Standards for Goals or Completion (feat. PO, PM, PD... Service Planning)

In those common so-so startups where I'm doing PO, PM, PD... service planning all alone, here are three things I check to gauge the common goal or level of completion.

Before deployment — Are the team members aware of the hypothesis we want to validate, and was the process reached through consensus? (Premise: Do we have the capacity/conditions to implement the hypothesis, whether ourselves or via outsourcing?)

Result of deployment — Did we build a product optimized for hypothesis validation instead of making an all-in-one gift set? (= Did we avoid pointless toil, or at least create an internal check against it?)

Through deployment — Can our hypothesis actually be validated? If the results differ, do we have the conditions (will, etc.) to accept them and pivot?


...
When you build and deploy services within the limited budget and manpower of a so-so startup, you inevitably run into a kind of "chamber of truth" that feels like being asked, "Do you love dad or mom more?" Put nicely, it's about focus and prioritization, but reality isn't that forgiving.

I used to think that once we launched, things would somehow fall into place — but no such luck.
The continuous overtime ends up unintentionally piling a load of learned helplessness onto the team. A pure-hearted PM (or PD) who can't stand by and watch this tends to lead by example, only to burn out first, which in turn triggers what felt like a neurotic breakdown — for us, and sometimes for me.
As a result, the all-in-one gift set plan that most so-so startups boldly set sail with ends up being released to the App Store packaged as an all-in-one bug set instead.

What you need to be careful of — what you need to keep in mind early on and throughout — is to examine how many 30-point (%) and 80-point (%) products (or services) are sitting inside your app.
The market is not family. It's not school, and it's not even the company. It doesn't wait for you and it doesn't try to understand you. It only either accepts, or if not, deletes. And honestly, isn't that how you and I already operate too?
What we need isn't an app with 100 promising products all racing toward 100 points someday — we need the 70- or 80-point product that is actually usable right now.