5 key factors before starting software and hardware development

For at least a decade, anyone regardless of their field activity can remember seeing somewhere, through a report, article or class, about high demand for technology professionals. In fact, until the middle of last year trends indicated a growing need for such professionals.

We know that technology currently plays a crucial role in several sectors, not to say practically all of them. However, the idea of this article is to share some reflections that may be useful both for other technology professionals and for companies and enthusiasts who want to acquire services or start developing software and/or hardware.

Many of the contents we see nowadays, whether posts or even videos, mostly promote technical learning, the use of programming languages, logic, libraries, frameworks, etc. And certainly, it’s valid and important content, but perhaps you’ve already stopped to think about how much software and hardware is already available on the market? Many of them, similar and aimed at solving the same “problems”? In some cases, this happens because the people involved, whether they are developers or not, end up dedicating more time to the solution. They compare products and try to do something with a “differentiator” that often stands out in terms of technology, language or front-end layout, for example. In fact, these are also important aspects that deliver value to the product. However, I highlight here 5 key factors before starting software and/or hardware development, including even spending your time learning new technologies or writing codes that may turn out to be unnecessary:

1. Know the problem depthly

There are already dozens of contents that highlight this issue, especially the statement that many have already heard: “Fall in love with the problem!”. What I bring here is, yes, a reinforcement of the same idea. When I first came into contact with the concepts of Lean Startup based on the contributions of Eric Ries, Ash Maurya and others, including recently book of Uri Levine, co-founder of Waze in the first edition entitled “Fall in love with the problem, not the solution”, I realized that It was still not clear to me how crucial the idea of delving deeper into the problem you were trying to solve was.

This issue ranges from the size of market in which the problem is inserted to a total immersion in the reality of potential customers who feels the pain. This is a fundamental key requirement. Because it involves the relationship between people, cultures, the need to learn about conviviality and speak. It is important even for developers who are passionate about technology, once rapid advances in areas such as AI, perhaps much of what you are studying today will be done by artificial intelligence in next years.

If you really dedicate yourself to reflection and delve into the process in which it seems necessary to develop software, hardware or both, you may conclude that a large part of it doesn’t make any sense at all, for a series of reasons, and yet , you will save technical time, money and future disappointments.

Falling in love with the problem is totally different from getting excited about solving the problem while thinking with the mind of a developer. The fact of being able to imagine a working prototype will not necessarily be the acquired solution by potential customer, unless you immerse yourself in their daily reality, know a little about their habits and with that, having the potential to extract intentions about impacts of a real solution to the problem.

Sometimes, a problem exists and the customer doesn’t even know, other times, the problem exists but there is no interest in a solution. There may also be cases in which the problem does not even exist, but there is a belief about its existence that drives a large market of pseudo-solutions. In any case, the most opportune are problems that exist and customers who are looking for a solution.

I could continue to write more about this key point, but we can stop here considering that the theme of the problem is multivariate, involving, in addition to technology, mainly philosophical, cultural aspects, beliefs, personalities, politics, religion and science.

Anyway, this key point requires much more reflection and immersion than it seems, and I hope you understood a little more about it or made you happy based on your own experience.

2. User driven

Prioritize user needs, from gathering information about the market and behavioral analysis of your target audience. If your software/hardware is for a pub, your “customer” maybe be the attendant who will operate the solution every day. If you don’t do something that is aligned with the real process, sooner or later, it will ask the pub’s owner to change the solution. The big question here is finding an alignment between person and process. And desire is to fit right the process with right people.

3. Clear Objectives

Set specific, measurable objectives for project. Build a roadmap based on MVP, avoiding scope creep and providing clear direction for the development team. In all software and/or hardware development, the key here is to avoid excitement so as not to lose control over the deliverable that is aligned with the MVP.

4. Prototype Iteration

Prioritize that prototype is validated with crucial features. Deliver releases so that customer can provide feedback and identify possible improvements, ensuring that the product meets expectations. The key here is that this approach creates a bond of trust with customer, which is, inexorably, a non-linear part of solution. Before starting development, remember that between conception and materialization of solution there will be countless iterations, and most of them will come from user experience.

5. Human potentialities

“Customers don’t buy products or services. They pay for solutions to their problems.” This is one of those cliché phrases we hear at many innovation and entrepreneurship events. This statement is often attributed to Theodore Levitt, an American economist and professor, who taught at Harvard Business School. Levitt is widely recognized for his contributions to the field of marketing. However, what we can extract from this statement is that instead of dedicating a lot of time to learning only technical skills and publishing your certificates on social networks, it is also necessary and fundamental to aim for the development of human potential. Creativity, for example, leads to broad problem-solving skills. Once you have trained the potential for reflection, you will be able to better specify how people interact with different processes, becoming capable of learning anything that can be used to implement process automation. Finally, the observation potential allows you to learn about the rules common to frameworks, libraries and programming languages, leading you to write better and better code.

So far so good. I hope you have identified with some aspects in this post and, most importantly, that it inspires you to explore and contribute more to the topic. Over more than 15 years of experience in technology, I realized that so many companies and clients are looking for people with the ability to communicate, work with a team and interact with different personalities, resulting in the development of both quality software and hardware, in addition to enable a more appropriate fit to the reality of the problem to solve.

Thank you, see you next!

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