I've been writing 2 posts here about successful success in my career, but today I also want to talk about epic fail.

Do you remember the post about working for a company that makes a solution for automating the HoReCa segment? https://vatyutov.ru/POagainstPastEra

Actually, not everything was so rosy with us. A year has passed. The team is shot down and performs. It would seem that carry out discovery, prioritize features and roll out to customers to raise their happiness, or as it is fashionable now to blow from each iron, grow the CX (customer expirience) of your product.

Our customer base is growing and our partners are actively promoting our solutions, landing pages are working. But then a cloud called "EGAIS" appeared in the cloudless sky*

If suddenly someone does not know, this is such a thing implemented on behalf of the state in order to take into account the sale of alcoholic beverages above a certain degree. (People were often poisoned with all sorts of fake booze from non-Orthodox alcohol. It's not good to stop it and start controlling it)

As if everything is clear, we drink a lot in Russia, according to some statistics, why not give this solution to account for alcohol in sales to our customers. Everything would be fine, but after conducting enough in-depth interviews with our target audience, and these are street food and fast food establishments, these are small chains, we found that well, in fact, most probably 80 - 90 percent, well, actually there was no such request.

Experience shows that alcohol is sold by individual establishments. If you come to a food court somewhere, for example, ala DEPOT, StrEAT and any other in any city, you see that most establishments just make great food: burgers, gyros, pizza, woks, udon fo-bo and so on. And at the same time they do not sell alcohol or even beer. But there is always one point where you can buy almost any alcoholic drink, from a glass of beer and wine to high-end whiskey.

Actually, our clients do not need the Unified State Exam. But we also have shareholders with twenty-five years of experience who say: "Not my brother, EGAIS, this is what the doctor ordered. You're a new person here, do as the shareholders demand.

"Well, of course," I answer, "Research shows that our customers need at least a simple solution to account for the remnants of unsold products and purchase management. Even a survey among partners in a closed group on one banned social network demonstrated: "Give our customers a "warehouse".

A small excerpt from our USAIS Road Map

The arguments didn't work.

As a result, instead of the planned 3 months, we spent 6 months sawing a solution for integration with the USAIS. If only it had to be programmed. - The EGAIS was written by one of the "own" offices and, of course, they monetized it as much as they could. - SDK/API is just like this, the test outline is just here, the keys for sending requests only on such days.

- Android is really closed and a lot of other delights of communicating with monopoly.

And then you will pay regularly for maintaining your integration.

Well, we finally got it, and with the next release in the prod. And how many customers do you think we have who bought an additional subscription to the EGAIS functionality.... That's right, the very 5%.

But there was no way to wait for the warehouse anymore. Of course, we farmed through the previously written USAIS, but for a big decision, where tens of thousands of rubles, but our microbusiness clents want to be inexpensive. In general, we had to quickly, quickly recruit a new team to create a warehouse management solution for our customers. But that's another story.

What is the conclusion of this story?

Actually, if you are going to be product managers, then ask future stakeholders.

+ "Am I responsible for the product result?"

+ "Will I have the right to say: "NO"?, to any top manager, up to the owner, that what you propose to go to implement does not seem to be confirmed by our in-depth interviews"

If they answer "no" or start to cheat, think a hundred times, is it worth going and being the executor of the will of the "smartest" in the company?