What came first - user or product?

Today was my very first day working in a product team, and so a good occasion to start blogging. This blog is intended to be about product management, product analysis and product development concepts, but even more so, it will be about thoughts and reflections on the world of product, and how I learn about these things in a very exciting technology environment and a relatively new product team. I've moved from the marketing team to a new role as Product Analyst, about which I currently know little but am very excited. The role will no doubt evolve as I do and learn more, and hopefully I will be able to write interesting observations throughout the learning process.

The first day has been hugely exciting, and the best thing about it is that I am realising how much fun it will be to work with all these product challenges. This is exactly what I've been wanting to do! The various projects I will be working on or in charge of are all related to issues and areas I care deeply about. One common denominator of these projects is the user - or more correctly the users, as we need to strive for a multitude of different, unique users at the same time. Understanding who these users are, is key to understanding how the product can and should develop. Google famously says 'put the user first, and all else will follow'. While much can be said about Google's real attitude to this quote, especially these days, the sentiment of focusing on the people using your product is both incredibly simple, incredibly difficult and incredibly powerful.

A good product, shaped by existing, future and previous users, and attracting new and returning users, is the goal for most businesses. But how do you go about achieving this? There can be no user without the product, but similarly, a product without users is arguably not a product, but an idea. One of the challenges I look forward to looking into in more detail will be to balance development of a product for future users, while ensuring that the feedback we get (and should get more of) from existing, or even former, users, help us shape the product we deliver today. We are lucky to already have both a product and users, but there are still many new products to deliver, and hopefully countless new users to deliver to - now for the challenge of understanding how to best do both.