Thinking of building a new product? Before you do, let me ask 2 questions:

  • Why Now? Why can’t we build this one year later?
  • Why us? Why do we think we in an unique position to build this?

Every product builder should ask these two questions before building new big bang features/product lines. Something which made sense pre-COVID might not be the best thing to do in this pandemic. ‘The WHY build this’ is the easier question to answer compared to these two. If you are an experienced PM, you already know how to align your Research and BI teams to build a case for a feature.

I will be honest here: I don’t have the answers to these questions always. To become better at answering these two questions, I have started writing a pitch doc for all big features which require significant resources. I strongly recommend you to do the same.