Are we developing products or projects?

Is a product a physical product or a product that needs to be met?

Here I will reference it firstGB/T19000――2008《Quality Management System Basic and terminologyTwo concepts in:

ProductProduct:Results of the process

ProjectProject:A unique process composed of a group of activities with a start and end date, coordination, and control. This process must meet the stated requirements including time, cost, and resource constraints.

From the above we can see that the product must come from the project, but the project may not necessarily produce the product. I am not very satisfied with this concept. For example:MicrosoftWindowsThe product has established many projects, that is, the product will also produce projects. In fact, the above definition is correct! A product is the result of a process and refers to a specific object, suchWindows 98ButWindowsProducts referWindowsWithin the family of lineageCapacity, includingThe existing requirements include unimplemented ones, which are closer to the "some" needs of people.Windows 98OrWindows xIs a "long-term" need.

I don't want to confuse the concept, but here I want to explain that the "product" we will discuss is a product that has been continuously developed to meet certain needs for a long time.

Are we developing products or projects?

"Evolution" is the biggest feature of products. Just like the evolution of natural species, products that have been retained after long-term historical tests will inevitably have excellent genes and tenacious adaptability. The project itself does not evolve. Its value can only be reflected by products. Product evolution must be driven by a series of closely related and elegant projects.

Therefore, project development naturally occupies the vast majority of our work content and time, and our performance will be directly linked to the project. To maximize the benefits, everyone wants to create more projects and implement them as soon as possible. This makes our project a little short-sighted. We only consider the current interests, and do not want to pay more for potential problems. At the same time, these potential problems may lead to the next project launch opportunity, this increases our revenue. This hard work method takes a long time, and the product will "evolve" to be bloated, complex, and difficult to maintain. Even more sadly, product personnel cannot make reasonable decisions even if they know the potential problems, because product personnel are divergent.