What Does a Traceability Software Product Do in Agribusiness?
Editor’s note: This article was originally published on LinkedIn.
I’ve been traveling over the last one week, on-boarding our first large agrichemical customer onto the Agribusiness Intelligence neoInt Cloud platform. Energized by the conversations I’ve had, I’ve been thinking a lot about the intersection between software and agribusiness. So, today, for a change, you will see me wear my Product Manager’s hat, rather than that of an agribusiness professional. Regular programming starts next week onward.
When you are a software Product Manager who strives to be self-aware about your own thinking processes, your thinking hat typically toggles between two modes.
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I’ve borrowed these terms and summarized my understanding from Ryan Singer’s beautiful framework on Demand Thinking.
When you operate from Demand Thinking (DT) Mode, you think deeply about the Context: What goes on in the life of your customers? What is important in their working life?
And when you operate from Supply Thinking (ST) Mode, you think deeply about the Tool: What are you building? What are you making to make their lives easier, and those whose lives whom they care about easier?
I can’t emphasize enough how critical it is to discern the former from the latter, because, let’s face it, we often think we are operating in DT mode, when we are actually operating in ST mode. Call it a Techie Product Manager Cognitive Bias, if you will.
“Some clients will ask me for a boat. What they actually need is to cross a river.” — Ronald Shakespear
I would in fact go further to state that this ability to distinguish between DT mode and ST mode is a matter of life and death for a Product Manager, because if you mess things up, Product Death Cycle awaits you.
Read more at AgriBusinessGlobal.com.
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