Lifecycle of a Product (in the retrospect) :-
I was the chosen / lucky one.
In the sense, that I got the chance to work with some really niche products in my last seven years of doing product development and management for some of the leading e-comm players in the industry.
I saw and contributed to products that saw the light of the day for long, and also walked through the dusk when the time came.
The lifecycle of any product will have it’s genesis stage where the idea comes up, followed by the running stage where the company applies all tricks and tools to stay in the race. Then comes the end stage where a product stops innovating and the team gets in a comfot zone.
Despite the company’s multi-million / billion dollars savings account; the teams dissolve as their solution doesnt either solve the original problem anymore or the solution is not even required further as the problem changed / upgraded during the nocturnal hours.
My top 3 reasons for the failure of any product :-
1) Myopic strategies and operational modes.
2) Intra-team conflicts of interest and vision. You can’t build an empire where half the group goes clock-wise and the other anti-clock wise.
3) The bias towards depth / breadth. You can’t prioritise depth over breadth or vice versa, with convenience. It’s a sweet combination and balance of the two that does the magic.
