The Art of Product Development is Finding Truths

There is still an art to product development.

If it was as easy as reading a book or listening to a podcast, every product would be successful, every feature would be a smash hit, and every startup would be insanely profitable. This is not the case.

This art is finding truths.

There is no tool that’s all of a sudden is going to make a PM or a designer be good at finding truths.

The biggest fallacy is you have to start with a hypothesis (“If we do X, we will achieve Y”). This led to product teams thinking their job is to come up with solutions before they even question what they want to achieve and why. The right solution to the wrong problem is always a bad solution.

The job of product teams is to define the problem as crystal clear as possible. And you can only define a problem when you have a clearly defined end state. And something is only a problem to the degree that it prevents you from a specific end state. Otherwise your problem space is infinite and all problems are equal.

If you’re not zen about your problems, you do not have a good product practice. Finding truths means finding the essence. It means being abundantly clear on what your goal is and why.

Modern product development over-indexes on solutions. Product teams would be better off being insanely good at defining problems. The starting point should never be solutions because you can’t measure success and you can’t define the solution space without a clearly defined outcome. All solutions are bullshit (including your own) until the problem and outcome is crystal clear.

So how do you find truths?

• Starting with a clean slate instead of starting with assumptions
• Listening and filtering for people’s desired end state and their incentives.
• Questioning everything including the value of your own questions.

These have nothing to do with PRDs and wireframes, and everything to do with where are we today and where are we trying to go.

This helps you “discover” what the real problem and how big it is. Which helps you understand what success is without jumping to solutions.

Product development in a nutshell is an exercise in discovery, not solutioning.

Discovery of clearly defined problems grounded in reality, and applying technology only when it makes sense to just enough to achieve a clearly defined end state. It sounds obvious but it’s not. If it was, once again, all products would be successful and there would be zero waste in product development. Product teams should be ruthless in finding truths, not coming up with solutions.

Solution becomes easier downstream of truths.

Go and find truths.