I recently upgraded my OS to the latest MS offering: Windows 7. The motivation for the upgrade? my PC’s OS has become so corrupted, it would not even recognize USB devices. For a short while, the system ran noticeably faster than the previous OS. After installing a few necessary software pieces, I notice a degradation in performance. I expect it to get worse…

We all agree the crux for these problems lie with software.

It may be the economies of scale that prevent PC software manufacturers
from providing a through and complete solution for every problem. For example, in one of my previous companies, the release cycle was once every 18 months. The combination of the amount of features vying to enter that release (or wait another 18 months to the next one), the need to provide reliable software, the need to stay ahead (or close behind) the other players creates a tough set of constraints.

Torn between impossible to recreate bugs and differentiating features a product manager will agree to insert the feature, providing justification that only few customers will encounter that bug, and that eventually there will be a workaround.

This way, many bugs, in almost all large software companies, are released to the world as “known issues”. That is, in the (good) case where these are known. Of course, the customer who encounters those bugs does not care that his case is rare. On the countrary, this may mean that he will have a hard time getting support.

But there is a silver lining in that cloud. With the move to agile development and software as a service, deployment cycles become a matter of days, and maintaining client-side software may become a thing of the past.

This entry was inspired by my good friend's Roee post in the Soluto blog

When will retailers learn that having a great website is pointless if you can’t actually fulfill a customer transaction when they want to buy a product?

I was going to quit blogging for the holidays, but then the following happened to me this evening and I had to write about it. A similar problem happened last year on Boxing Day with this retailer. You’d think they’d fix the problem by now!

Future Shop – a large Canadian retailer (http://www.futureshop.ca) now owned by Best Buy -  started their Boxing Day sale a bit early this year with a number of online specials.

My wife and I were looking for a new washer/dryer and saw this special:

After a quick bit of online research, we decided to make the purchase. How much better does it get than that for an online retailer?

When I went to checkout and pay for the purchase on the webstore, I got the following screen:

click image to enlarge

This virtual “waiting line” took about 45 minutes to go through. I had to sit and watch that progress bar slowly inch forward. Eventually it reached 100% and then I was greeted with the following wonderful message:

FSDataAccess error ‘800a000d’

Type mismatch

/Checkout/CheckoutControlLib.asp, line 79

Yup, after 45 minutes, a coding error. I tried going through the line again (same error) and a 3rd time (same error). At least 1.5 hours wasted on this purchase.

Was it just me experiencing this? Twitter gave me my answer. - Click on tweet images to enlarage

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So I guess it wasn’t just me!

I tried a fourth time — another 20 minute wait to get to the checkout, but this time it was successful — or at least appeared to be. But wait, what’s this message in stage 2 of the checkout? It says, under Stock Status that my item is OUT OF STOCK???

click image to enlarge

But that’s not right, because the product page says there are clearly 2041 of these units in stock!!

click image to enlarge

So, now what gives? I did get a final web page that said an order confirmation email would be coming to my email address. That has not arrived yet. We’ll have to see if Future Shop can actually fulfill a transaction on an advertised special via their website as we appraoch 2010.

Future Shop web site Product Management and Development Teams, a big FAIL to you this Christmas Eve.

Future Shop Customer Service, what are you going to give me for the roughly 2 hours of my time I spent trying to get a transaction through your site?

Saeed

I don’t have an MBA. I have never even taken an accounting class. Yet in my years as a product person I’ve had to help generate numerous financial models to help figure out whether a new products and/or services makes economic sense.   Through my mentors, I learned just enough to generate the tables and charts that would show me whether the product or service deserves to be built.

In my mind, financial modeling for a vaporware product is a framework to help the team think through these questions:

• How many units do we think we can sell in the next few years?
• What is the average sales price?
• How much does it cost to sell each unit?
• How much do we need to spend to develop and sustain this business?

The toughest question to answer is the unit projection question.  Some people pull projections out of you-know-where.   I think a little analysis goes a long way here.  I tend to do this with a top-down approach, then cross check against a bottom-up approach.

The top-down approach is a market sizing and analysis exercise:

• Use analyst reports and other sources of quantitative data (e.g. US Census) to size your target market segment.
• Take it down as necessary to accommodate constraints imposed by your technology platform.
• Come up with a percentage ramp that predicts the market penetration you will achieve over time.
• Cross check your projected market share growth against competitors (quarterly or annual reports from public companies in adjacent or comparable markets are a great resource).
• Apply the sniff test: do you think you can sell enough to make this product worth your while?

Once the top down approach passes the sniff test, you can try the bottom-up approach:

• Build up the number of units you think you can sell via each distribution channel in the plan.
• Use hard data as much as possible – for example, if you are selling through retail outlets, check your projections against sell in/sell through data for comparable products through those outlets or classes of outlets to make sure your estimates are not out of whack.

Now that you have your top down and bottom up number, compare them and see if they match.   If they don’t, figure out why.  It may be that your top-down scenario is too rosy and the channels are fundamentally not equipped to support that kind of volume. Perhaps the distribution strategy needs to be revisited.  Or it may be that your channel projections are too rosy and assume an unreasonable growth in market share.  It’s an iterative process until both approaches pass the sniff test.  At this point I would use the bottom-up estimates as a basis to calculate gross revenue projections.

Having a credible unit sales / gross revenue projection is half the battle. The other half is to figure out whether the economics of the business makes sense. This is where the value chain analysis comes in.  Lay out everybody in the product’s ecosystem, figure out who gets paid how much and by whom, tally up all the costs out of your own business and calculate the cost of sales.  At this point, you are ready to calculate the gross margin of the product based on the expected average sales price.

Lastly, let’s count all heads and operating expenses directly attributable to the new business line.   There is the upfront cost (to develop the new product or service) that skews towards R&D.  Then there is the long term cost where R&D spending goes down into maintenance mode and sales and marketing costs go up to fuel growth.

Once all this is done, it’s time to tally it all up and make a nice hockey stick picture – the net income chart.  Typically the income will go up exponentially a couple of quarters after the product or service is introduced.   If it doesn’t, figure out why.  If you can’t make the net income look reasonable, perhaps the product or service doesn’t make sense for your business after all.

Tom Grant has started an interesting series of posts entitled Against a Grand Theory of Product Management. The articles are interesting reading, but make sure you have your thinking cap on when you start, because Tom is discussing an important but rather abstract topic.

He pulls in references ranging from Middle Range Theory (something I’d never heard of before) to Darwin’s theories (something I think we’ve all heard of but probably don’t adequately understand) to help convey his points. I had to read the posts a couple of times each to better grasp the specifics of his arguments.

In Part 2 of his series, Tom asks:

If someone can figure out why even the most meticulously written and reviewed requirements don’t stop some tech companies from making products that their users don’t like or can’t understand, that’s a big contribution to our little field of study. Best to have more middle-range theory before even thinking about the GToE [Grand Theory of Everything].

This is a great question. But before I answer it, I want you to watch the following video. It is from a TED Conference talk given in February 2008 by Robert Lang. Not only is this a fascinating video, but as you’re watching it, keep Tom’s question in mind. Don’t read on though until you watch the video.

[BTW, if you are impatient and read ahead, the important stuff starts at about 2:30 in the video.]

Lang talks about the evolution of origami, that took it from a traditional Japanese art form that most of us associate with creating things like this:

and turned it into an art (and science)  form that allows people to create things like this:

And what caused that evolution? In Lang’s words, the answer is “mathematics”, or more specifically, the creation and utilization of a set of rules that provide a language for defining what can and can’t be done in origami.

The rules define the crease patterns — the lines along which folds are made — in the paper. And there are 4 rules:

• 2-colorability — any valid crease pattern can always be coloured with only 2 colours and will not have the same colour in two adjacent areas.
• modulus (M-V) = +2 or -2 — at any interior vertex, the number of mountain folds and the number of valley folds will always differ by 2
• For any vertex, the sum of alternate angles around that vertex will always be 180 degrees. e.g. a1+a3+a5 … = 180 degrees  & a2+a4+a6… = 180 degrees.
• No self-intersection at overlaps – a sheet when folded cannot penetrate itself

[Note: if you don't understand these rules, watch the video. ]

Now these 4 rules define the properties of valid crease patterns, but there’s still something missing. How can those rules be applied to create sophisticated origami? In short, what goes in the box? (see 4:40 of the video)

Lang discusses that as well, and provides this diagram:

In short, the physical subject is reduced to a tree figure defining the key components (“flaps” in Lang’s terminology) of the subject. In this case, those are the legs, antennae, horns etc. of the beetle. That’s fairly easy.

Then some process must be used to take that tree-figure and create a base form for the final origami. He calls that the hard step.

And finally the base form can be refined to create the finished model. That’s fairly straight forward.

The “hard step” is accomplished using the rules defined above and the language for applying those rules. Given those rules are mathematical in nature, they can be written precisely and unambiguously and then executed to create the final model.

What does this have to do with product requirements and Tom’s question?

When looking at product requirements, there are analogies to Subject-Tree-Base-Model example given above.

• Product Managers investigate  real world problems, needs, scenarios etc. (Subject).
• They then take their learnings and create abstracted representations of them (requirements) using artifacts such as problem statements, personas, use cases and user stories (Tree)
• These artifacts are then used by engineering teams to create prototypes and mockups etc. to ensure that the requirements were understood and addressed in the product. (Base)
• The final product is built, tested, tweeked etc. with the appropriate “fit and finish” before being released. (Model).

Sounds pretty good so far right?

But herein lie the problems.

• There currently is no language for requirements like the one defined for origami, that can precisely and unambiguously convey what is needed and define that in a way that ensures it can be built.
• Requirements should be implementation neutral, but as we all know in technology, the ability to fulfill a requirement can often be limited by technology choices and decisions that were made well before the requirement existed.
• Other constraints such as time, resources, knowledge, legalities, finances etc. all factor into how well a requirement can be met, or perhaps if it can be met or not.
• In many cases requirements contain unknowns or ambiguities that are filled in by assumptions during the development process. This is a reality of developing products in a business environment.  In the origami situation, this is would never happen. A model (like the stag beetle) can only be built when the full crease pattern is defined.
• There is no concept of people “liking” or “understanding” the origami in Robert Lang’s rules. i.e. Tom Grant asks about why companies build product their customers don’t like or understand.

This last point is key and deserves a little more discussion. What people like and understand is complex and is not static. In general, what people like is based on overall experience and emotion. It is not something that (currently) can be defined in a set of requirements.

i.e. users of this product must feel giddy with excitement the first time they use this software

So, can origami teach us something about product requirements?

Absolutely. The origami path from Subject->Tree->Base->Model forms series of transformations that is akin to the requirements gathering, communication and development process used when creating products.

Once a set of clear foundational rules for origami were defined and understood, not only did they open up new possibilities for forms never thought possible, but those rules formed the grammar for a language that makes precise and unambiguous communication also possible.

There is almost certainly a set of rules and language for precise definition and communication of requirements, but it has not yet been clearly formalized. That is likely a necessary stepping stone in the maturity cycle of product development.

But even with that requirements language, changing market landscapes, customer preferences and needs, technological, resource and time constraints will all work together to make product success a “grey box”, where those with great vision, insight and execution are likely to succeed but never guaranteed that success.

Saeed

So, thanks to all of you who voted for us in the Canadian Blog Awards.

We didn’t win. We didn’t come 2nd or 3rd. We came in 4th in our category, just ahead of some dude named Matt Scott Nelson.

So, perhaps next year? At least this year we made to the final round of voting.

Thanks for your support.

HP Enterprise Desktops going live in iQuote. For our UK and Ireland users iQuote will very soon be featuring the HP 8000 Elite Desktops. This range is aimed at corporate users due to its high levels of warranty and long product lifecycles. Customers can choose from Small Form Factor, Ultra-Slim Desktop and Microtower chassis.

iQuote will show all of the Top Value systems plus options very soon we are just in final testing before release. There is no action required by iQuote hosts as the parts will appear automatically and price/stock will be picked up from the existing feed.

A holiday gift to my colleagues in product management and product marketing…

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the firm,
Every dev team member was struck by the germ.
The code had to be finished right away and with care,
In hopes that on Xmas Day, they would not still be there.

The product managers were dreaming about their soft beds,
While visions of market requirements danced in their heads.
Personas, pcamps, pricing and analysis,
Makes you think – get to work and stop the paralysis

The sales team calls with just one more request,
It’s the demo again, something we just detest.
Of course it was something needed real bad.
To delay would only make sales really mad.

When on the conference call there arose such a clatter,
I shot from my chair, fearful of what was the matter.
The PowerPoint preso was up in a flash,
But the network was down – get the helpdesk on the dash.

Marketing was staring outside at the new-fallen snow
Wondering when they could join their friends down below.
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But the CEO dressed in full Santa gear.

He carried a sack, all red, big and bright
It was just one more diversion from this long night.
He put his hand in, drew out envelopes that were hard,
No bonuses this year, just a “thanks” and $5 coffee gift card.

“So thank you, thank you” he called to one and all.
As our AV geek put the projection on the wall.
A last review of test cases was finally to occur
(And, to be honest, this last hour was one big blur.)

So the meetings were done, and code put to rest
Customers were happy and said we’re the best.
Another release met the deadline, got out the door,
We took a moment to lift our jaws from the floor.

The release may be out, and the dev team said good day
But the product management team knew there was more to say.
Positioning and material left to write,
With fears still that this could turn into another long night.

But, sales expected the PowerPoint today
It didn’t matter to them if it was a holiday.
To avoid their calls and emails during tomorrow’s time,
Working on these tools now was worth the dime.

I write the requirements and create the tools
I’m in product management, I’m no one’s fool!
The rest of my company may have left hours ago,
But the work never stops for me, this much I know.

My present will be waiting when the sales numbers are met,
And I meet the big forecast, and win the company bet.
I then get to use the frequent flier miles I have earned,
As I head to a sun-drenched beach (with no cell service) to get burned.

So, no matter what celebration of the holiday you observe,
There is enough credit, accolades and attention you deserve.
And if you’re a colleague in this product management land,
Stand up now… join me and give yourself a hand!

[And, If you’re thinking this is a career for you,
Think twice then again, before you do.
For while it is exciting and rewarding, full of joy, and fragile
Get ready for next year, for then we tackle Agile!]

To me, one of the most interesting aspects of my career in the software business has to do with my progression across different functional areas in the business, at many different firms.  In my 20+ years (!) in this business, I’ve worked as a software engineer (8 years), technical software consultant (4 years), and product management/marketing (8 years), in both individual contributor and management roles.

This has given me perspective, and (I hope) some wisdom that I can share here.  As such, I’m kicking off this thread, in which I’ll explain the hows and whys of software companies, aimed at a technical audience.  Thinking back to my first few software engineering jobs, straight out of college, I had no idea how software businesses could or should have been run.  While I was very fortunate to have been hired into my first software engineering job by an amazing technical team lead, who provided excellent technical mentoring, I was not so lucky on the business and management side.  This context is something I learned over many years, at many different companies –by watching what did and didn’t work, and asking a lot of questions.  Along the way I formally augmented my knowledge by obtaining an MBA (while working full-time as a product manager, with a baby at home….I don’t think I slept for 2 years).

Hopefully this series will be illuminating and useful to people currently working in the software business, who want to be able to understand the complete business context of their workplace, be able to better contribute in a more meaningful way, and professionally learn and grow (how can you argue with that?)

I spent this last weekend thinking about my next post here. I was intrigued by a post written last week by Dr. Jim Anderson on “Tough Times Call for You to Fire Your Customers.”  I did some more research, and had a nice draft written. Just a little clean up and I was ready to post it this afternoon.

Then, I opened my RSS feeds of my blogroll, and I have a lot, only to see that this morning Steve Johnson beat me to it and wrote a post referencing the “fire your customer” concept.

So, now, what do I do? If I do a complete post using the nicely worded draft, I look like a copycat; and, if I don’t post it, I look like…well, the early bird with the best intentions who missed the worm.

Yep, that’s me.

The only thing I would add to the esteem colleague posts above – and this will only make sense if you read the two posts referenced – is that at the end of the day, while you may want to “fire your customer,” there is another option. I had the chance to ask Forrester Research’s CEO George Colony once if he ever fired his “troubled or over-demanding” customers. His response, which I think is the best one I have heard, was simply “No. I don’t fire them. I invite them to my competitors.”

From the outside looking in – there are two lessons in this post: 1) don’t wait to act – despite taking time to learn, craft and put in due diligence, sometimes you need to follow your gut and act more swiftly; and, 2) if you can’t make a customer happy, let your competitor spend their time, money and resources doing it. It will leave you with more to go after the rest of the market.

Why hasn’t a Google emerged from India, or even a smaller technology product such as Adobe? This is a frequently asked question, and the lack of product R&D in India has been explained by many reasons, including the exclusive focus on services, the basic educational system that promotes rote-learning and a paucity of talent. So much has been written on it that we are not going to get into that discussion here!

Instead, in this post, I’d like to look at a more positive aspect of the situation: while a product focus and therefore product management in India has not dominated the market, the situation is slowly changing.

As tech product firms grow, naturally, there is a greater imperative for product management and product managers to be involved and help the firm move to the next level. Here is our list of five essential ‘daily’ skills for product managers working in India in a dynamic and challenging environment. These are not about tools or techniques, but about qualities that every project manager needs.

Setting the scope. Whatever the size of the firm or the scale of the project, “project creep” seems to be an intrinsic part of product development. Product A starts out as a tool to help individuals manage their finances, but soon the powers that be decide that it must be usable for SMEs too; soon, the features demanded are so many that the product doesn’t really meet anyone’s needs well.

A good product manager can be invaluable in setting the scope well, and avoiding a reduction in quality at the expense of quantity. This is easier said than done and may involve conflicts, but it’s better handled early on than seeing your product land in the market with a resounding thud.

Time Management. This may sound basic, but it doesn’t come easy for many, many managers (so much so, that we now have entire blogs dedicated to the topic of time management). The Indian work culture with its coffee breaks and group lunches and cubicle gossip can be a big challenge for managers here. Some tools for better time management include regular to-do lists, setting curbs on Internet time and getting one’s team to adopt time limits for meetings.

Documentation. No one likes it, but everyone needs it, at some point or the other. With start-ups, there is often little documentation of development goals, processes or troubleshooting. Sooner or later, the team changes and that’s when the lack of documentation raises big questions. The smart product manager avoids this with appropriate documentation.

Taking the team along. The term ‘product manager’ is somewhat misleading in one sense – ultimately, the product manager’s focus is not just the product; instead, the product manager is at once a customer evangelist on one end and a team ally on the other. Getting the development team to buy in on customer needs and continuously demonstrating to them why a product needs to be a certain way, is an essential skill for every product manager.

Influence without authority. Related to the previous point, the question for most product managers would be – how does one influence people without authority? In most situations, product managers work with team members who do not report to them and are often peers. Authority therefore comes not from ‘designation’, but from knowledge – team members will listen to you only when they feel that what you are saying springs from a detailed understanding of market conditions. Ergo, the only way to acquire authority is to first become an expert in your market and know as much about it as possible.

My Comments On: “REI TV Ads Portraying the Outdoors in all its Uncomfortable Glory” By Dan Neil December 1, 2009 LA Times.

I just read Dan Neil’s article on REI’s brave commercial execution that features 2 women scarfing down a PB&J, without the J. It’s like they can’t wait for the sandwich to be complete. Who needs all the ingredients when 2 will do in a rush? This is the great outdoors in all its cold, damp, uncomfortable, realistic glory. The commercial’s voiceover says, “Oct. 28. Jenny Kruger finds out that even the finest four-star restaurant is no match for one with 4 million stars.” The camera pans up to a patch of sky between the clouds in the dusky blackness.   View the commercial via the link below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZh_7vMSZxY&NR=1

Dan called it “very nice”.  I call it brave, honest, intrusive, compelling and overall OUTSTANDING!  Great job, REI and BBDO.  And congrats to Dan Neil and the LA Times for their insight in bringing it to our attention.

Wow, it can’t wait to be cold and uncomfortable again because of this execution. Thanks REI.  I’ll be sure to stop by first before I leave.

Let’s face it, not everyone is easily brandable. And furthermore, sometimes it is not an efficient use of time and energy trying to try create your unique brand if, at the end of the day, you are really an exceptionally good, effective “generic” product.

Before everyone gets ready to lynch me for heresy, I certainly feel that if you have truly unique skills, or a standout business persona you should do everything in your power to differentiate yourself and build your personal brand around these unique attributes. But sometimes what one offers is, at best, uncompromised performance at being a generalist. You know the proverbial “jack of all trades and a master of none”. Sometimes what is really needed is a superb generalist.

We can’t all be chiefs and generals. Sometimes the army just needs great troops, not another great tactician of outstanding strategist. If the organization’s bench strength is already strong with great generals and chiefs in place, what I would want for the organization is a proven professional who can execute the chief’s strategies flawlessly.

Ok, I can already hear you now. You are saying that the ability to be a great executer is by itself a unique quality, worthy of being a brand. Well, I site a real world debate that I had with a VP of marketing from an office supply/paper goods manufacturer. (I did not work for this company.) I argued, “Do you need to offer the market another brand of legal pad, at triple the price, with a higher quality yellow pad, with a brand name that is really unknown to most anyway”. Competitively, a 5-pk of regular pads will cost less, perform the same, and no one even cares or looks at what the name brand is”. But, we still expect…and get, an acceptable level of efficacy from the 5-pack of cheaper paper pads. I have yet seen a legal pad that did not perform up to expectations, no matter what the quality of the paper.

The same can be true of professionals who are only brandable with great deal of effort, energy and creative positioning to craft a brand. The end result is still answered by “who cares”. Know your brand quotient and position yourself accordingly. You’ll be more successful in the end.

Updated list of Product Management Blogs – check it out:
Blogroll

I recently got intrigued by the whole Search Engine Optimization (SEO) effort. Obviously I am way behind the true thought leaders in this field. I didn’t get my FaceBook site until a year ago when a friend chastised me for being behind the curve of the social networking trend. I just got a Twitter site within the last 6 weeks. Yes, I was a Linker (LinkedIn), and I was on another lesser known social network site but I viewed this whole trend as something for those who were not very serious business people. After all, if you were a serious business type how did one have the time to tinker with these time consuming diversions. Well, I now smell the coffee. I have gotten excited about the whole process in its entirety.

I started with completing my LinkedIn site so that my status shows 100%. Then I posted a professional profile that is viewable on my FaceBook site through BrightFuse.com. I even created my own website within the last 2 months. But I mainly did these things because others said that marketing professionals should be getting involved at this level. Especially, if you were recently unemployed as I am. But they said that it was necessary, particularly if I want to stay relevant in the newest phase of the electronic technology expansion called Social Media. But at first I was just going through the motions. Then I got exposed to some folks that are really proficient in the whole SEO process. I have even been lucky enough to meet a true professional in the field, John Nosal through an organization called Career Connections. These folks helped me to understand how little usage I was getting out of my tools it they were not complete. Then once complete they needed to e optimized to reach people through SEO efforts.

I had to start optimizing and linking my sites. At first it was just a list of activities that doubled my ever growing “list of things to do”. But then I got started and I got hooked. I stared optimizing each social site. I then took my very basic website and started dressing it up so that it spoke “professionalism” to other marketing professionals who viewed it. Don’t get me wrong…it is still basic compared to some that I have seen. But it is not a company website. It is just my personal site to market me, Wendell Hall, and Mother Nature Marketing. Very recently I created my first blog on WordPress as you are no doubt reading now. Each baby step that I learned has made me go back and continue to refine the earlier social networking sites.

As I began to tinker I found myself more and more intrigued by the creative process. Being unemployed I have more free time than I have had in years to devote energy to just learning, just for sake of “learning”. Intrigue grew into real enjoyment. Now I happily logon to Blog, Tweet, FB and Link. See, good things come from the most unfortunate circumstances. Certainly I wish I was still among the ranks of the employed. But since I am not I have learned a new set of skills that, hopefully, keeps me relevant and informed.

Here are 10 great articles I read last week.  Enjoy and have a good weekend.

• What is being a startup really about?
• 10 common mistakes that startups and small companies make
• How to eat a five hundred pound marshmallow
• A VC’s advice on how to pitch VC’s
• Comments are the new black
• How to bring a product to market / A very rare interview with Sean Ellis
• Launching a new product
• 10 ways to recognize the innovators in your organization
• What is lean about the lean startup?
• Beware the hockey stick in your budget

This time of year, your big product has launched and is receiving acclaim in the market… so where will the next big idea come from?
 
Some folks have ideation sessions – often with cross functional teams involved with each trying to top the crazy thoughts previously proposed.
 
These ideas, once gathered, should be classified by the type of idea.
 
1. A minor enhancement to an existing product
2. A major enhancement to an existing product
3. A derivative product
4. A brand new upgrade product
5. A totally new breakthrough product
 
Looking from the outside in, rather than gather a cross functional internal team together, perhaps you should be talking to customers (and even non-buyers) to discover ideas they solve their problems and that they may even have budget to purchase.

I have learned to look to the natural world as a source of learning and solace. Mother Nature, herself, has frequently taught me the lessons of slowing down to a point where I can think and process the information around me. She has shown me that natural selection is the way of the universe and is not necessarily a bad thing in business either. Consumers gravitate to the best ideas, the clearest message and products that fill a need and make life a little easier or happier.

Similar lessons from nature are all around. She has shown me the wonders of immense snow capped mountains, vast green valleys and the awesomeness of a rushing river, the beauty in desert environments and the wonders that lie in tidal waters of our oceans. All of the elements of her natural world have lessons waiting to be learned. If listened to, these lessons combine with my spirit, make me a more knowledgeable person, a more thoughtful business man, a more creative marketer and a more patient and tolerant human being. Some might say that Mother Nature is my Therapist.

In that classic model of a product lifecycle – the ‘Boston Matrix’, there is a special place reserved for products or services that need intensive care and supervision.

These are the Problem Children.

They consume money, time and effort and resources. They often  look like they are failing and the temptation is to save money by culling them.

But consider what a Problem Child is. If you have done the marketing bit right, you have an offering that is as close to perfect for the market as you can get it. Now you need to communicate and maybe modify.

If you get that phase right you get a Rising Star and eventually a Cash Cow. So your expenditure is investment and not cost.

If you terminate the Problem Children you’ll eventually find your Cash Cows turning into Dogs with nothing in the pipeline to replace them.

Companies that have a balanced portfolio of products in all of the boxes of the Boston Matrix, enjoy years of plenty. Organisations that avoid investing in Problem Children always suffer famine after the feast.

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OK, this request won’t even be subtle.

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I apologize for the reference to Spinal Tap, but this is my personal blog after all.

I normally don’t post most LinkedIn announcements here, but this one is too big to ignore.

On Monday, LinkedIn made faceted search available to all members.  This effort brought to fruition efforts that date back to 2007 to completely rearchitect and redesign the LinkedIn search experience based on the unique characteristics of people search.

Rather than try to describe the feature here, I’ll just point to the formal LinkedIn blog post by Esteban Kozak, and embed his great youtube video on the feature:

The news coverage has been flattering:

• Mashable: Facebook Could Learn a Thing or Two from LinkedIn’s Faceted Search

What’s most exciting to me, however, is that these are still very early days in the development of the LinkedIn search platform.  It took LinkedIn over five years to amass its first billion queries.  This year alone, LinkedIn will exceed that number by a wide margin.  People search requires unique investments in structured data, relationship information, search intelligence, and personalized relevance.  (If you’re curious, the Boolean Black Belt got a sneak peak at some upcoming features).

I just wanted to take a moment to say kudos to the entire search team for this tremendous achievement that cuts across all areas – product, design, research, web development, engineering, marketing & operations.

Twitter integration, Open developer program, Faceted Search.  What a great way to launch into the holidays.

Can’t wait for January

What is Positioning?
Positioning is a product management process to identify and ultimately articulate a product’s value to potential buyers. It’s an important process that should result in one or more positioning documents (more on that in a future post) that are the foundation for all outbound marketing communications.

Why buyers as opposed to users? Buyers are the decision makers. They need to be convinced that your product offers the best value in solving their business problem, particularly in comparison to your competitor’s product.

Why is it important?
Not only is positioning important to your outbound marketing activities, it is also important for other reasons such as:

• When unforeseen issues crop up during development, it can provide guidance on what’s the best alternative.
• When you make the go/no go to market decision, it can be used to determine if you have delivered product value.

When do you start positioning?
Considering its importance to your development process, positioning is not something that should be undertaken just before product launch. Ideally, it should be completed before you write a single line of code. The more clarity you have about your product and its value, the better you will be able to support your product from its inception to product launch and beyond.

There’s a lot of super smart people working at Zazzle.  Many of them attended Stanford or Cal, but there are other schools represented.  I did my Master’s in Human Factors and Ergonomics through the excellent program at San Jose State University, while still working my day job.  My advisor while there was Dr. Anthony Andre, and he recently invited me to come back and talk to his current crop of students about what I do at Zazzle and how I have put my degree to use in the “real world”. As someone who moved from User Interface Design into Product Management, I have a somewhat non-traditional job for a Human Factors degree.

Last month, I visited the SJSU ISE 290 class and talked about Product Management, User Interface Design and how these roles fit in at Zazzle.  And, of course, I presented a few case studies about how good interaction design benefits Zazzle customers.

Mike T presents to ISE 290 class at SJSU

Some things that we discussed:

1.  Product Management 101:  look for problems and create solutions, don’t make a solution and look for a problem it might solve.  At Zazzle we’re always striving to solve problems for our customers.

2.  Talk To and Listen To your customers.   This is important for UI Designers and Product Managers.

3.  How UI Designers work with Product Managers

4.  How UI Designers make excellent Product Managers

5.  Case study: Zazzle Product Page re-design.  More on that in a future blog post!

And just to show that Zazzle has something for everyone, even User Interface Designers, here’s a few related products

UI Designers have to remember Fitts' Law!

User Experience T-Shirt

Requirements gathering is one of the first steps in the process

There’s an interesting interview on measuring product/market fit at Venturehacks: http://venturehacks.com/articles/measure-fit. Apparently it’s easier to launch products that have a great fit with their target markets. Thankfully the interview goes into somewhat more depth than that one insight.

You can empower your product team and eventually create better products.

In many organizations, preparing the product roadmap involves feature-level discussions: a basket of features is presented, along with estimated costs for each, and a decision comprised of the main new features is reached.

These types of discussions severely limit your product managements ability to take leadership and actually force them into a passive stance.

A better way to approach roadmap planning and empower product management is to let them sit in on the business discussions, sometimes taking place in executive management forums. The type of questions asked in these forums should be:

• Do we have a problem with our current cost structure?
• What is the sales goal for next year?
• how do we meet this sales goal?
• Who is our target customer? (surprisingly, this discussion is not always shared with PM)
• What is our market approach?

Letting your PM voice their opinion, as well as giving him the detailed reasoning and knowledge of the alternatives not taken, will help create a better roadmap. This roadmap will be  aligned to the organization needs.