If you haven't seen the Nightmare Before Christmas, you'll find this blog post has lots of spoilers. If you're fine with that, or if you're familiar with the story, read on.
My wife loves Halloween. Being scary and dressing up in costumes, lurking in the dark, she loves that kind of stuff. Getting scared is fun too. ...and we're one of those houses that gets all covered with lights and spooky decor every October 31, so it's no surprise that our kids started watching the Nightmare Before Christmas today, getting ready for Halloween.
Watching it this time through, I realized just how much Jack's dilemma matches that of many Product Managers.
The story told from a product management point of view is essentially this:
Our hero Jack, from Halloween Town, has always run the Halloween holiday, in much the same way that you would think of the North Pole as the year-round town of Christmas, always preparing for the next year's December 25 with Santa Claus heading up the fun, though in Halloween Town, it's Jack that runs the place. Jack loves scary things, scary things are fun in his culture, the scarier the better, and everyone around him, the vampires, monsters, and skeletons all love it too.
After yet another successful Halloween holiday, Jack finds that it's the same old thing every year, and decides to spice things up. While taking his ghost-dog for a walk, he stumbles on a completely different culture, Christmas Town. Here everyone is happy and jolly, singing songs of joy. He notices there's no death here, no ghouls, no monsters.and they have completely different customs from the world he's used to.
Jack returns home with the idea that this year, Halloween Town could run Christmas, and they could make it even better. Essentially, he wants to beat his competitor and delight his customers by introducing something new into the mix that Christmas has been missing -- it would be far more fun if Christmas was scary.
He's the one that's been in the field, so it's challenging to communicate what he's learned to someone who doesn't understand this completely different environment. Much like a product manager would, Jack developed a vision for what this could be, and then supervises the work to create this new Christmas. The whole team worked hard to create their version of Christmas, making Jack-o-lantern jack-in-the-box toys, wreaths that frighten, dolls that spring to life and scare children, and assuming the persona of Santa Claus, he leaves large serpents around the Christmas trees instead of toy trains, etc.
He assumed his customer would be delighted with the change, and didn't test the market at all before "launching" his "product."
In short, Jack's version of a "better" Christmas was not welcomed by the children of the world. It proved to be a disaster.
I think we can all relate.
What we can learn from this as product managers is that you should test the market regularly throughout development to make sure you're on the right track. Jack's fundamental mistake was assuming that customers would enjoy his vision of a "better" product.
Have you ever struggled to communicate your customer's use case and culture to your colleagues? Have you ever launched the wrong product because you didn't properly test the market?
Test early, test often, and build the product that will delight!
My wife loves Halloween. Being scary and dressing up in costumes, lurking in the dark, she loves that kind of stuff. Getting scared is fun too. ...and we're one of those houses that gets all covered with lights and spooky decor every October 31, so it's no surprise that our kids started watching the Nightmare Before Christmas today, getting ready for Halloween.
Watching it this time through, I realized just how much Jack's dilemma matches that of many Product Managers.
The story told from a product management point of view is essentially this:
Our hero Jack, from Halloween Town, has always run the Halloween holiday, in much the same way that you would think of the North Pole as the year-round town of Christmas, always preparing for the next year's December 25 with Santa Claus heading up the fun, though in Halloween Town, it's Jack that runs the place. Jack loves scary things, scary things are fun in his culture, the scarier the better, and everyone around him, the vampires, monsters, and skeletons all love it too.
After yet another successful Halloween holiday, Jack finds that it's the same old thing every year, and decides to spice things up. While taking his ghost-dog for a walk, he stumbles on a completely different culture, Christmas Town. Here everyone is happy and jolly, singing songs of joy. He notices there's no death here, no ghouls, no monsters.and they have completely different customs from the world he's used to.
Jack returns home with the idea that this year, Halloween Town could run Christmas, and they could make it even better. Essentially, he wants to beat his competitor and delight his customers by introducing something new into the mix that Christmas has been missing -- it would be far more fun if Christmas was scary.
He's the one that's been in the field, so it's challenging to communicate what he's learned to someone who doesn't understand this completely different environment. Much like a product manager would, Jack developed a vision for what this could be, and then supervises the work to create this new Christmas. The whole team worked hard to create their version of Christmas, making Jack-o-lantern jack-in-the-box toys, wreaths that frighten, dolls that spring to life and scare children, and assuming the persona of Santa Claus, he leaves large serpents around the Christmas trees instead of toy trains, etc.
He assumed his customer would be delighted with the change, and didn't test the market at all before "launching" his "product."
In short, Jack's version of a "better" Christmas was not welcomed by the children of the world. It proved to be a disaster.
I think we can all relate.
What we can learn from this as product managers is that you should test the market regularly throughout development to make sure you're on the right track. Jack's fundamental mistake was assuming that customers would enjoy his vision of a "better" product.
Have you ever struggled to communicate your customer's use case and culture to your colleagues? Have you ever launched the wrong product because you didn't properly test the market?
Test early, test often, and build the product that will delight!
