Build a Great Product (1)

Hi there, this is only a gist on how to build a great product taken from the perspective of team management especially tech team

TL;DR

  • Having a good backup
  • Analyze your weakness, harness your strength
  • Work with others with empathy
  • Challenge yourself & learn a lot
  • Open to suggestion and critic
  • Sharing is caring

Prolog

before talking about building a great product, let me tell you a story on how I land a job that fits with my dreams.

I want to make something impactful, for myself as learning phase and for others that bring benefits for most people.

Not long time ago i’m jobless for about 6 months, previously I work for a digital agency based in Singapore, they have a great business team that usually deals a project with government official. But that’s not my dream.

Until I start asking for more, once i try to apply in another digital agency, one in Jakarta, and one in Bali. I thanked God that all of them reject all my application.

Having a good backup

Soon after the rejection, I call my friend (one of my backup) that can refer me to his friend that work in Pomona, and fortunately they trust me to help them build this product.

I start work as a Software Engineer bcs of my background, having a degree in Computer Science. FYI, I’m not that bright, but I learn that I need to be responsible, start with my own life to finish my degree

Sometimes life hit you hard, just bear with it and endure the damage

So, yeah, i got to work with my dreams, well not exactly my dream, but i can adjust my mission to have the same alignment with my Pomona’s mission

Analyze your weakness, harness your strength

My weakness are:

  • poor time management
  • mood swing
  • perfectionist, takes longer time to do something due to extra effort

My strength are:

  • quite good at programming & logic
  • analytical thinking
  • perfectionist, build something extra

Work with others with empathy

At this point I realize, I’m not gifted, I’m not special. The next step is incorporating myself with the team, i learn a lot from my past, like profiling a personality of certain someone, restrain my ego, and not to judge people quickly. this is usually called empathy, respect people same as you respect yourself.

This is not originally my way of thoughts, but by observing the CTO that treat people around him nicely without lacking of professionalism, kudos to him that gives me such inspiration.

Challenge yourself & learn a lot

Challenge and try to compete & beat your old self, here in Pomona we don’t lacks any challenge, especially the technical ones.

From how to make an efficent data structure & data flow, security & privacy, end-to-end communication from microservice, the summary is a great product that loved by our lovely users, a profitable business, and engineer friendly

If you ask me, the priority of satisfying rate, is like this:

  1. 45% engineer (employee)
  2. 30% users
  3. 25% business (client)

The very first user is the engineer itself, so it’s natural to hear what they feel about the product, from business perspective, engineers is trying to solve business problem translated to business logic application

Open to suggestion and critic

Sometimes we lost track of ourself, and we need to take a break, if we don’t stop, rest assured, team, people around us is notice it and let us know about our current state and what we need to do, if no one care about you, then you need to evaluate the team, is it still working as a team?

Once we hear a suggestion, try to reach this expectation and try to slowing down a little bit and start a new pace

Sharing is caring

Scrum & agile is nice to have, but if not possible, prepare a time once a week to make a report (prefer verbal only) on your working progress, and sharing a new knowledge to the other, this is a powerful way to train your brain, by sharing your brain capacity of learning is boosted & you can even hear other people’s knowledge