Are you building what your customers want, or are you just building? When successful companies first started out, they had to constantly deliver value to understand what their users wanted. This grew their business. Many large companies that have been around for decades, or even newer startups that have found some stability, fall into a dangerous place called “The Build Trap”. They continue building feature after feature, without stopping to validate it’s what customer truly want and need. This is due in part to poor understanding of Product Strategy, Product Management, and how to manage teams. Instead of focusing on the problems there, they search out “silver bullets” like Agile without understanding the brain behind the process. In order to get out of “The Build Trap”, businesses need to restructure their thinking to focus on finding value for the user to achieve business goals.
Melissa Perri is the founder of Produx Labs consulting group and Product Institute, a school for Product Managers. Working alongside product development teams around the world, Melissa helps them create strategies that satisfy users and drive business goals. She coaches Product Managers to answer two important questions – “Should we build this?” and “Why?” Her clients include Lloyds Bank of England, Spotify, Rovio, Valtech, Plated, Wayra UK, and Levo League, among others.
Melissa has been consulting with Produx Labs, training and coaching clients to build the right things since 2014. In early 2017 she started Product Institute, an online school to help educate Product Managers around the world to start building the right thing. At the moment she is finishing up her book with O'Reilly Media, “Escaping The Build Trap: How Effective Product Management Creates Custom Value”.
