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Read.Me: What is product development?

We were recently digging around our computer hard drives the other day and unearthed a few columns that were originally published circa 1996, when MRT first established our company web presence. Back in the day, MRT’s Alex Cooper and myself started writing side by side commentaries that we labeled “the read.me file”. This was our “blog” before “blog’ was even a word. I decided to republish these forgotten pieces (mostly to save me a lot of time), and was surprised they still seem rather relevant. Here’s the first article from the read.me collection:

READ.ME — “WHAT IS PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT?”

The question has plagued mankind since the day man invented the wheel and subsequently tried to sell it for no money down: What is product development?

Product development can be broadly defined as any series of processes resulting in the delivery of goods or services to one or more consumers. Someone has a need. Someone fills that need. “Product development.” Hopefully, currency is exchanged in the process. It’s how you get there that’s the question, but it’s really why you get there that troubles me.

In 1992, a certain vice presidential candidate looked millions of American’s square in the eye through the magic of television. “Who am I?” he shouted, as rhetorical as he was blunt. “Why am I here?” Admiral Stockdale wasn’t only providing material for Saturday Night Live, but expressing the most pervasive human need: the need for a sense of purpose. Was I really put on earth to figure out how to use fewer screws on this sub-assembly and still retain structural integrity? Does my sweeping the shop floor contribute to the proficiency of manufacturing, hence I am a part of the development process? Where does the definition begin and end?

Is product development as simple as a million monkeys with a million workstations hoping to eventually pump out the source code for the next version of Windows? Or is it as complex as a tightly configured matrix of people, who may or may not even be aware of one another, and whose combination of activities turn ideas into tangible objects or intangible services, feeding the materialistic pursuits of society? Whoa, wait a minute, I thought we were trying to figure out product development, not the meaning of life. But that’s the point. Product development is life.

Think about it. You’re born, the end product of a cross-functional team of two. Society is the customer. Product configuration is defined by customer requirements of acceptable physical appearance and behavior. Of course, this varies according to geographical and cultural considerations. The nine-month manufacturing process is conducted in a variety of time-honored, traditional methods. It involves a wide network of outside contractors and suppliers. And upper management (in-laws) is always hounding you to compress time-to-market. Let’s not even talk about fuzzy front ends!

But more seriously, I recently read somewhere that success does not breed happiness, happiness breeds success. If you are truly happy in what you do, then success is the logical outcome. For those in job functions that can be described as “product development,” sometimes that’s not so clear. Most likely your job involves processes with results that are not immediately visible. The end product of which you are a contributor may not be apparent to you while you fulfill your day to day tasks. You might be happy with your job, and what you do may be considered successful, but if it’s only a part of a larger product that loses money for the company, were you still successful?

To some this may seem like a picayune, unnecessarily microscopic examination of the process that isn’t even coming close to honoring the topic of this column. You could argue that people just plain are, and sure, we do things to make a living, have a bed, some food and a roof, and if along the way to our own happiness we contribute to somebody else’s, all the better. Call it ‘product development’ or ‘hacky-sack’, I don’t care, as long as I get my paycheck twice a month, pork chop night every Thursday, and two weeks of camping with the wife and kids every summer, I’m happy, I’m a done deal. Throw in a six-pack every weekend with 2.5 hours of football, and it’s more than I deserve.

Of course, it is man’s need to inflate the importance of his activities. Few people will admit to the fact that their lives are inconsequential. Call it the “It’s a Wonderful Life” syndrome. One could hypothesize that the construction of cities by human civilization cultivates equal significance as an ant colony. Both are just groups of living things keeping busy as time marches on to no master but its own passing. But something within us keeps us from realizing life’s obvious futility. Just because we can’t see the ultimate purpose doesn’t mean it’s not there, right? Maybe.

Man seems cursed with a high enough order of intelligence to create progress, but without the insight to see beyond the immediate result of his myopic actions. We are deadline driven, not only because incrementalism is a logical progression, but because there is a fear of being satisfied, of reaching the end. You can conceive, design, refine, produce, distribute, market and sell the next greatest mousetrap, but then what? In the true spirit of kaizen, continuous improvement assumes that perfection is unattainable. Therefore, the pursuit of improvement generates its own “raison d’etre.” Is this self-feeding cycle "product development"?

Nowhere else is this “what have you done for me lately” attitude more pervasive than the computer industry. No sooner has the next great microprocessor been introduced than its symbiotic mate, the software industry, maxes its capacity into immediate obsolescence. Being the old fogey that I am, I remember when the Mac SE was state of the art in 1987, and when 20 meg was a voluminous hard-drive. I don’t think I am alone in wishing today’s hardware was running yesterday’s software. Today, technological capacity not only has us running in place, but moving backwards. For every megahertz of speed we add, the latest operating system will require two.

Where am I going with all of this? Do my ideas seem as disjointed as your last design review? I guess what I’m saying is that the term “product development” is simply a way for people to create a sense of ultimate purpose to their daily routine, and for corporations to generically label their process of revenue generation. It’s so when you’re at a cocktail party, you can define yourself by how you spend 40+ hours a week, instead of actually having to say anything real. “Oh I’m in product development at company X. Excuse me, I have to go to the bathroom now.”

Having a cup of coffee first thing in the morning is as much of what you do as finite element analysis. I’m not trying to demean anybody’s highly valuable skills, rather, I think people don’t engage in this type of self-reflection often enough. It is healthy to question authority. It is illuminating to review not only your self-value, but your role in the cosmic scheme. The small picture is what keeps you going, the big picture is what keeps you humble. Our animal selves tell us that the ship date is coming up and our brain will be in a better position to release endorphins if it is met on time. Our spiritual selves argue that life goes on no matter what you do. Which is correct?

I don’t want to come off as being cynical. I know that humanity is not so binary – indeed, we are riddled with fuzzy logic, a combination of Vulcan practicality, human emotion and biological instinct. You’re here. You exist. So why not make the most of it? Who cares why there is a market for your product – you’re just there to help deliver value to customers, plain and simple. It could be nicotine delivery systems or the handle to the zipper on your fly, it doesn’t really matter.

So what is product development? The answer is everything. And the answer is nothing. A Zen master would urge you to become one with the duality of this nature, to realize that both the negative and the positive are equally similar and dissimilar. You can neither dismiss the significance of your activities nor ignore the ratio of your existence to the infinity of the universe. I think Popeye said it best, “I am what I am and that’s all that I am.” Product development? Well, that’s just something you do.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Any reaction to this article? Send your feedback to gregg@roundtable.com

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Link: http://www.worth1000.com/cache/gallery/contestcache.asp?contest_id=3229

By following this link, you’ll visit Worth 1000, which is website all about image manipulation using programs such as Photoshop. They house numerous galleries of interesting pictures generated by the contests that they run.

In the collection at the above link, you’ll see some images from a contest where they asked folks to morph two automobile images into their personal dream car. The entries are rather creative with great production values as these pictures look like REAL cars, such as the Porsche ambulance and the Mini-Cooper/Mustang convertible shown above.