The 11 Oaths of Product Development

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” — Carl Jung

Making a lot of mistakes the hard way this past year of product development. It was time I sought to bring my mistakes to the surface so I could learn from them and move on a smarter, more productive product developer.

Here’s the summary of my biggest takeaways this past year.

From now on, I do solemnly swear to:

• Not start product development without a minimal viable audience
• Start product development by investigating and interviewing the problems that unbiased people have.
• Interview users with curiosity and not attempt to justify.
• Sell the concept first and only then develop the product.
• Try the simple solution first.
• Be quick to observe when sunk costs are keeping from changing course.
• Make product decisions not via speculation, generalisation or attempts and mind reading, but from real human feedback.
• Be quick to recognise when difficulties are a result of not understanding the first principles of a domain, and seek people to help.
• More actively seek the involvement of others.
• Not replicate the human experience when the human experience is what is needed. Furthermore facilitate the existing good parts of the human experience before augmenting.
• Favor building the community.
• Work smarter, not harder.

If these issues sound important to you, you might be interested in reading the more detailed narrative version of my personal journey when encountering them, including all the ways I thought I could take short-cuts and bend the rules. It might help you sooner recognise the potential pitfalls yourself.

It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about? — Henry David Thoreau

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The 11 Oaths of Product Development was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.