The Perfect Product: Priceless

Mike Jones — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 08:19:00 GMT

I have been in Penang, Malaysia these days helping a company integrate a new product into their manufacturing line and getting feedback on user experience. A little luck came my way and I got invited to a Malaysian wedding reception.

A prayer was invoked in Malay with chanting of the Koran in Arabic. The couple dressed as King and Queen. Friends and Family visited them on their throne and sprinkled water and flower petals on their hands, then gave them their hand to congratulate them. The president of the local company and I were invited up to give them our blessing as honored guests.

The bride and bridegroom made a very happy couple; how can anyone improve on that? No man made product can match the value of a wedding: infinite value value zero cost.

Timeless

iPad

Joe Admin — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 01:56:00 GMT

I waited in line for an iPad yesterday so I could play with it and imagine some applications. Most of my friends said there was no room for a device between an iPhone and laptop. I imagine lots of applications, such as automating a doctors office or auto repair shop, but the argument fell on deaf ears. I asked people in line why they wanted one and most people gave answers like: I travel a lot and want to watch movies, read e-mail, and use maps, and this is small, but not too small. I let my daughter play with it and she thinks it is cool. For her it is a social networking and media platform, not a homework machine.

Only time will tell, but I still can imagine lots of ways to use it for business, so I guess I better sharpen my Object C skills and write my first app.

SVPMA

Mike Jones — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 01:48:26 GMT

Yahoo! I am at Silicon Valley PCamp to learn how un-conferences work. About 900 people registered. The place is coming to life and votes are being made. The top 15 internet voted topics make up the morning sessions. The bottom 15 are pasted to the window and we are "dotting" them to see what wins for the afternoon sessions. We each get three votes. I'm cheer leading for the "how to overrule the engineers in a startup" topic :-) Since I am a product manager with an engineering background, I guess I'll learn how to tell myself what to do!

Everyone is playing with TweetDeck. I am not a Twitter fan, but it hooks into Facebook and Linked In, so I'll give it a try. If you are into social networking, you might want to give it a try.

-----------

Companies that were hiring were allowed to get up and announce their openings. 25-30 people made announcements for product marketing, management, developers, sales, etc. They where asked to write "Hiring" on their badge so people could find them and they could bask in the sunshine of new friends :-)

-----------

About 500 people showed up out of 900 registered. All the sessions I went to had more than 20 people. In the area with the screen presentation format was used, and I gathered that more well known people that could draw a crowd were assigned to it. Other sessions were run tutorial style, and in one session a problem was given for people to solve in small groups and then gather to share insights. People did not promote their wares, but it was not to hard to figure out who the consultants were and exchange information. The growth rate after several years seems to be something like: 150, 190. 250, 500.

-----------

The quality of sessions was quite high, and were much more participatory than traditional conferences. This PCamp is now well enough known that people flew in from North Carolina, Chicago, and of course Colorado, where I am from. In the former case, the employer paid for the trip! The organizers seem to be well connected and share materials with the other PCamps. Key to success where Yahoo! (provided the place), sponsors, so that food could be provided, and a key core of volunteers. The place consisted of 8 or so classrooms and a main meeting area with a projection screen.

My main goal in attending was to learn how PCamps and un-conferences are run in the hope that rmPDMA can be a catalyst to running one in Denver. I have provided my notes here so you can get a flavor of some of the sessions. All in all it was quite impressive. Lots of networking. Lots of learning from peers. Very low price.

-----------

Morning Sessions

Product Management in a Startup Environment

The leaders printed out an "Exercise Scenario" for a hypothetical startup. There are questions for discussion. The proposed company is a online retail called "The Guy Registry."

A few interesting ideas came out the session:

Develop personas of users and have a consultant/expert maintain blogs for them so the team can interact
The role of PM in a startup is to guide the conversation such that it leads to focus
Deal with the CEO who is off on a new idea before the initial one is complete
Clarifying vision of the CEO needs constant testing because he will change his mind a lot
Assumption testing is critical
Don't have single points of failure
Can fall apart when the PM and CEO have a basic disagreement over direction and must be delt with
Flexibility is more important that process
Use Google Wave to manage the conversation
Host website by customer to get hits

Anthropology for the Product Manager

PMs have to deal with different cultures within organizations: customer, engineering, finance, etc. The PM has unique ability to translate customer needs and knowledge to the internal cultures. More can be learned by observing because people don't always do what they say. Customer's idea of what a product represents can be very different than yours. Personas can fall short of actual experience. Observing customers can provide context and one can see how a product fits with the whole person.

Anthropology is a process of informing.

Cultures

Tribes

It is important to avoid ethnocentrism. Measuring against self is problematic.

Frameworks:

cognitive anthropology - how people categorize things

symbolic anthropology - what does my product represent

Who you select to visit is important. Would not make huge scale changes on small number of data points. Small samples are good to open thinking, giving new areas to explore.

In the B2B context, how products fit into the work flow is important.

Pay attention to language and how they categorize their world. What is important? What media do they read. Another definition of culture is the language through which people see the world. What is tangible in the culture, what is taboo? What do they all have.

PMs don't use enough testable hypotheses and adjust them over time. It is very difficult to know your assumptions and cultural frameworks. People may frame things differently.

Best practices of what to do with data:

Worst thing is to think one customer is every customer
Overlaying thoughts, beliefs, values on customer said or did is dangerous
A lot can be learned by watching someone fumble with your product
Take and show videos of customer using product

What resources are out there:

Very new discipline
Not much out there
AIPMM
Johnson
The Chief Culture Officer MIT Pres (great position for PM)
Look for proxies: movie stats, economy, etc
Watch Dilbert Cartoons (don't just look at the product)

What about underlying drivers. Deeper ethnography's dig into this. $50K+. Humans are driven by primal forces and sometimes they show up. For example, body care product being used as entertainment (in Guatemala). Messages can then be tailored.

The business development manager ends up playing the role more than the product manager, but the business development manager is more interested in sales, adn the product manager is more interested in the overall product, market, etc.

Participant observation is used so people let their guard down. For deep "hang out", it is mostly observation, not recommending how to use a product.

Afternoon Sessions

Marketing Yourself

Rules about positioning:

Not about you
Differentiate
Why vs. What (or what I can do for you)

Why should I hire you? Because you will get... A, B, C

Know what the need is and align with it. Know the benefits and use "I" to support it.

It is ok to say I don't know yet because I don't know if we are aligned.

Top three strengths... good at and enjoy doing? How does it benefit a potential employer.

Tell me about yourself... let me talk about your organization and how I can help you...

Hard vs. soft benefits: hardware is "let me tell you how I did this in 3 other companies.."

Always lead with the benefit. Have a purpose and be strong.

Resume: Does it sell or merely tell?

Typical Resume... Company, Position, Dates

Company, Position - Employment Dates

Position Goals & Objectives

Grow..
Launch...

Change your resume for every job you apply for if neccessary. Only emphasize what matters to hiring company.

T - Resume (cover letter)

Position Requirements (left) Relavant Experience (right)

Taken from job desc Accomplishments per above

Watch out for poorly written requirements. You may have to rewrite them.

Finding Unadvertised Opportunities. Small % success at getting jobs via internet job sites.

Resumes posted by requirement
Most jobs come from networks and knowing people
May be posed to intelligence gathering, image, etc
People are looking for perfection and can't make decisions

Prospecting

Identify target companies
Get names of hiring managers
Google hiring managers to get to know them
Get email formats of hiring managers
Initiate contact

Take interviews for practice and networking.

Questions:

Why are you hiring a product manager?
Why is that important now?

Leads to ideas on selling yourself.

Finding Unadvertised Opportunities

Get names of hiring managers: "title" + companyname

Get email address formats: *@domain name, for example initial+lastname@domain

Position search on LinkedIn.

Many hiring managers are looking for someone to replace someone.

The Interview - Selling Your Product

50% - Related to person selling it

33% - Product

17% - Other

Be engaging
- Appearance
- Body language / eye contact
- Energy Level
Play offense without being offensive
The questions you ask
- The suggestions you offer

How do you talk about your self without talking about yourself. Always talk about yourself second. Talk about issues and how you can solve them. It is about them first then about you.

The Interview - Do's & Don'ts

Project a positive attitude
Smile and be passionate
Roll with the punches
Learn something from every interview
Don't talk money in the interview

Thank You note: reiterate their needs and how you fulfill them.

How to be a Phenomenal Product Manager

Book: The Phenomenal Product Manager, Expert Product Management

Becoming Phenomenal

Clarity: Role, Responsibilities, Ownership
Evangelize: Groups, Team, Reinforced...
Influence: Subtle, Relationships, Debating, Negotiating, Arguing (3 reasons), Alliances
Tone: Authority, Certainty, Writing & Speaking
Leadership: Think/Act/Communicate, Career Advancement, Instill Hope, Challenge Team
Be Bold: Have guts, Strong opinions, Stand up for what is right...or don't be a PM!
Communicate: Terse, Appropriate, Clear - briefly summarize the situation - state a few selected facts - state what you need, want or demand
Logic & Emotion: Data, Anecdotes, Personal Motivators
Expertise: Market, PM Domain, Business
Whole product: Own It, Insist, Fight, Give Credit
Enthusiasm: Self Generated, Infectious, Fake It, Brand (do not become cynical or jaded)
Tenacity: He who sticks with it... Respect
Attitude: If it's not fun, why do it?

Storycraft

Requirements -> Build it -> Product (value)

The guys that built it are weird but really smart. Need to communication them precise requirements they can build.

Human nature is to fill in the parts. If you don't specify exactly what you mean, they will build it any way and fill in the blank.

Mobile phone asset tracker: 3G Asset Manager Product Requirements

List the assets (inventory)
List asset owners
Associate assets to owners
Add/Delete new assets
Add/Delete people
Trace assets between owners

Stories should be implementation free. Business owns story list, not developers.

Personas are key to stories:

Users
IT people/ops
HR

Story Format:

As a <user> I want <activity> so that I can <benefit>
Acceptance criteria, great if specific and with data (business, not technical) - defines done - specific is better

Epics:

The whole story
Need to be decomposed or broken down

Thin slice:

If you don't thin slice, you are doing iterative waterfall
Start with very basic function

An Agile team will not work without approval of a story.

Non functional requirements and cost. Performance. Other out of bad requirements. Need a close relationship with developers.

Need to know how the learn, especially in an international context. Diagrams are much easier to understand. GUI mockup, workflow, etc. Diagrams support a bucket of stories, usually a natural bucket.

Delay commitment until the last responsible moment

Conferences

New Product Development

The Perfect Product: Priceless

iPad

SVPMA