Hello world, it's time to focus on value

This is probably the tenth time I try to take my website further. It's ok, I learned my lesson, or so I hope. Perhaps I think I've learned it until the next shiny technology pops up in the horizon and I end up lost in the details of trying something new I don't really need. Anyways...

On the positive side, this constant jumping around (together with my personal interest in human behavior and psychology, and perhaps a thousand other factors I can't really pinpoint) led me to the awareness of two personality drawbacks which prevented me from bringing this website further: shortsightedness, and a short attention span. I'm not the only one though, it's a well-known fact that the attention span of most people is considerably shortened due to the widespread use of technology. Awareness is the key to counter the problem, and I finally became aware of my own weaknesses.

Shortsightedness, an equally widespread behavioral trait, locks us down on the details of the present and prevents us from adopting a long-term perspective of the problem at hand. The nine previous attempts of bringing this website to life were hindered by my attempts to create the perfect design, to write the perfect article, to fix all the little issues I was aware of. It's finally time to let these go; it's finally time to focus on the long-term value I want to create for you.

The bottom-line of my message is simple and straightforward: we should focus our efforts on the tasks which deliver the most value to our target audience. Sounds easy, but practice is much harder. An example: when developing a prototype or an MVP, the color of the button doesn't matter. The margin between components doesn't matter. The animations here and there don't matter. Don't lose your sleep over it. Don't waste precious time on discussions destined to be forgotten. A moment will come when these decisions will be necessary to improve UX. Only then the real value is there. Only then you should focus on these issues. Your focus should be on designing a system which welcomes changes, makes them easy, and can be easily extended to accommodate new value-adding features as they become necessary.

Look at your current process for conceptualizing new products or features within an existing product. How much of it can be left for later discussions so that you can get whatever you are developing as quickly as possible to the market? After all, customer feedback is the most important source of truth for whether your decisions hit the mark or were slightly off. Increasing time-to-market will probably cause more harm than good, since each step you take towards a new feature without collecting customer feedback is a potential step you have to walk back later on.

Which brings me to the last point: business value is not what you perceive of the product, it's what your customers perceive of it. As business owners and product managers, we tend to believe in our idea. That's fine. We should believe in it. However, this creates a strong bias towards the viability of the product and the actual demand for it. We think that, because we see value in it, everyone does. Of course this is not the case, and the world is crawling with failed businesses and projects that were too far down the road when they realized the conceptualized product was not really what the market needed. Don't run into the same mistake: focus on value, define the crucial features necessary for customer feedback, collect it as soon as possible, and iterate.