How focussing on value first helps to ship faster and stay focussed

I Shipped My 1st Product In 2020 Using The Value First Mindset

On the 4th of May 2020, a sunny day in The Netherlands, my first product launch of 2020 (and in the past few years, to be exact) was a fact: Washem.

What’s A Washem?

Washem is a free mobile application built in Xamarin that shows video sequences during each washing step in the instructions as provided by the World Health Organisation (WHO) along with a countdown timer so kids (and adults) can follow along while washing, and see when they’re done.

I created the Washem because I wanted to teach my kids how to wash their hands conform to the World Health Organisation’s washing instructions, which are more complex than you’d imagine (especially for 7-year-old kids).

Hand washing proved to be not quite so trivial during the (Corona) pandemic crisis. And since building an app was within my skill-set, I wanted to help by building something scoped that I already had aquired the skills and experience for during my career.

But the functionality of the app isn’t what I wanted to celebrate in this milestone. Neither is my career.

Focus On Providing Value First

What I DO want to tell you about is the fact that I worked on creating Washem by following my own advice. Especially for makers, that is the type of advice that is often ignored and/or overlooked.

The specific type of advice is something I actually wrote quite the articles about on Shipharder.com:

Focus. On. Value. First.

I’m proud that that’s exactly what I did with Washem.

How Did A #valuefirst Mindset Help Me?

By keeping myself focussed on creating value, I kept moving to the target instead of making turns, running in circles, and jumping through hoops that weren’t needed to move me forward.

With every step of the way I kept that main question in the back of my head: how can I provide the value that the application is a vessel for (not the end goal). By…