The Productologist

I went to visit another customer recently and discovered something very interesting about them. Their first hire was not a Software Engineer or even a Product Manager, but a User Experience specialist. How novel…thinking about the user first.

This is novel, because at most companies that build software, the first hire beyond the founders is usually an Engineer to write the code that supports the founders’ vision of the product and how it should work. Most founders are not experts in user experience. They may have been users once, but they are not likely the user that they are trying to serve now.

This is a new feature that I am trying out. On a regular basis, I’ll write a post with a collection of interesting (at least to me) postings from other Product Management blogs. It’s intended to give my readers some exposure to what else is going on in the world of Product Management and to spur some dialog.

Just because I include a link to a particular posting, that is not an indication that I agree with the original author. In fact, I may post topics that are the opposite of my views or at least somewhat controversial in order to provide a contrasting viewpoint to the one I present on The Productologist.

I went to visit a customer a few weeks ago as part of a commitment to myself (and my products) to get out into the field more often. My goal with them and with all of my planned visits to the field was to talk about how they use my product, what business challenges they face and what they see for the future in terms of their own growth and what they would want and need from my product. I got what I was looking for…and a whole lot more.