{"id":962,"date":"2010-04-06T01:17:17","date_gmt":"2010-04-06T08:17:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.mentor.com\/robinbornoff\/?p=962"},"modified":"2026-03-27T08:55:48","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T12:55:48","slug":"a-faster-horse-mentor-ideas-for-mechanical-driving-product-development","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/2010\/04\/06\/a-faster-horse-mentor-ideas-for-mechanical-driving-product-development\/","title":{"rendered":"“A Faster Horse” – Mentor ‘IDEAS for Mechanical’ driving product development"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Mentor ‘IDEAS for Mechanical’<\/a> site allows users\u00a0of FloTHERM<\/a>, FloVENT<\/a>, FloTHERM PCB<\/a> and FloEFD<\/a>\u00a0to post their software enhancement requests (access via their SupportNet<\/a>\u00a0login credentials), comment on other people’s and most importantly vote on those ideas that they believe would\u00a0 be of benefit to them. The result is a prioritised list of possible software features that product management can use to help determine\u00a0a short term roadmap of the products that has the best chance of ensuring continued satisfaction of the userbase.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

\u00a0As blogged about last September<\/a>,\u00a0my colleagues and I involved in the development of\u00a0\u00a0FloTHERM, FloTHERM PCB\u00a0and FloVENT are committed to using the IDEAS for Mechanical site in this way. A recent blog <\/a>on that site covers some of the other enhancements we have been working on in the development of V9\u00a0as a direct result of the posts to the IDEAS site. All in all we’ve implemented 5 of the top 10 voted requests and 8 of the top 20. What better way to demonstrate our continued commitment to both our products and our users?<\/p>\n

As a product manager I’m a representative of our users to the software development department, the internal client if you like. As a customer representative I have to actively and accurately reflect the needs and desires of the customer. It’s a job\u00a0I love and one I take very seriously. It was therefore with a sense of incredulity that I reacted to the following quote attributed to Henry Ford when I first came across it:<\/p>\n

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Apparently an often quoted phrase in product management circles for obvious reasons. At first I thought it smacked of arrogance, albeit a retrospectively successful arrogance! Surely to\u00a0provide anything apart from what your\u00a0customers\u00a0wanted was conceited and bound for commercial failure. I’ve come round to taking the quote as describing the benefit of trying to\u00a0know your customers better than they know themselves (although there’s still a lingering sense of conceit somewhere\u00a0in that phrase…).<\/p>\n

In my experience users will\u00a0recommend solutions to underlying problems. A good product manager will be able to bury down below the recommended solution to identify the true underlying issue. A good and honest\u00a0dialog with the customer is of course critical in achieving this. Once the underlying issue is teased out, a\u00a0close relationship with the software development team will enable the most effective software solution to be identified and implemented. Makes for\u00a0a very enjoyable working dichotomy!<\/p>\n

6th April 2010 Ross-on-Wye<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Mentor ‘IDEAS for Mechanical’ site allows users\u00a0of FloTHERM, FloVENT, FloTHERM PCB and FloEFD\u00a0to post their software enhancement requests (access…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71715,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spanish_translation":"","french_translation":"","german_translation":"","italian_translation":"","polish_translation":"","japanese_translation":"","chinese_translation":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[80,86,157],"industry":[],"product":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-flotherm","tag-flovent","tag-pcb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/71715"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=962"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/962\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6333,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/962\/revisions\/6333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=962"},{"taxonomy":"industry","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/industry?post=962"},{"taxonomy":"product","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product?post=962"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/simulating-the-real-world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}