Software development: Product-driven or design-led?

SD Times article by Jason English

Most software developers work within project-oriented teams, since most companies are not startup vendors that can constantly reinvent themselves and deliver hot new products to market. Upgrades, integration and modernization projects carry forward a sizable estate of already coded software assets and third-party service dependencies.

I once pondered an alternative product-driven strategy for software organizations to behave more like high-growth software vendors, recasting their project managers as product managers. They would spend less time measuring time, and more time measuring the features they deliver.

Ostensibly, this product-oriented approach would cut down on endless initiatives and sprawling scope creep, by getting executives to reconsider the contributions of developers toward finite high-value products.

A finished product implies reusability, and higher potential value for more use cases than the work output of a project.

But lately we are seeing a second shift – from product-led to design-led strategy. Some of the founders of today’s fastest growing unicorn vendors emerged from design schools and creative industry backgrounds.

Read the entire article here.

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Principal Analyst & CMO, Intellyx. Twitter: @bluefug