Product & Startup Builder

Ideal product process

Added on by Chris Saad.

Canva recently released a new product process for their product org.

It is…

  1. Vision (communicated by rough product designs)

  2. Goals

  3. Milestones (including design and user testing)

  4. Build

  5. Refine (sense check with internal team/founders… does it meet the quality bar, does it feel right)

  6. Launch

I think it’s good but not ideal.

Here’s the process I like to use to build products that create step function change.

Strategy

  1. Vision in roughly right, ambitious idealized design

  2. Sense check with peers and leadership

  3. Break into thin slices/milestones

Iterative/agile build (for each milestone)

  1. Detailed design/requirements

  2. Build/polish

  3. Launch

  4. Learn

  5. Repeat

Without strategy, you get lost in incremental change. Without iterative/thin slices you get lost in development hell, disconnected from testing and market feedback for too long.