Prototype (NOT Product) Management
I have been fascinated with Product Management. Today, while on my learning journey, I realized something that has fundamentally changed my worldview about Product Management.
The realization is this - I am NOT fascinated with Product Management, I am fascinated with Prototype Management.
Let me explain. Maybe it changes your worldview too.
The Product Dilemma
I was reading a product management book called Getting Real written by folks at Basecamp. The following paragraph from Chapter 7, seriously challenged my mental model of a Product Launch:
“Launching something great that’s a little smaller in scope than planned is better than launching something mediocre and full of holes because you had to hit some magical time, budget, and scope window. Leave the magic to Houdini. You’ve got a real business to run and a real product to deliver.”
Why did it challenge my mental model, you might ask. I have always worked at a startup or at my own startup. And whatever I have read or learned about launching a product is in complete contradiction to what is written in this paragraph. Pretty much all startup advice books or blogs agree on one thing - it is okay to ship an imperfect product.
For example, here is an excerpt from the essential advice the world’s best startup factory - YCombinator - gives to the founders:
Launch now
Do things that don't scale
Find the 90 / 10 solution
I trust Basecamp folks for advice, and I trust YC folks for advice. So, their diametrically opposite views on what product to launch were something that made me uneasy. That made me rethink my mental model of a product.
Product v. Prototype
‘Inspired’, a book written by Marty Cagan, was the first product book I read, and almost all my Product related mental models originate from it. I opened it again and there it was, the answer to my uneasiness, staring right at me. Here is the key excerpt:
I always try hard to reserve the term product to describe the state at which we can run a business on it. Specifically, it is scalable and performant to the degree necessary. It has a strong suite of automated regression tests. It is instrumented to collect the necessary analytics. It has been internationalized and localized where appropriate. It is maintainable. It is consistent with the brand promise. And, most important, it is something the team can release with confidence.
So, I realized that X is a product only if it can sustainably bring in cash for a company.
And, from my previous reading, I learned that the stage at which a company has high confidence in its ability to bring in cash sustainably is called a Product-Market Fit (PMF).
So, if we accept both those definitions to be accurate, then a company can’t have a product pre-PMF.
This crashed my brain again. Previously, I had also learned that a startup should build an MVP or a Minimum Viable Product — A PRODUCT — pre-PMF and iterate it quickly to reach the PMF. But if a company can’t have a Product pre-PMF, what in the world is an MVP?
Inspired came to the rescue again, here is what Marty writes (as if he is speaking directly to me):
I think the root of the issue is that while the P in MVP stands for product, an MVP should never be an actual product (where product is defined as something that your developers can release with confidence, that your customers can run their business on, and that you can sell and support). The MVP should be a prototype, not a product.
Building an actual product-quality deliverable to learn, even if that deliverable has minimal functionality, leads to substantial waste of time and money, which of course is the antithesis of Lean.
I find that using the more general term prototype makes this critical point clear to the product team, the company, and the prospective customers.
And then clarity struck, a Prototype and a Product, when properly defined, are two fundamentally different things. Prototypes are primarily optimized for speed and cost, Products are primarily optimized for quality. Prototypes exist pre-PMF, and Products exist post-PMF.
This new mental model of what a product was further supported and enhanced when I scanned the book Lean Analytics again:
It’s important to note that the MVP is a process, not a product.
And when I realized that a Prototype (MVP) is just a process to reach a Product, it crystallized the differentiation between the two even more. The difference was clear and there was absolutely no scope for confusion anymore.
However, this clarity brought me to a new crossroads, a new dilemma - Am I fascinated with Product Management or Prototype Management?
Prototype (NOT Product) Management
I think Prototype Management is fundamentally different from Product Management. Both, of course, have a lot of similarities in principles and share a lot of tools and techniques. For example, both involve iterations, experiments, testing, measuring, and pivoting. And, both involve making wireframes, writing user stories, A/B tests, etc.
However, I think both are so different that Product Management and Prototype Management should be different roles altogether. Here are two reasons for my belief.
One, both have fundamentally different start states and end states.
Product management starts with an already existing product that makes money and aims to improve the product or add additional features/products. Prototype management starts with nothing and aims to discover the Product around which a business could be built.
Two, both demand people with very different mindsets and characteristics.
I have serious doubts that the majority of people from the post-PMF (Product) environment, can thrive in the chaotic pre-PMF (Prototype) environments. Or, the people in the pre-PMF (Prototype) environment can thrive in the structured post-PMF (Product) environment.
The Final Word
Whether Product Management and Prototype Management get differentiated in the real world over time, only time can tell. But, whatever the case might be, I realized that the Product management I was fascinated with, was not the Product Management that Basecamp folks were talking about. In fact, it wasn’t Product Management at all, it was Prototype Management - a process of making something that brings in cash, out of nothing, by fast, cheap, and consistent trial and error.
Overall, this was a fun little exploration for me, it made me think, and I hope that was the case for you too.
Books and Other Sources
INSPIRED: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love
Lean Analytics - Use data to build a better startup faster
Thanks for reading Ideabox! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.