We can Build Better Things Together by Martin Eriksson
Kicking off #mtpcon London 2019, Martin Eriksson reflects on how much the product community has grown and why we build better products together. Here's a quick recap of his opening speech.
ProductTank started nearly 10 years ago because product can be a little bit lonely. Martin wanted to meet other people to work out how to navigate this challenging job, and so it began – with 25 people in the back room of a bar in London.
Since then, the community has grown and grown, and it's incredible just how many product people there are today.
There are now 185 regular ProductTank meet-ups across the world, and it’s a community made possible by the dedication of our many ProductTank organisers. Mind the Product now hosts five conferences a year and #mtpcon London 2019 plays host to nearly 1,800 product people from 53 countries.
As a result, product is a lot less lonely than it used to be. However, the challenges we face haven't changed. Whether you’re working on a consumer app in Singapore, a Challenger bank in London, or SaaS startup in San Francisco, the challenges are the same and we can only tackle these challenges by coming together as a community.
Are we Building the Right Thing?
In order to discover products that are feasible, useful, and valuable, we need to combine design, business, and technology disciplines.
However, in trying to build excellent products, we’ve become obsessed with frameworks like Kanban, Agile and Lean, which largely come from manufacturing industries. They’re great if you know what you want to build, and want to build it as cheaply and quickly as possible. They don’t help if you haven’t worked out what to build.
Building the right thing is about getting to know and understand your customer. It’s also understanding the context of a product, the market opportunity, and the wider impact of the product decisions you make. We need to forget about moving fast and breaking things and make sure that our products help people, society and the most vulnerable among us.
It’s up to us to Make Sure we are
This responsibility can be daunting – but it means that we get to shape the future. And this is why our roles as product people are so difficult – because we have all this responsibility but very little authority.
But that’s why we’re here – to work out how to do build better things together.
About the author
James Gadsby Peet
I've been in the digital industry for over 10 years and have worked across small and large charities, as well as my own freelance projects. I am now Director of Digital at the sector leading creative agency William Joseph. Having been at Cancer Research UK for the last four years, I have been able to work on high volume, high profile campaigns such as Race for Life, Dryathlon and the much-quoted #nomakeupselfie. In that time I helped drive forward the charity’s digital product and marketing capabilities to be some of the most respected and successful in the sector. I'm always excited to work with other organisations, share expertise and swap cat gifs. Give me a shout!
