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Please note this is highly opinionated piece — please be aware of biases!

As you know, there are a plethora of apps out there. Some are “amazing” – they are easy to use, have useful features that make life easier, and they are a delight to use. We even tell our friends about them, or write about them. And then there are some products that are not so “amazing” – they fail in one in one of the above aspects that makes us abandon them — not good for businesses!

On my quest to understand what makes a product “amazing” and unearth a framework to help us make any product “amazing”, I’ve found one classification system that allows you to categorize products into one of the following three groups:

  • Engineering-driven,
  • Design-driven, and
  • Product-driven

Let’s dive into each of these.

 

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I’ve been thinking of starting a blog for over a year. Week after week, I would tell myself that during the upcoming weekend I would sit down, install WordPress and start typing. But I never did.

I love understanding people and the real (and sometimes ugly) reasons people think and behave the way they do. Understanding yourself (thoughts + behavior) is scary and difficult, but once you confront yourself, you get to know yourself better, and you start to truly appreciate who you are and what you are capable off.

So after confronting (or soul-searching) myself, I found out the real reasons why I was delaying creating this blog. I thought:

  1. People don’t care what I think, and
  2. I don’t know anything

Pretty grim right?

But alas, if you are reading this blog, how how did I overcome my insecurities? What magic potion did I drink that gave me this confidence?

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I attended a talk by Natalie Hollier back in September on Lean Product Management for Enterprises: The Art of Known Unknowns, when I saw a slide from her presentation that blew my mind.

It wasn’t that the slide had beautiful visuals or fancy transition effects, but what it had was a simplicity on how it communicated on a high level the differences between the 3 most common product development processes: Waterfall, Agile and Lean.

This image/slide was so great, I had to ask Natalie for it, and luckily she sent it to me asap!

Without further adieu, here it is…
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We use fits everywhere. You might say your pants fit you well or your two friends who are dating/married are a good fit for each other. Fit is also important in the startup and product development world where you have to figure out the Problem/Solution Fit and Product/Market Fit before even thinking about scaling, otherwise you risk wasting valuable resources (time and money).

Employers also look at fit. Sometimes they judge a bit too prematurely based on your resume, or perhaps rightly. They even use the word “fit” when rejecting you through their automated messages:

 

…we don’t think you are the right fit for this position at the present time.

 

It is just as crucial for you to look at fit when looking for your next move, especially in Product Management and UX where there are a lot of factors that you must take into account to increase your job satisfaction.

Here are the Fits you should consider:

1. You-Role Fit

You-Role Fit is about understanding what you are going to be doing on a day-to-day basis. Hopefully you’re applying to a job that fit’s your perfectly or in your zone if not the exact fit. Here are some questions to ask to help understand if the role if your fit:
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This is my first blog post and so I thought I would go big! Why say Hello World when you can say Hello Universe!

Wondering why I started this blog? Well wait no more! Here’s why:

1. Getting my thoughts in order + releasing them

As we get more and more connected to the world universe, a lot of cool, and sometimes not so cool things come to our attention whether it’s design patterns, product development processes/frameworks or useless crap.

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