Product development. What they don’t tell you about in job interviews
Product development is the development of a product aimed at a specific target audience. A product can be anything that can be sold: a website, an application, a service.
Stages of new product development:
idea → development → alpha/beta → product
Stages of development in an existing product (using CS-Cart as an example):
business requirement → prototype → demos/feedback → feature
What they tell at job interviews at product companies
If you go to a product company interview or google “benefits of working at a product company,” you’re likely to hear/read this:
big product, X years on the market;
no TOR from the customer;
we work in sprints, no “urgent” and “now”;
no managers, you can easily program.
From all this you may get the impression that product development is just about coding and implementation. But it isn’t.
I’m not going to compare the specifics of working in different types of companies, I’ll share my experience of working in a product company.
Product development = customer development, not product development
This approach to building a business was developed by American entrepreneur and scientist Steve Blank based on his experience with dozens of startups and companies. The essence of the approach: the most important asset of the company is customers, not a product; the product must solve customers’ problems and contain value.