Product vs. Project
A Better Way to Deliver Customer-Centric Products
Happy New Year!
As we kick off 2025, I want to express my gratitude to every one of you—readers, subscribers, and supporters—who have engaged with my articles over the past year. Your feedback, insights, and shared experiences have made this journey incredibly rewarding. To those marking the holidays, Merry Christmas, and to everyone, here’s to a year filled with impactful product building and innovation.
Episode 19
A Moment of Reflection
As I wrapped up my last articles for 2024, my mind began to shift toward the new year. What could be done differently, across multiple fronts, to build better products, deliver value faster, and meet the dynamic user needs? While reflecting on this, I found myself revisiting a conversation from earlier last year—one that had prompted me to write the last sets of articles about the cost of using a product, the cost of building a product, and the cost of middlemen.
In that conversation, I noticed a recurring pattern among many participants: they approached product development as though it were project execution. That realization became a pivotal moment for me. This misconception—the tendency to treat products like projects—sets the stage for a fundamental misalignment in goals, strategies, and outcomes.
Where one approach prioritizes outputs, the other focuses on outcomes. Where one is concerned with finishing a sprint, the other is about meeting user needs. These differences don’t just affect delivery timelines—they shape the entire process, from ideation to execution, and ultimately define the value delivered to customers.
The Project Mentality: Running Sprints Toward Short-Term Goals
The traditional project-based mindset is deeply ingrained in many organizations. Projects are scoped with clear deliverables, timelines, and milestones. Once the final task is completed, the project is deemed successful, and the team moves on. This approach works perfectly for finite initiatives, like building a bridge, organizing an event, or deploying a patch.
However, when applied to products, this mindset becomes limiting. Products are not one-and-done—they’re ongoing relationships with users. Treating them as projects turns development into a series of disconnected sprints, where the primary focus is checking off tasks rather than solving real problems.
In such setups, teams are often celebrated for shipping features rather than evaluating whether those features addressed customer pain points. This output-first mentality can lead to missed opportunities for innovation, customer dissatisfaction, and products that fail to evolve with user needs.
The Product Mindset: Running Marathons Toward Long-Term Value
In contrast, a product mindset views development as a marathon—a long-term endeavor that requires focus, adaptability, and continuous iteration. Products aren’t measured by what’s delivered in a single sprint but by the cumulative impact they have over time.
Operating with a product mindset means:
Delivering Outcomes, Not Just Outputs: Success is defined by whether the product solves a meaningful user problem, improves satisfaction, or drives engagement—not simply by meeting deadlines or shipping features.
Embracing Iteration: Products evolve with user feedback, market changes, and technological advancements. There’s no definitive "end"; the work is ongoing, guided by a commitment to continuous improvement.
Aligning with Strategy: Products are built with long-term organizational goals in mind. Every decision ties back to the bigger picture, ensuring that user needs and business objectives move in harmony.
This shift in perspective isn’t easy—it requires cultural change, leadership buy-in, and a commitment to user-centricity. But the rewards are worth it: stronger products, deeper customer loyalty, and greater alignment across teams.
Reflecting on Missed Opportunities
In the conversation that sparked this reflection, I recall asking why delivery timelines were consistently lagging. The answers revolved around process perfection, approvals, and a heavy reliance on roles and frameworks. While these seemed necessary on paper, they ultimately led to inefficiency and delays. Even when opportunities were recognized early, the organization moved too slowly to act.
The problem wasn’t a lack of talent or ideas—it was the project mindset driving the approach. This mindset created a focus on execution over exploration, deadlines over discovery, and structure over adaptability. The result? Outputs were delivered, but outcomes remained elusive.
Breaking Free from the Build Trap
This isn’t a unique story. Many organizations fall into the trap, where the focus shifts to delivering features rather than delivering value. Escaping this trap requires rethinking the way we approach product development:
Focus on Outcomes: Ask not what was delivered but whether it made a difference. Did the feature reduce churn? Improve satisfaction? Drive engagement? These questions must guide every decision.
Empower Teams to Iterate: Build processes that prioritize agility and learning. Experimentation and adaptability should be celebrated, not hindered by unnecessary layers of approval or documentation.
Create Space for Discovery: Products thrive when teams are given time to explore user needs, validate assumptions, and refine solutions. Rushing to deliver often sacrifices these critical steps.
Agility: The Foundation of the Product Mindset
True agility isn’t about frameworks or buzzwords—it’s about adaptability. Agile organizations empower teams to collaborate directly with users, experiment with solutions, and pivot quickly based on feedback.
In my article on the cost of building a product, I discussed how over-engineered processes often masquerade as agility, creating more friction than flexibility. Real agility removes barriers, fosters collaboration, and keeps teams focused on solving user problems rather than navigating bureaucracy.
From Projects to Products: A Practical Example
Consider a payment gateway. A project-based approach might involve deploying the gateway, customizing features, and marking the task "complete" upon launch. The team would move on to the next project, leaving the gateway stagnant.
A product-centric approach, however, sees the gateway as a living entity. The team gathers feedback from users, identifies pain points like transaction speed or interface clarity, and iterates based on these insights. Success isn’t the launch—it’s the gateway’s ability to continuously render value (grow adoption, reduce churn, and empower businesses).
Moving Forward: Building with Purpose
As we step into 2025, let’s challenge ourselves to rethink how we approach product development. Great products aren’t built by sprinting toward deadlines—they’re nurtured through sustained focus, adaptability, and a relentless commitment to solving user problems.
Products are marathons, not sprints. They require teams to move with intention, iterate with purpose, and deliver solutions that resonate deeply with users. By shifting from output to outcome, from projects to products, we can create experiences that drive real impact.
This year, I’ll be diving deeper into the nuances of this transition, exploring practical strategies for organizations to align their structures, processes, and cultures with the demands of product development. Let’s build better—together.