How attached are you to your first iteration?

Responsive product development means you iterate along the path you have chosen.

The goal isn’t to get it right on the first try, to but to ship work that affords you opportunities to experiment and evolve towards the best possible solution.

Trusting that over time, you’ll make enough incremental progress to turn something good into something great.

Now, the biggest barrier to this process will be stubbornness. Becoming overly attached to your first iteration.

Because if you’re too identified with your product’s original purpose to easily adapt into something better, then you might not get the traction you hoped for.

Whereas if you’re focused on a general outcome you’re looking to achieve, while experimenting with the process to get there, then the possibilities are endless.

My most memorable lesson in this principle came from launching a software product during the pan

Taking an incremental approach shows your customers that you’re listening to them, solving their real, urgent, expensive and pervasive problems. Ultimately improving their condition better than the competition.

How attached are you to your first iteration? Could you get greater traction with your product by evolving beyond its original purpose?

Lebowski, the legendary stoner philosopher who defined a generation, is famous for his catchphrase, new shit has come to light, man.

That’s a smart way to think about product development. You iterate along the path you have chosen. It doesn’t matter if you get it right on the first try, or even the fifth try.

Just as long as you keep experimenting, learning and evolving towards the best possible solution.

Trusting that those infinitesimally small changes in your work today might magnify into huge gains over time.

What if everything that happened to your product today formed for the basis of what could happen tomorrow?