Should product work on custom pieces?

I often hear of product teams being asked to build one-off, custom pieces. It’s an idea for a story or an advertiser request. Not necessarily a bad idea, but it can pose a dilemma.  

Does it fit into the product process? The traditional product process starts with the problem — the customer problem. So is this request a creative problem that needs to be solved? Or a restricted business need that needs to be met? 

That depends on our definition of customer. Is an advertiser a customer? Is an internal stakeholder a customer? Comically one day last week, I was having this discussion with a senior media leader who argued that customers should always be external. As he was telling me this, I realised that I had a powerpoint slide showing a triangle of customers: users, commercial, and internal. The reason it was funny: The slide had his company logo on it and was presented by one of his colleagues at a recent event. 

I would argue that it’s OK, as long as we define what it is and how it fits into our workload. 

This is likely to mean delving into the request:

• What is the customer problem exactly? 

• What is the ROI? 

• Will other customers find this useful? ie is it something that we can reuse in the future? We use the term “productizing” something for a reason. It’s taking something and making it reusable, perennial. 

• What are the tradeoffs with other work that can be reused? How does this play into the ROI? 

I can see pure product folk rolling their eyes. No custom work isn’t true product work 99% of the time, but it shouldn’t be an automatic no either. And if we’re being honest, if the CEO asks for a one-off — even where the answers to most of the above are no — if it’s not going to take much time and will take longer to argue, and potentially damage a relationship, then sometimes the answer is JFDI.

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