Not everyone buys iPhones, Teslas, or uses Gmail. It gets even more complicated when we build enterprise products that are used by different people for different purposes. While Gmail allows you to read, send, and respond to emails, it does not try to help you edit a spreadsheet. It has a separate product more appropriate for that use.

In product development, we invest a lot of time creating personas. Ignoring the needs of these personas and what they are looking to accomplish with your product can lead to building something that tries to be everything for everyone. It will probably lead to a very complicated feature or product.

If something is for everyone, then it is for no one.

The challenge is to identify when to break up the product or feature into multiple pieces. Anyone who has worked with personas before knows they have different needs. Knowing who is it for is a good place to start. Once we know the needs, we can ask ourselves if it is for them?

When the answer is no, we have found a way to simplify. When we find ourselves answering no more often than not, it might be time to break things up.

It starts with knowing who is it for and what they need.