scope. And, even though they may start the process with a clear, minimalist vision, in short order they too slowly morph their own ideas to accommodate the ever-growing roadmap.

Pretty soon, the development team is buried and the product itself has gone from an elegant solution to a newly distinguished problem becomes a Frankengadget.

But given the external pressures to answer every prospective client’s request, and to fulfill the founder’s own expanding scope of possible verticals and use cases, product managers are stuck in the middle.

Product Focus and Bloat

I recently ran across an article that had a title something like “All the things you never knew you could do with Microsoft and Google Office”. It was a tutorial on additional functions that in my over decades of using every app within both products, I have neither needed nor used. In fact, I never knew they existed,

If you look at any product you use, you will discover that like so many things, they too exhibit the Pareto Principle. Only 20% of the available features and functions get 80% of the use.

A Doorbell AND A Sprinkler Timer

When Jamie Smirnoff originally created the Ring doorbell — a product that is ubiquitous as the primary content of the NextDoor app, he originally had something far grander in mind. He initially envisioned their device as a complete smart home control system. They had an app that could control everything in the house—lighting, alarms, locks and more.

On one ordinary day, he was showing the prototype to a group of prospective users. Has he demonstrated feature after future, he noticed that some of them had begun checking their phones, and others eyes had glazed over. well they had started out excited about the product, they suddenly looked disinterested and bored.

He realized that less is more. People wanted a simple way to monitor their doorstep. So he zeroed in on making Ring the best it could be at that one function. A video doorbell. Of course, the core functionality of putting a video camera on your doorbell had tons of ancillary benefits. It recorded crimes and auction, noticed the packages have been dropped off and could spot the neighbors kid sneaking out at three in the morning. But nonetheless, the product was a video doorbell. Not a smart home control center.

That ruthless focus on a clear and simple product enabled Ring to eventually dominate the market and ultimately get acquired by $1 billion in 2018.

Having a clear use case that powers your product’s place in the market is critical. And while it is extremely important for product managers to embrace that clarion call. It is even more critical from a strategic standpoint. The hardest thing for a strategist is to develop a breakthrough plan for a product that has what I think of as a “fuzzy outline”. When the product, its purpose and ideal customer are blurry, the strategy will be equally as ill-defined.

A VCR And a Toaster!

In 1983, Sony and JVC revolutionized home video with the lightweight, portable video camcorder. Before the time, taking home movies was one of the noteworthy or deals of life. It involves huge suitcase, sized devices, and actual film. And if your family forced you to watch family movies, you were likely to sit around for an hour before hand, while somebody tried to remember how to reel the film through the projector. Portable video cameras were truly a breakthrough.

You may not recall those days, but I recall them vividly. Everybody had a camcorder. They were inescapable. At the time, I lived in the UK, and I can remember the transition from tourists with maths to tourists with camcorders at the ready to capture every inch of Central London —whether the changing of guard or fish and chip shops.

Both Sony and JVC cameras used a video cassette as recording medium. JVC’s was a VHS tape and Sony’s a BetaMax. The two were at war for quite a long time. Because of that competition and I’m sure, murmurs of dim requests from customers, Sony began to add more and more functions to its camcorder.

Some of those features included title generators and character displays. But because the technology was so new, adding so much functionality simply created confusion. Sony’s market share stopped growing. JVC took a vantage of that lull and pushed its product, which was simple and focused on one function.

Its minimalist design and easy availability of playback devices eventually carried them to visitors in the VHS/Betamax war.

But it’s not at all clear that history would have played out that way had Sony stayed ruthlessly focused on clearly executing a camcorder strategy instead of a product diversification strategy. The distraction and bloat of functions undermined both messaging and their strategy. And they wasted resources on product development, new versions and models, and additional training and marketing costs as they made the product more complex. Had they done otherwise we might all be familiar with Betamax today.

Getting to Less

There is a Japanese design philosophy called Kanso. Kanso is best u Dee’s told as “simplicity through subtraction”. By eliminating clutter and extraneous items, you can showcase an object’s pure essential form. You see this kind of principal in use in some kind of flower, arranging, and interior decoration. But it also evident in (for example) Apple’s design of their hardware.

In the next addition, I’m going to talk more about this principle, specifically in operations. But it’s not a bad idea to employ a similar principle and product development. Consider removing a low value function for every new function you add to your product. It’s a terrifying equation to try to manage, but it leads to spectacular results.

Here are some basic principles that can slow creeping product scope. They are equally as important for founders as for product managers—because fundamentally, it’s a strategy problem, not a product problem. Strategy succeeds on the back of clarity.

• Define exactly what problem your product solves in one or two sentences. Assess every new function through that description —and be ruthless.
• Evaluate every feature request against business impact, user value, and resources required. Use actual data for this—not your gut.
• Institute a “one in, one out” policy requiring the removal of a low-value feature for each new feature added.
• Survey users continuously to identify low-ROI features. Have the courage to remove them.

Do you lead a product or other technical team? The Leaders Lab Mastermind program is designed for you! It is an exclusive membership where you will get training, coaching, and a small group of trusted, fellow leaders who will become your own brain trust. Learn more here, or schedule a call with me to chat about it.