Products and Customer Need

Disclaimer: This is a timeboxed stream of consciousness rather than a polished piece of writing. How I express some of the ideas could likely use some work. Also, as always I will inspect and adapt my position on these ideas (maybe even over the course of the article), so please give me any relevant feedback.

This idea triggered from a podcast featuring Seth Godin*. One concept he put forward was a marketing “revolution”. The example goes, no one wants a quarter inch drill bit, they want a quarter inch hole. The idea is you shift from marketing your product to marketing how you fulfill a customers need. He added to this by tracing further up. They don’t want a hole, they want a way to insert a toggle to mount a shelf. They don’t want that they want… and keep going up until you hit something like the feeling of happiness from x. Fundamental feelings of safety, joy, love… these are what people are really seeking in their lives.

Continue reading “Products and Customer Need”

Testing as a Holistic Exercise

Early on when trying to apply Agile methods to software development I found a lot of the challenges were in the area of software testing. Not just because a lot more automated testing was being done, but because requirements would shift and change rapidly. Many levels of rapid feedback needed to be in place to ensure the development didn’t misstep for too long.

I started exploring more places a focus on testing and quality could be applied. And that led me on a journey earlier and earlier in the development timeline.

Continue reading “Testing as a Holistic Exercise”