Crafting Product In The Messy Middle

Products aren’t designed and developed in a vacuum. On the contrary, they are crafted and managed amidst ambiguity, frequent bouts of…

Products aren’t designed and developed in a vacuum. On the contrary, they are crafted and managed amidst ambiguity, frequent bouts of self-doubt and uncertainty, and working in sheer anonymity. For new products, you can falter and switch it up as much as you want… because nobody really cares.

For the last decade or so I’ve been fascinated by the trials and tribulations that product teams face in the messy middle. I’ve come to believe that the volatility and challenges a team faces are the ultimate source of their product’s complexity.

While a product’s simplicity is its advantage right out of the gate, solutions made — and customer requests addressed — under duress in the messy middle introduce complexity. When you rush to build features for “power users” or your most important customers, coupled with your own anxiety, the product becomes less accessible to new customers. I call it “the product life cycle” 😩