The UX Collective piece titled 'You're not building a product. You're running a project.' surfaces a single provocative claim delivered to a £30M bootstrapped CFO during an interview. The distinction matters: products imply continuity, ownership, and compounding value. Projects imply deadlines, handoffs, and a finish line.
The framing targets design and product teams who mistake shipping cycles for product thinking. If your roadmap resets every quarter and nothing compounds, you are not building a product. You are executing a series of projects with a product-shaped logo on top.
The full article is worth reading for how that CFO responded, and for the specific organizational patterns the author uses to tell the two apart. The argument has real implications for how teams hire, prioritize, and measure success.
[READ ORIGINAL →]