Scott Boekweg, Vivint Smart Home, Senior Product Manager
“Aligning the vision with the strategy of what you’re trying to do on a project can be a challenge.”
Scott Boekweg has experienced several challenges when developing and launching products. “Aligning the vision with the strategy of what you’re trying to do on a project can be a challenge,” he says. “When you’re working with third parties, sometimes they have a different idea about how they want to work on the project with you.”
Ensuring proper alignment when collaborating on a product launch can be surprisingly difficult when such differences arise, as Boekweg can attest. “For example, we may be in a relationship with an original design manufacturer (ODM) in which we tell that team what to build. Recently, we were working with an ODM on a project in which collaboration challenges arose. They thought they were going to produce a product and that we were going to receive it and not ask any questions about it as far as quality and operability,” he adds. Boekweg has also seen this dynamic play out when it comes to the technology chosen for a product—an element that may not seem consequential at first but can actually throw a project far off course if not all the parties involved agree on the desired outcome.
This is an excerpt from 7 Experts on Product Leadership. The eBook was generously sponsored by Workfront.
