Posted 8/21/2018

How Product Management saved my relationship!

At the beginning of the month, I celebrated my 3rd anniversary with my loving partner. How we got to our relationship milestone wasn’t all hearts and flowers. It took building all our communication and working on the small bits of our relationship to get to this point.

What help me take my relationship to the next level was what I learned from Patrick, the Managing Director of Gateway Adopters. He showed me his Market Fit Fast model. Although the model is best applied to product management and technology, I thought I would give it a try on being a better partner.

The Vision

Giving my partner unconditional love

The Method

1. The Features

To get started on my project, I need to layout all the things I can or would do to make them happy. We’ll call these features. Below are some of the features I thought of:

Features list

- Clean the house
- Italian dinner
- Bring a dog home
- Learning about sports
- Trip to the aquarium

2. The Model

Once I gathered my features, I ran them individually through the Market Fit Fast model. Each question in the model helped me understand the value-add and prioritization of each feature.

3. The Value

After going through the model, the feature will land into one of the five type of value.

• Must are the features that are expected and are taken for granted.

  Example: Clean the house - When I first showed my partner my room, it was clean and tidy. Whenever my partner see my room now, they expect my room to always be clean, thus this feature is a must value

• Linear are features that have to be there, but the more you add value the better!

  Example: Italian dinner - I cook meals fairly often for my partner. To add to my menu, I decided to make Italian dinner. What made Italian a linear value is adding new recipes to my library of meals.

• Delighter are features that you don’t expect in the product and are compelling value-add.

  Example: Bringing a dog home - Both of us never had a dog before, but we dreamed to adopt one day. My partner came home and to their surprise, saw a dog in our house running around. Bringing a dog home was a delighter value since it was unexpected and my partner loves the dog too much now to ever leave it.

• Indifferent is what it sounds like. When you introduce a product, but there’s no reaction to it.

  Example: Learning about fishing - My partner and I are not an avid fishing fan. For me to introduce fishing is not going to add any value to our relationship and leaves us both indifferent about doing the activity.

• Hostile is a reaction when you introduce a feature that receives negative feedback and diminishing returns upon usage.

  Example: Trip to the aquarium – My partner is highly afraid of fish. I knowing that I would never take them to the aquarium.