Consistent Products Lines #

The people working on a product build consistency within that product.

Have you ever interacted with a product that everything seems to be in place, that everything seems to just make sense, that works just perfect for the scope it was built for, that every feedback message made sense, that every process or setting or configuration had just the required amount of controls? Well, that is the result of people focusing on delivering the best product. It’s true that this kind of products might miss some bells and whistles.

The people working on a domain build consistency across that domain.

On other side, have you ever interacted product that everything seems to be customisable, that has all the right indicators, that has all the right information at the right place at the right time, that has options that you didn’t even knew you needed. Well, that is the result of people focusing on delivering the best domain expertise. It’s true that this kind of products might have too many bells and whistles.

The mistake people nowadays make is that they attempt to assemble a product by bringing domain experts at every level who are asked to build the best onboarding process, the best customer area, the best report system. Or they will bring people that built a nice product and put them to create the best single feature for their entire product line. This scenario will only end up in disaster as product people will focus too much on the customer and not the best practices, the domain experts will focus too much on the specifications and not on the use case and all promises the business made to their customers will be broken.

Just because the domain experts built a great reporting system for many products doesn’t mean they will build a great reporting system for one product and just because the product experts built a great reporting system for one product doesn't mean they will be able to build a great reporting system for many products.

Both types of experts should work in harmony as both should understand their counterpart’s argument. One will argue that they needed to build something fast for the customers at the expense of best practices and the other one will argue that they need to implement .

Both are correct and also both are wrong. The aim for the business should be the nearest possible to the center. A product without best practices will fall apart and a product that only follows best practices will never be released.