Jun 10
How Solution Engineers lead Product Discovery for internal tools at Clicampo.
Product Discovery is hard, but it’s even harder when dealing with back-end intensive solutions — as in Finance, Logistics, and other critical business areas.
Compared to customer-facing products, internal tools require different Discovery approaches. For example, UX research, Design Sprints, and Interviews won’t always tell us what to build or if the feature will work. That’s because internal tools generally need more validation on business rules, data modeling, and data pipelines than is required for UX/UI.
Here, we want to tackle that problem with scrappy solutions — stuff we build and fail fast with scripts, sheets, and low-code apps. This is where Solutions Engineers (SEs) come in and lead those initiatives.
This approach enables us to build in a few days or weeks, constantly integrating operating systems with business areas. Therefore, Solutions Engineers’ goals here are to test fast and constantly innovate. They prioritize discoveries over certainties and speed over quality.
As we gain confidence in a solution and make sure it impacts our desired outcome, we’re ready to discuss developing a more robust product. Therefore, whenever tested tools succeed and prove themselves crucial, our PMs & Software Engineers will collect learnings and develop proper software. The inspiration comes from previous experiences and this text from Brandon Chu.
Business Areas are boiling ideas daily and generally lack engineering expertise to implement quick wins or small features that may change routine drastically — that’s why Solution Engineers work close to them, frequently testing lots of ideas. In the end, it’s a funnel of features.
This framework isn’t new. But we believe what differentiate us is: SEs work within the Product Team, always iterating with Product Managers and Software Engineers — it’s collaborative and results come fast to everyone. We’ve seen many scrappy teams building scalable solutions in Business areas but isolated from Product. We want to make sure that incredible discoveries become proper softwares and don’t remain just as ‘business work arounds’.
We believe SEs mitigate development risks while generating core business value!
If you’re curious, innovative, and passionate about continually testing new ideas, have experience with script languages, and would like to work close to business areas, proposing solutions, reach us!
