Edward
Edward
Sep 8, 2018 · 3 min read

Product Management with SqlDBM: Idea

Product Management with SqlDBM

SqlDBM (www.sqldbm.com) is an online Database Modeling tool that provides an extensive functionality for database design and it is compatible with MS SQL Server & MySQL. The product team at SqlDBM works as a dynamic organism that encompasses development, design, marketing, engagement and other areas of a lean company. In this series we will share our story and our unique way of creating products.


Ideation

There is something else behind intuitive. functionality and beautiful UI in what SqlDBM has to offer. Like all other digital products, the SqlDBM team went through multiple iterations during its product development lifecycle — with only one purpose in mind is to deliver the best product possible to its existing and future users around the globe.

“We wanted to do something incredible, something that would fill the gap on the market of Database Modeling tools” said one of the SqlDBM co-founders. The purpose was to launch a product that will be loved and supported by the users at the same time. Eventually, users are the driving force of any successful product on the market, everything else comes with it. In SqlDBM, the users define the feature prioritization process and functionality of the whole tool. So, to better understand how to build an exceptional product that is used by tens of thousands developers in the world, one has to step back and see what led the product to its existence in the beginning.

Start with the right story

In the case of SqlDBM, the process started with a discovery session of available Database Modeling tools on the market and associated problems. The main goal was to identify the problem and find the solution. Yes, it does sound like a cliche in the industry of tech companies and normally founders strive to find a problem, come up with a solution, create MVP of their product and then launch it for the whole word to see. In the case of SqlDBM, there was something else, a very important aspect of product development process that is usually skipped in this chain of actions. Product people or founders always seek to identify a problem and only after digesting this problem they work on the solution. SqlDBM looked at this from a different angle, namely, SqlDBM simply combined them together — a problem and solution. Then the team ranked the combination of them on a scale of one to ten. Where 1 represents a light “headache” and 10 depicts an unbearable “migraine”. This scale involved absolutely everything what SqlDBM Product Team could think of at that point — cost to develop, time to develop, time and effort for marketing the tool, need for this tool on the market, popularity of similar tools, use of database modeling concept in general and many more. When SqlDBM came to realization that the combination of the problem and the solution is above 7, it decided to move ahead.

This realization allowed the team to have a clear vision of what exactly they needed to do and how it needed to be executed. The team conceptualized and developed a required array of features that would solve a “migraine” problem. for the users with a power of a super drug. That was their approach- the SqlDBM product team approach. One could probably question “a super drug” term that is used here. That could be very well explained by a simple fact that SqlDBM is a totally free tool, which is full of multiple features that a developer would need to work more effectively and efficiently, and it has been available for more than a year since its first release.

Sky is the limit in product development, but even that needs to be implemented right.

To be continued…

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