Our approach on a product development journey - Journal

Our approach on a product development journey

Many of you must have heard stories about the challenges in building a product. It all happens when product teams are hit by massive demands and expectations from the ever-evolving market.

Together with a group of four software engineers, the journey of building our world-class platform, XTOPIA, is not short of these moments. What keeps us together is our common goal – is to democratise technology, specifically in web development.

Here are some lessons we have learned on this journey.

1. Iteration is inevitable

We all started off by believing that we are equipped with the skills and knowledge to take on the world. We quickly learned the fact that we are not. The response from our users did not match with our expectations. We had to make code changes, UX adjustments constantly to make it work for our users. XTOPIA is built to be reversible. Thanks to its solid foundation, stacking additional features or making code changes is possible. Hence, despite the need for constant iteration, XTOPIA is able to respond swiftly to the market demands.

2. Respect feedback and opinions

The art of building a good product is to listen earnestly. As XTOPIA’s UX Lead, I must admit that I care for users deeply. It is not always the best approach. We cannot dismiss the technical challenges in the development process. In order to work as a team, we learn listen to each other and this approach often helps us to deliver win-win solutions. All feedback is equally important simply because we know we all want to achieve our common goal together as a team.

3. Nothing is impossible. It is a matter of how

We strongly believe in thinking unconventionally. Throughout the entire journey of developing XTOPIA, we have learned to not take no from each other as an answer. Surely there are limitations from various perspectives. We form new ways of solving problems by leveraging on each other’s domain knowledge. Teamwork makes dreams work.

All said, product development is never going to be an easy journey. A team needs to believe with all their hearts, that the effort in building the product is to serve a good cause. Then, it is a journey worth travelling.

contributor

Josephine Toh

Joe is the Agency Manager of XIMNET Malaysia since 2018. She is also the UX Lead for an web building platform, XTOPIA.IO.