DEV Community: Maher Al Musallami

Defining the Value Proposition

Maher Al Musallami — Sat, 30 Oct 2021 15:48:39 +0000

Intro
“Value proposition refers to the value a company promises to deliver
to customers should they choose to buy their product” - Alexandra
Twin.

Recently I’ve been working as a product manager for a few
early-stage startups that are building their first product and I noticed
that most of them struggle with defining their value proposition.
I am writing this article to give some guidelines that will assist
early-stage startups, and their product teams to define their value
proposition.
Defining the value proposition is a crucial step in the "Lean Product
Process" developed by - Dan Olsen. This is important because that is
what convinces a customer to buy from you and not your
competitors.

The Invisible Wall
Defining the value that your product intends to deliver is the step
that follows identifying your customer needs. In this step you must
set your mind on which of the customer needs your product will
satisfy. Here is where the issue I noticed arises, startups have a
tendency to try and tackle a wide range of problems. This creates an
“invisible wall” that blocks the success of their product. The reason I
am calling it an “invisible wall” is because, you will not be able to see
the problem until it is too late, which is after launching the product,
by that time you have already consumed so much of your resources
and time on it.

How to overcome the invisible wall
Your product must be built with a focus on the set of needs that are
critical to your target audience. Products tackling a wide range of
customer needs have a higher chance of facing issues, in both the
problem space (determining your target customer) and the solution
space (technical issues in your product).
When working on your first product, it is important to understand
that you still don’t have enough information on what your potential
customer actually wants.

The uncertainty in the hypotheses is often overlooked by the
startups when building their product, this is a huge mistake. A good
startup with a strong product team should always keep in mind that
the hypotheses formed initially on the customer needs might not be
entirely correct, and after testing the product with users you might
have to come back and make some changes to your hypothesis
which means you will have to make changes in your solution as well.
I have noticed that startups tend to get too confident with their
hypotheses. That is why they end up tackling a wide range of what
could potentially be customer needs. At this point when you realize
some of your assumptions were wrong, it will be extremely
expensive to make changes, chances are high that this might kill your
product. Good startups must only allow their confidence in the
hypotheses to increase proportionally with the information that they
gather from the users or the market. Being able to determine which
of the needs to tackle is an important skill. However, determining
which needs not to tackle requires even more skill and talent.

Conclusion
When building a product it is easy to get carried away with the
temptation of solving more problems. However, startups must spend
enough time, and effort making sure that if their solution requires
some changes after testing it in the market, they can make the
needed adjustments. In addition to that, startups must be aware of
the fact that they most probably will have to revisit their hypotheses,
and make changes in the product they built.
Concentrating on defining a clear value proposition will help you
avoid wasting your resources which you cannot afford especially
when building an MVP. It will also keep you from launching a product
that is not valuable or usable.

Follow me on twitter @Almsalmi_

LinearSearch-VS-BinarySearch

Maher Al Musallami — Sat, 21 Aug 2021 14:41:10 +0000

In this article I will show the difference in time complexity / Big O notation between the two searching algorithms.

The Problem

In this example we need to create a function that accepts an array and a value of any type, we should be able to know if the value is in the array or not.

The Solution

We will solve this problem with 2 different approaches : -

Linear Search: Iterate through the array and compare the value to the items at each index O(n)

Binary Search: Split the array and compare the mid point to the value O(log n)

First Approach Linear Search

function linearSearch(arr, num) {
    // ITERATE THORUGH THE ARRAY
    for(let i = 0; i < arr.length; i++){
        if(arr[i] === num){
            // IF FOUND RETURN THE INDEX
            return i
        } 
    }
    return `not found`
}

linearSearch([10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100], 40)

Create a function that accepts an array and a value
Loop through the array
Compare the value at each index / arr[i] to the value passed
If you find that arr[i] is equal to the value, return the index
If the loop ends and the value is not found, return "Not Found"

In terms of implementation this approach is relatively simple compared to the second approach. However, the time complexity of this approach would O(n), as you will have to loop through the whole array in the worst case when the value is found at the end of the array. So in an array of 8 numbers we will do 8 checks.

Second Approach Binary Searcch

function binarySearch(arr, num){
    let start = 0
    let end = arr.length - 1
    let mid = Math.floor((start + end) / 2) 

    while(arr[mid] !== num && start < end){
        if(num < arr[mid]){
            // UPDATE END POINT
            end = mid - 1
        } else if(num > arr[mid]){
            // UPDATE START POINT
            start = mid + 1
        }
        // UPDATE MID POINT
        mid = Math.floor((start + end) / 2) 
        // IF FOUND RETURN THE INDEX 
        if(arr[mid] === num) return i
    }
}

binarySearch([10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100], 40)

Create a function that accepts an array and a value
Create start point, end point, and a mid point
Check if the mid point is greater or smaller than the value
If it is smaller, update the value of start point to be mid + 1. This means our array now is smaller, we got rid of the first half of the array
If it us greater, update the value of end point to be mid - 1. We got rid of the second half of the array
Update the value of mid point to be the center of the new array

Repeat this process as long as the value is not found and start point is smaller than end point

Finally if the value is found return the index

In this implementation we are making use of the "Divide and Conquer" pattern to find the value, unlike the previous approach we won't be comparing each index to the value, We will check if the mid point is equal to the value. So in an array of 8 numbers we will only do 3 checks This would give us a better time complexity of O(log n). The rate of operation growth would be O(log n) which is much better than O(n). Refere to BigO chart.

Ternary Operator ? True : False

Maher Al Musallami — Mon, 24 May 2021 06:49:53 +0000

What is a ternary operator

In simple words, It is a shortcut for an If statement.
You set a condition followed by a question mark, after the question mark you put some code to be executed if the the condition is truthy, And then you put a colon which will be followed by the code to be executed if the condition is falsy.
const age = 5 let grade = (age <= 5) ? "Kindergarten" : "Grade 1";
// The output should be "Kindergarten"

Convert If statement to a ternary

const number = 10 let result if(number >= 50) { let result = "It is true" } else { let result = "It is false" }
// The output should be "It is false" because 10 is not greater
or equal to 50

Now let's do the same example using a ternary

const number = 10 let result = (number >= 50) ? "It is true" : "It is false"
// We should get the same output as the previous example.

Syntax

condition ? true : false

Conclusion

Ternary is powerful operator to reduce the lines of code we have to write, As you see in the example given, We were able to reduce the code lines from 7 lines to 2 lines.