Brett Sandusky

Brett Sandusky
Consumer Wise

Over the past few years, direct-to-consumer (D2C) sales have been top-of-mind for many in the publishing industry.  This approach has also been hotly debated, with some advocating for deeper consumer relationships through data, and others equating D2C with taking on Amazon in the retail spaceā€”a fight in which few, if any, would like to engage.

Twelve Tips for Agile Product Development

As publishers become increasingly digital, both in workflow and product offering, we will continue to hear more and more about the agile publishing model. Agile is a methodology that comes from the software development industry. Its main components are iterative design, rapid prototyping, minimum viable product (MVP), customer feedback loops which provide behavioral and usage analytics and data-driven decision making.

Essentially, the objective of agile is to push things to market more quickly, and to learn from actual usage patterns. The data collected informs subsequent product releases. While this model has yet to be fully realized or articulated in the publishing space, there are components of it which have been the subject of experimentation among publishers. If your company is just starting in agile or is in the midst of implementing an agile workflow, here are a few tips to keep in mind: