Different approach Quote by Brian de Haaff

““Charles Du designed NASA’s first iPhone app, an award winner and a huge hit with more than 10 million downloads. But he also faced challenges from NASA brass who tried to water down his vision for the app. In a guest blog for Aha!, he laid out a basic principle: Maintaining your product vision is just as important as getting buy-in for that vision. After I got buy-in for the NASA app, a project manager was assigned to our team . . . a project manager is not the same as a product manager. Since my project manager didn’t understand the difference between the two roles and had seniority over me, we fought many battles. The vision of the app was user-driven. So, I validated my product hypothesis by talking to users and looking at our website metrics — a user-centered design approach. The project manager took a different approach. She saw this app as an opportunity to get more resources for our local center . . . She was advocating for politics-centered design that was divorced from any customer conversations. To me, this is a clear case of why product vision should drive everything you do as a product manager. I had clearly communicated why the vision for this app would achieve NASA’s high-level goals. This allowed senior leadership to see that I was working to help grow the whole organization. And it prevented politics from entering the picture. . . . We ended up launching a pure product designed 100 percent for our users — and it was a huge success.11””

— Brian de Haaff