On Prototypes

The old saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words”, has helped me so much during my Product Management career. Words are powerful but they have often failed me when trying to clearly and succinctly communicate problems and opportunities to engineering teams. A picture, or in my case, a prototype, in those situations has been most effective.

My first meaningful use of the such came early. A new industry standard had emerged that we had to adapt into my product. Moving away from a proprietary technology was proving to be a hard sell to the engineers. It was not because they did not understand the value of doing so and it was not because they were not incredibly technically adept but it was more rooted in them not intuitively connecting with how this new approach would impact the user experience.

I wrote words. I did draw some pictures and extremely poor ones, given a lack of artistic skill. But success was achieved when I showed them a living and breathing prototype of the new approach working within our product. Over twenty five years later, I still recall the feeling of elation as I saw their eyes reflect obvious clear understanding as I clicked my mouse around the screen.

The project ended up a big success and a first feather-in-my-PM-hat.

“A working prototype is worth a thousand words” became my mantra and I have leveraged it successfully for any moment when words, slides, pictures on a napkin, were not enough.

I was able to do this because I could write code. Today, all one needs is a prompt and AI. Now with a few words, one very quickly can generate “pictures” that say so much more.

Leverage prototypes more in your PM work. They will make you, your engineers and your customers much happier.