Creating a Product
by
Richard Buttars
FIRST SMASHWORDS EDITION
Revised and Expanded
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Copyright 2010 by Richard A. Buttars
All rights reserved
License Notes
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Creating a Product
This book is intended to be a manual for the small business owner or entrepreneur and describes the logical steps needed to create a product that can be sold. For the purpose of this manual a product can be a physical item, a computer file, a service, or anything else for which someone would be willing to purchase. In the most basic sense however, all of these different forms of products are the same.
This book is about process, not the process of creating any specific product, but rather general principles which apply to just about any product that you can imagine. Many of the steps that I lay out in this book I used in preparation of the book itself and they come from my many years of experience in business and engineering.
Product Definition
It is very important to precisely determine the scope of your product and what is included with it. It is very often the case there is a lot more that goes into making your product than you or anyone else expects. Product scope isn’t just the thing that goes to the customer, but all the ancillary stuff that goes along with it as well. Even this book was written with that in mind, with a scope and size that I have semi-standardized for works of this type.
Using standardized patterns and plans is one way to keep the scope of your product under control and improve the chances that everything which is which is supposed to go into your product makes it in. Make up a spreadsheet listing all the parts and services required to create your product and list the costs associated with each one. Not only will this allow you to track what goes into your product but at the same time you can calculate the per-unit code, from which you can determine the price you need to sell your product for in order to make your desired profit margin.
Whatever your product is you should ensure that what goes into it or with it is clearly and carefully defined, so that both customers and those inside your company know exactly what it is. Normally, you want to make sure that everything needed to make your product function is included when it is sold but if you have one of those rare occasions when it isn’t, you want to make sure the fact is clearly spelled out when you sell it. We all remember what it’s like when you buy a nice, fancy electronic device that requires batteries and the batteries were not included. If people don’t know about things like that up front when they buy your product it could turn them away from you and your product.