We live in a world dominated by technology-powered products. Behind all of our favorite apps, software,—even everyday items like our headphones, there’s a hard-working product team driving innovation and developing the products we love.
Every business approaches product development a little differently. I know I’ve experienced a variety of strategies and techniques during my time at companies like Procore Technologies and PayJunction.
At FastSpring, our vision is to build the powerful features and solutions that make us the leading all-in-one ecommerce platform that helps software, SaaS and digital goods businesses sell more globally.
I want to briefly share with you how FastSpring’s product team works alongside every individual and team to fulfill this company vision.
Successful product development is about solving a problem.
Product development starts with the vision. Everything we build is in an effort to support FastSpring’s company vision. We’re solving complex ecommerce problems for digital businesses around the world. Before we start any new product development, our job as Product Managers is to intimately understand the breadth of the problems we’re trying to solve for, how they impact users, and how solving them aligns with our overall product strategy and company vision.
We drew some inspiration from a variety of valuable resources like Marty Cagan’s book, “Inspired”, to establish some key questions we review before we begin the process of developing a new product:
- Do our users want this?
- Why do our users need this?
- Is it easy to use?
- Can our engineers build it?
- Do we have stakeholder buy-in?
- How does this align with our overall product strategy?
If one or more of these questions don’t come with a decisive and resounding “yes” then it’s time to go back to the drawing board. Every product and feature we deliver at FastSpring must bring value to our end-users.
Great products are built in a collaborative environment.
From initial discovery to delivery, every step of the product development process is a collaboration between individuals, teams, departments, and customers.
The collaboration process includes direct feedback from customers, suggestions from the Customer Success and Sales teams, as well as data pulled by our Business Intelligence and input from the design team. All of these touchpoints come into play to help us deliver the best solution for our current and potential customers.
A major part of my job comes down to listening. I am listening to input from a variety of sources—Customer Success, Marketing, Sales, Engineering, and the leadership team—in order to develop the product roadmap that covers all of the plans for building the features customers will love.
When all the internal teams work together, we are able to develop the powerful solutions that our customers use to earn more sales, grow their business, and scale worldwide.
How it all comes together at FastSpring.
I’m proud to work at a company with a mix of great culture, strong leadership, awesome coworkers, and inspiring customers. Here are some of the reasons I enjoy being a part of the FastSpring team:
- FastSpring has a strong company culture that is consistently reinforced.
- The leadership team embodies the values and mission of the company and it trickles down to all employees across teams.
- The leadership team supports healthy work hours and encourages employees to enjoy time outside of the workplace.
- The open communication helps foster a sense of ownership and motivation to do my best work.
- My peers are all team players and it’s a pleasure to work together to create winning solutions for our growing customer base.
Interested in joining our product team or any of our amazing departments? We’re hiring! Check out our open positions at https://fastspring.com/company/careers/.