Could software be the perfect product?

There are may different types of products in the world from textile to chemical to mechanical and beyond. Our physical world hosts a verity of materials and mediums for us to product products. We, as enterprising beings, can use these materials and mediums to patch together a product that has value to someone else. This product can then in turn be sold for money and the more people willing to pay for your product, the more financially successful one can become.

However, with physical goods there are a number of factors that inhibit them. They can be limited in resources, in production, in storage, in transportation, in distribution, just to name a few. These limits eventually affect the price of the product which eventually changes the ability for the product to penetrate further into a society.

What I like about software products is their ability to bypass many, if not almost all, of the same limitations on physical products.

1. Build ability – Time to market / Cost

Software products are great in this aspect for two reasons. First, a software product can be up and running as quickly as you want it to. Fully functioning prototypes can be built in a matter of days to months. If it takes longer than 3 months for a functional prototype, then you are either solving a really large problem or something is wrong.  Second, software is relatively inexpensive to build. If you can’t locate someone who can build you a prototype given the amount of freelance and outsourcing solutions, then you are not looking hard enough. A quick search on google can turn up people to build whatever your heart desires. A couple months down the road and a couple dollars (if you didn’t it just do it yourself) down the road; you should have a prototype out there for people to play with.

2. Skillets and personalities

I really love how easily it is to find passionate people out there to help create software products. There are passionate designers, engineer/developers, passionate technologists and marketers. A high amount of passion means that these people make it their life work to stay up on the industry and these people also tend to be highly entrepreneurial. Its fantastic to see an industry of people so enthusiastic that they all have side projects and their day job doesn’t stop at 5:00. Passionate and high energy people create a unique feeling of excitement that not many companies or projects can achieve.

3. Distribution

Electronic devices are becoming more ubiquitous by the day. From mobile phones to internet enabled tv’s to computers everywhere, our world is becoming more and more connected. Even in the developing worlds mobile devices are outnumbering computers because of their price and connectivity. A software product has the ability to be distributed to almost everyone, provided the software is useful to them. Software does not have to worry about shipping logistics or storage costs, although there are still companies who do, it is not necessary.

4. Changeability

When something in the software product is not working correctly it can be changed. In the world of bytes, anything is possible given time and resources; but it is still possible. Bugs can be changed, menu’s can be changed, taxonomies can be re-developed; and once the changes are made software can be upgraded remotely. Software does not need to research and develop a new prototype, the prototype doesn’t need to go into a factory, software doesn’t need to be recalled in the same manner as physical products.

5. Behavior tracking

I love data. Software can create more data than any one person can consume. In the world of atoms, a product would have to undergo a myriad of different testing scenarios to see how people would use the product. People are paid to come into a room with a glass mirror, paid to talk to a researcher, or asked to participate in a survey; there are many different ways that companies use to determine how people use their products. In the world of bytes, we have the ability to track how each customer is using our product. We can see how many people use a given feature, how many people clicked links, the paths that people are using to get through the system and much much more. Every customer can potentially be a participant in giving feedback about software with out having to be imposed on.

6. Flexibility

Software is flexible. There is a saying in software, “users are going to figure out how to use your products in ways you cannot hope to predict”. Lets take for example a vacuum. The user must plug it in, turn it on, hold it by the handle, run it over the carpet, turn it off and when they have clean carpet; they will empty out what they have picked up. This is the overwhelmingly correct way to use this product and 99.999% of people use vacuums as they were designed to be used; software however is much more flexible. A group of people can sit in a room and debate the logical path to their hearts contents. In reality though, there are going to be many different ways that people can use to navigate the system. At the end of the day, software should be flexible enough to allow people to use the software in the manner that they need to. There is no way around the fact that people will use it in their own way.

7. Innovative Posture

Software is set up to be innovative. With a quickly changing business landscape, no business can sit still. This causes business to be motivated to not get too comfortable and invest in the new and emerging. Software also has the unique ability to utilize an evolutionary philosophy, “survival of the fittest”.  With features that are quick and inexpensive to implement, product evolution is an easy game. As software becomes more prolific, the feature set that best meet the needs of the user reside, while the ones that don’t subside. Owners of a software product can deduce multiple different ways for the user to accomplish their task. After implementing all of them, one will likely be predominant. Paths that work best reside, while paths that are not as efficient subside. This allows for continual evolution of feature set through a robust iteration cycle.

8. Open Source

This has got to be the strongest point as to why software is the perfect product. My second point about skillets and personalities speaks a bit to the mindset of a highly passionate industry. Software professionals are so motivated and passionate that it has created an open market for free software. This is software that has been developed by companies and people that is free to use. The notion of the open source movement is based upon contribution. I am free to use open source tools (like drupal or wordpress) and change or modify them to my desire. I can build websites for people using Drupal and make money off of using the platform. The hope is that if I were to develop something custom for Drupal, that I in tern share it with the community. Thousands of contributions, in time and addons, have helped to foster this great free flow of knowledge. I have used Drupal for multiple sites and have contributed modules as my way of thanking the community for creating something I could not have created by myself. Open source lowers the bar for people to jump into creating software by utilizing already pre-built building blocks. I can now put together thousands of different applications with out having to code anything, for free, and make money off of it. When I do I am absolutely inspired to give back to the open source community by way of software contributions.

I am sure there is more that can be added to this list, but I feel that these are absolutely crucial pieces and these make up some of the reasons I feel that software is the perfect product.