Project Retrospective

As our startup project neared completion, I deeply felt two major mistakes of mine:

• During design, we didn't create user personas based on research, so many requirements were subjective guesses. That led us to build lots of features we weren't sure users actually needed, increasing development cost and disrupting validation of our core needs.

• Before design, research primary users and create user personas to represent that group, as a reference when validating requirements;

• After design is complete, show the demo to target users and let them experience it, to verify whether features meet their needs.

• We didn't consider the relationship between "must-have features" and "nice-to-have features," so the latter became bloated and dragged down the entire project timeline.

Product "must-have features" are essential to the core flow; nice-to-have features refine the experience on top of must-haves. In the early stage, avoid touching nice-to-have features as much as possible—predicting too early how users will use the product hurts agile product growth.