There is nothing wrong with planning, which enables the team to put more focus on achieving goals with greater collaboration. When the team set time, budget, and scope in stone, and deliver the project on time, they think the mission is accomplished. The celebration is justified, but realizing the business value (Customer experience, customer engagement, and conversion rate) delivered with the shipped project is a lot more important. Alas! That's mostly forgotten.
At first, understand what project mindset is:
When the software development company redesigns the websites with a shallow approach of just upgrading the features, or modernizing the interface within the timeline and budget, it’s called project mindset. The prime focus is on delivery where the three parameters- time, scope, and budget are considered to measure the success.
Looking for success in terms of having the specifications beforehand and achieving the milestones according to schedule all along the way is a wrong approach. More focus should be given to the outcome rather than output while keeping the scope, time, and budget goals at the upfront.
This is why the companies are emphasizing the development teams to redesign the website with a product mindset where success means the best website delivered to the client that bring leads, increase conversion, uplift loyalty, and augment ROI.
The shift to product mindset is taking a center stage in the development landscape, let’s understand what is it:
The team redesigning the website with a product mindset doesn't make the efforts to get the job done; instead they concentrate and devise a strategy for how things will be done that maximize the website value. The teams continuously research and identify the opportunities alongside balancing the risks and priority to create a product roadmap with frequent releases so that long-term revenue can be guaranteed.
Brilliantly redesigning the website that customers love is a clear vision that product owners have in mind. They think, plan, and craft the strategies from the customer perspective to build a website that performs to the notch.
For instance, the website redesigning project came to reflect the brand vision, upgrade the obsolete technology infrastructure, and improves performance; then from the day one, the team redesigns the website that stays synced with modern web standards and the user's expectations. Also, the design and code quickly adapt to the ever-changing business needs while maintaining the architectural integrity of the website to ensure long-term effectiveness.
The two mindsets are different ways of software development, which significantly differs in the way the software is developed, delivered, and drive business value.
Here are the differences between the two approaches:
- Funding
On the other hand, in the product mode, the team gets funded on a rolling basis where they work on a website redesigning task with periodic reviews. In addition to stakeholder requirements, user micro-interactions are also considered to create customer-centric designs. The roadmap created and evolved to align website redesigning with the business strategy and make website design a source that magnetizes the customers.
- Deliverables
When website redesigning is treated as a product, the team build-run-iterate the solution unless it adds value to the business and the end-users. Design thinking, empathy, and lean innovation using agile methodology are part and parcel of the product mindset approach. The value doesn't mean making the pre-defined changes in the design; instead, it's about crafting a design that ensures a wow experience is delivered to the users when they use the product.
- The definition of success
The product-mode team doesn't consider it as a success. Breaking the silence, the team uses business KPIs and build a feedback loop to listen to how customers are responding to it. They build a mechanism where they strive hard to improve the business metrics to increase the business outcome. The team finds themselves responsible for making things done, such as increased traffic, enhance engagement, bring leads down the sales funnel, and more.
- Priorities
The things turn upside down when the team redesigns the website with an agile methodology where the stakeholders can access and view the work in incremental sprints. The collaboration tools allow the stakeholder to monitor the ongoing project status and can request changes in the project based on the market trends.
A point in the case: Many times, it’s better to test the project idea feasibility in the initial stage to find out whether the website redesigning idea will bring the expected outcome or not. Also, continuous technology innovations sometimes make the idea outdated before it’s built. The team in the product-mode can help by building a prototype that enables stakeholders to test the water before investing thousands of dollars in website redesigning project. It’s not possible with project-mode
Also Read: Checking the Pulse of Successful Website Development Projects: The Four Strong Pillars it Stands On
The benefits product mindset brings to the table:
- Greater responsiveness
The laser focus on outcome allows the team to achieve what they are making most efforts for and make the work set in the rhythm of market trends, evolving user’s preferences, and technology innovations.
- Ensure the solution work
This problem doesn’t live with the product-oriented team where the complete team is involved from the day one of the redesigning to its final version release. The stable and long-lived team is chosen that spend weeks to months to the problem area closely and iterate unless the actual benefits are realized. The build+run teams in product mode don’t let other teams integrate with the system that executes the process in the narrow pursuit of timely project delivery, which in turn, negatively impact stability and degrade performance.
- Nurture the relationships
The product owner works differently who explore and explain the slew of possibilities to the stakeholders to innovate the website redesigning task, which target users genuinely love. The innovation agenda makes the C-suite stakeholders feel as if the team is not connected with the stakeholder to get the job done, while actively working on website redesigning project to make it a great success. It's a great formula to build and strengthen the long-lasting relationship with key stakeholders that certainly bring more project to the team.
Conclusion
The development landscape is so immersed in the "Project" way of doing things that team quickly lose the sight of real goals and focus on just dates and delivery, especially under the gun. It's a recipe for disaster for the website that fails to offer value to the customers, create a competitive advantage, and bring financial benefits. The accompanied smells are wrong that needs to be mitigated or removed.
This is why product mindset coming as a radical change that’s gaining high traction across IT landscape to figure out the business vision and execute the strategy in a way that business development needs can be fine-tuned with customers’ needs and preferences.
From the website redesigning perspective, the product-oriented web designer team with the right mix of people, process, and platforms redesign a customer-centric product that delivers long-lasting value. From technology infrastructure to UI changes, every aspect gets equal importance to let the product grow and prosper in the ever-evolving market, trends, and customer’s expectations.
Celebrate the success of a product, not project to engineer groundbreaking experience around the website you are working on.