Inspired: How to Create Products Customers Love

Marty Cagan is a voice of experience when it comes to creating a product, and assembling a team and process to build that product. In his book Inspired: How To Create Products Customers Love, Cagan covers a lot of basics and does a great job of explaining on simple terms the key issues of developing and managing a product. Particularly in the area of software development.

Having been on a small team with one product for the last 6 years, much of what Cagan talks about help me give a name to a lot of the things we have learned through trial and error. The book helped define some roles that eventually need to be created as our product and team grows.

The book is broken down into three sections that each contain short and simple chapters; People, Process, and Product. This book is a great starting point for anyone who is getting a software or internet business up an running.

What I appreciate most is that Cagan gets that there's not one size fit all process for product management. He understands that some of the most successful business have their own process that is very unique to their company, but he does a great job of teaching you about some of the common people and processes that everyone has or uses.

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• Big ideas from Marty Cagan's "Inspired" that helped me feel more confident on how to proceed with my business (zacharyburt.com)

Perseverance, Wisdom, and Perfection

In James 1:2-8, the writer opens his letter by encouraging readers to consider trials and persecution opportunities for joy. During those trials we are to ask for wisdom throughout the circumstances we face, whether it be persecution or the temptation to do evil.

It seems that in the midst of trials, asking for wisdom is a difficult thing to do because many of our trials are self-inflicted in some way. In our attempts to create perfection, we often come up short. Could that be because we lacked wisdom in the first place? If we are to obtain perfection and completeness through our steadfastness as James suggests, we must first learn humility before asking for wisdom.

As Matthew 5:48 suggests from the Sermon on the Mount, we don't seek perfection as if it is obtainable on our own, we should instead seek perfection knowing that God is perfect.

Personifying Evil & Belief

Rather than just giving evil a face and calling it the devil, what could we be missing instead?

When I do more compare and contrast of evil in the Old Testament to the usage of the devil in the New Testament, I wonder if I have trivialized evil in our world and the force that it plays.  It's easy to personalize sin and point the finger at a devil and say it's me vs. him, but I'm afraid the battle of good and evil extends further than any one of us individually. As much as I would like to know the origin of good and evil, my finite self cannot begin to understand the complexities of evil and how it seeks to devour. I must live knowing it is larger than what I have given it credit for in the past.

This thought is scary, but at the same time the thought reinforces my beliefs and bolsters my faith at a whole new level. Once I begin to think I have things figured out, my confidence and trust only increases in myself as it decreases toward others. For that reason I worship the Creator because the more I try to understand the unknown the more complex it becomes, and the more I am left to marvel. I leave myself with no other choice but to believe.