10 Characteristics of a Successful Software Product (Characteristic #1: People)

Software product may fail: it can enter the market and get lost among the competitors. It may happen that the product will stay outside the main business and bring its 10 cents hardly paying back the maintenance efforts. It may also happen that the software will boost the market, killing the competitors by the burst wave and get a toehold in the tops.

 
In this series of articles I would like to cover 10 characteristics which, to my opinion, follow each successful software product whether it is Facebook, Kaspersky antivirus or Angry Birds.
  
So, part I of 10. People.
 
1. Your product is intended for specific people.
 

 
It’s true. It’s hardly possible to write a good product without having a clear understand of who will use it. If the product is being done for a “stranger”, its absolutely unclear what skills this stranger has, what applications s/he usually uses. Besides, it is absolutely unclear what task a user has to solve. Whether s/he will use the software as a main working tool or use it for an hour once a month. Such uncertainties will not allow anyone to create a software product which specific people need.
  
So, it is very important to understand who will use the product you create. It can be leggy blonde in a pink dress or bearded system administrator or a teenager in ripped jeans or a top manager in Armani suit. The main thing is to visualize these people when you develop a software product.
  
Some companies often practice marketing researches which determine a typical user by certain criteria. For example, it is a North American man from 30 to 40 years who takes the position of the chief software architect in a middle-sized or big company, who has 2 children, and a hair loss problem. Of course this information can be very useful but on the start-up stage when a new product is just in someone’s head, such research is quite a challenging task.
  
In this situation you can take advantage of personas modeling or fit the product on live people. By the way, it’s awesome if your entourage is included into your target audience. A product for “friends” has much more chances to succeed because you can easily find out the requirements and the “pain” of your prospect by just having a friend-to-friend talk.
  
To be continued…

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.