The Blueprint of a Product

Building an enterprise software product is very similar to building a custom house. As most houses have common functional components like bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchen, dining, living and family rooms, storage and play areas and garage, all software products share a number of common modules: such as customer onboarding and user access, invoicing and payment, customer support, accounting, and sales demos and marketing collateral showcasing the product.

A well-designed house provides easy and intuitive access to the common areas of the house to each user equally. It also places windows and doors strategically to provide good sunlight and easy movement throughout the house. Similarly, a good software product is easy and intuitive to navigate and architected well to scale and provide the required information efficiently (without delay and at the right moment without overwhelming the user with data overload).

Finally, as a good house is designed to provide utilities (such as water, power, and gas) and the ability to monitor usage, a good software product comes with a detailed and well-designed reporting module to report required information and performance to various user personas.

It is a fact of life that even with the same components in each and every house, some houses are much more appreciated by their residents than others because of the efficient use of space, easy movement, energy efficiency, better sunlight, and really designed to the needs of the owners. Similarly, product management has enormous influence and responsibility to deliver a product, which is easy to use, intuitive, scalable, and efficient in the use of all resources.