LinkedIn Posts on Product Development

My wife and I have been talking . . .

A LOT!

Aside from our normal, family-focused conversations, we’ve been discussing my posts on LinkedIn.

She asked me to add photos of food and find a way to tie that into product development.

This post is my first experiment.

Product development doesn’t follow a recipe. Unlike making soup.

Adding ripe or more than ripe avocado to potato soup would NOT result in better soup.

When developing products, we do need to add ingredients that may not make sense to us on the surface.

Take telemetry as an example for a car or a software application.

15 or 20 years ago, no one would have believed that telemetry would become an important part of the product we build.

Yet, we use telemetry to inform us of where cars are on the road (or off the road). As well, how people are using our applications and when those applications fail.

Sometimes, throwing something into the mix improves it. Other times it makes the mix worse.

Avoid adding over-ripe avocados to your products, as I don’t think those will improve their quality! 😉

#lifeatimproving #productdevelopment #teamwork

P.S. What odd product enhancements have you done in your work?

Yesterday, I met a friend for lunch between where we work.

Our offices are in Plano, Texas. They are both in buildings situated off Legacy Drive.

We’re about 3 miles away from each other.

To make it easy for both of us, we met at Legacy Hall, off Legacy.

Meeting people where they are at or meeting them halfway is what team work and leadership are about.

We need to be willing to understand our colleagues so that we can achieve results and accomplish outcomes.

At times, this means grabbing a meal without a set agenda. Taking time to get to know them.

Discovering share experiences, affinities, and other human connections helps us create delightful products.

Please remember, we are people solving problems for people.

One of the tasks I do not like doing around our home is unclogging sink drains and cleaning drain stoppers.

However . . .

This time the work inspired a LinkedIn post.

“How to unclog your backlog”

Inspect the work at the bottom of the backlog. How long has it been there?

If it has been there more than 2 or 3 quarters, get rid of it.

The timing for the work being a priority might be off.

Don’t worry, if it was good enough to make it on the backlog once, it will get added again.

#lifeatimproving #productdevelopment #teamwork #scrum #lean

P.S. What tip would you add to help “unclog your backlog”?

P.S.S. Robynn Storey, I added a photo of my Dunkin’ run for you!