3) OPTIMIZE: Harnessing Emergent "Product Truth"

Part 3 is a work in progress!

In the meanwhile, here's a quick teaser on complexity and harnessing emergent "Product Truth":

How do you really know that you’ve solved the right problem? With the right solution?

This concept is known as product-market fit. It is fundamentally a question about the presence of complexity (as opposed to complication!) in your product development endeavor.

Complex things are defined by their “unknowables”: unbounded and infinite inputs and outputs, and ever-evolving possible states. Complexity exists around interactions: products and their markets, businesses and their products, behavioral dynamics on a team, pieces of logic in code, and more. The natural world is complex. The universe is complex.

Assembling Ikea furniture, on the other hand, is complicated. Mechanical watches are complicated. There may be lots of parts and steps, but these things are ultimately perfectly knowable if you're willing to invest the time in thoroughly learning them.

Both complexity and complication exist together in heavily engineered products. Yet, they are fundamentally different problems requiring different approaches to overcome.

The optimal response to complexity is agility. Complexity is unknowable upfront; it can only be realized through time and/or experience. "Agile" as a named set of principles sets out to deal with matters of complexity.

The optimal response to complication, on the other hand, is expertise. While all complications begin as unknowns, they can become known upfront (e.g. you thoroughly memorize those Ikea instructions). Research, documentation, and project management are common weapons used to slay complication.

Meaningful complexity exists in almost all product development endeavors. A critical challenge, however, is parsing complexity from complication, disorder, and even chaos and responding to each accordingly and simultaneously.

If your product development endeavor faces complexity (and it almost certainly does), the way you collect and respond to emergent Product Truth is of paramount importance.

The following framework summarizes six dimensions across which emergent "Product Truth" may be harnessed so that actionable strategic insights may be continuously harvested:

"No facts exist inside the building, only opinions" - Steve Blank

As you continue to develop a product over time, you will (knowingly or not) be faced with many "Pivot or Persevere?" questions.

Emergent Product Truths will inform your answers to those iterative "Pivot or Persevere? questions.

Fine-grain truths such as some small piece of user feedback or a specific measurement will inform fine-grain strategies on features and prioritization. Occasionally, fine-grain truths will create larger "a ha!" moments. Similarly, external context (e.g. user preferences, competitive threat, new business interests, etc.) will inform both large and fine-grain product strategies.

Stay tuned for more!