Product Management, from Malaysia, by a Malaysian

How to Get a Real Education at College

2011-04-28T11:10:00.001+08:00

“Why do we make B students sit through the same classes as their brainy peers? That's like trying to train your cat to do your taxes—a waste of time and money. Wouldn't it make sense to teach them something useful instead?

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Perfection

2011-02-28T09:27:00.002+08:00

Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add,

But when there is nothing left to take away.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

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The best analogy to the Product Manager role

2010-05-26T00:08:00.007+08:00

I met with Vladimir Bataev yesterday, and this blog post is inspired by him.

If you were asked "what's a Product Manager like?", can you think of a parallel or analogy that can help others understand the role and say "aha.. I get it."

A Product Manager is like a movie director.

Here's what TheFilmMakers.com says about the role of a movie director:

A good director makes sure that all parts of a film are creatively produced and brought together in a single totality. A director interprets the script, coaches the performers, works together with the montagist, etc., interrelating them all to create a work of art. According to Film Scholar Eric Sherman, the director begins with a vague idea of the entire film and uses this to help him determine what is to be done. He gains most when others are given their freedom to show what they know.

The position of the director in the traditional filmmaking process varies greatly and is extremely complex. The film director is seen as a leader of others, as providing a kind of guiding force. According to this view, the final outcome is more or less predetermined by requirements of the script, camerawork, acting, and editing; the director providing certain organizational context to the picture.

A good Product Manager makes sure that all aspects that is required of a product's success are brought together in a single totality. A good Product Manager interprets the vision, trends and requirements, educate the organization, works together with the stakeholders, etc., interrelating them all to create a great product.

Product Managers usually begins with a vague idea of how the product should serve its customers and uses this o help him determine what is to be done. He gains most when others (customers, stakeholders) are given their freedom to show what they know (instead of being autocratic and dictate directions).

The position of the Product Manager in the product development process varies greatly and is extremely complex. The Product Manager is seen as a thought leader, as providing a kind of guiding force. According to this view, the final outcome is more or less predetermined by requirements of the customer, technology, design and marketing; the Product Manager provides organizational context to the whole process and ensure all the departments are orchestrated to perform to the success of the product.

Thanks Vladimir :)

The path to successful new products, according to McKinsey

2010-04-06T01:27:00.005+08:00

According to a survey done by McKinsey in North America and Europe, the businesses with the best product-development track records do three things better than their less-successful peers:

They create a clear sense of project goals early on.
They nurture a strong project culture in their workplace.
They maintain close contact with customers throughout a project's duration.

I certainly find the 3 very relevant and agree that a business will be in peril of the 3 does not exist. My experience with the 3:

Keeping it Focused

I find that while it's easy (as a product manager) to get a small group of people (the product management or the development team) focused on the goal, but very challenging to get all the other stakeholders to focus on the same goal.
Key reasons - misalignment of interest or the so called "KPI". If the sales & marketing team have different KPIs, your product development might not get enough attention (unless it's a money making machine). If the customer service team has a different agenda in what they tell the customers, your product might not be used in the intended way...

Project Culture

The article says it all: "When people with critical skills become overburdened, they often decide on their own which of their many projects is the most important, a decision best made at the management level."
And I thought good project management is very much about making sure the project delivers the intended result, but often we see project teams merely aiming for "completion of project" rather than "getting the result" itself. How many "projects" created in your organization is actually geared towards the desired result? And does everyone agree on what is the desired result to begin with?

Talk to the Customer

"More than 80 percent of the top performers said they periodically tested and validated customer preferences during the development process, compared with just 43 percent of bottom performers."

Validated customer preferences during the development process? Wow.. that's pretty much unheard of in Malaysian context. Correct me if I am wrong.
I have personally done that - though one could argue that I actually released a beta version of the product to do market testing so it's not technically in "development" anymore. I can testify that it is indeed a valuable process to minimize risk and increase chances of success when the final product is launched.

Ref: McKinsey Quarterly - The path to successful new products

On the roll

2010-04-02T17:56:00.005+08:00

I was quite surprised and happy to see my blog Product Matters on the blog roll of On Product Management today.

It's number #44 on the list.
Coincidentally, I am employee #44 in the company I have served as Product Manager all these years.

Thank you - to the folks at OnProductManagement.com.
That means I will work harder on more quality posts.

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Why Not? | Yale Economics Lecture

2010-03-28T02:15:00.001+08:00

Watch it on Academic Earth

via academicearth.org

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Six questions when no one wants to change

2010-03-08T19:53:00.001+08:00

Six questions when no one wants to change

Posted using ShareThis

Dedicated Product Teams

2010-02-19T10:04:00.001+08:00

Article: Dedicated Product Teams

In my last article (see http://www.svpg.com/knocking-down-walls/) I talked about the importance of knocking down walls, especially the wall between product management and engineering. In this article, I want to describe a technique that helps achieve this, along with several other significant benefits.

While there are many variations, there are essentially two common ways of running your product organization. The most common of the two is to do some form of project-based planning. In this model, the management of the company essentially defines a communal roadmap – they come up with a prioritized set of projects for the quarter or year, and they allocate time and people to those projects. For example, they may have a team spend two months working on a new advertising system, and then the next high-priority project for that team might be a new search technology, or some SEO work. The team may or may not change, but the project and even domain they are working on typically changes frequently.

Basically if you look at the communal roadmap, you see a mosaic of different projects, each row typically an allocation of a set of developers to a project.

These roadmaps hardly go a week without significant change. Some new business opportunity comes in and takes priority, so that throws a big wrench in the plans and a bunch of shuffling is done, or a project takes longer than expected, so that has a ripple effect.

(Not to mention that these project-oriented portfolio roadmaps are typically created before there is any real information or knowledge on what it will really cost to build this, and whether customers will actually want to use it. But that’s a different issue. See http://www.svpg.com/your-business-plan-is-wrong/).

These communal roadmaps change so frequently are are so full of assumptions that they’re rarely something companies enjoy, but nevertheless this is often how they run their product organizations. There are, however, several less obvious consequences of this approach.

First, teams are constantly moving around. Product managers team up with specific developers on a project basis. Often they don’t have nearly the time they need to form the working relationships so important to effective teams.

Second, the developers are often constantly reassigned to different areas. While on the positive side the developer gets exposed to lots of different areas, they often don’t get the time to develop the deep expertise in an area that can make a developer so incredibly valuable.

Third, since the developer is switching topics so frequently, they don’t develop the velocity that an experienced team does.

Fourth, since the developers are scheduled on different projects beginning right after the prior project ends, this tends to encourage what we call “release and forget” where a project is launched because it is scheduled to launch, but the follow-on work and the product optimization work gets deferred for months or even indefinitely because the team is on to other projects.

The alternative to this, which I’m happy to say is spreading fairly rapidly across our industry, is to move to dedicated product teams.

In this model, the executives, rather than debating specific projects, instead consider which areas of the business they want to invest in, and what percentage of resources to allocate to each area. For example, for a typical e-commerce company, they might have teams like “Search and Recommendations,” “Product Pages and SEO,” “Fulfillment Systems,” “Infrastructure,” “Rapid Response” and “New Business Opportunities.” They would then choose what level of investment they consider appropriate for each area.

The next step for the management team in this model is to define Product Team Scorecards for each of the teams (see http://www.svpg.com/the-product-scorecard/). This essentially sets the business priorities for each of the teams.

Next the organization staffs the teams with a product manager, user experience, developers, and QA, in proportion to the allocation decided above.

In this model, the team then is charged with coming up with the projects, features and fixes that they believe will best deliver on the KPI’s defined in the Scorecard.

There are two important differences here. The first is that these teams are ongoing. They don’t switch from topic area to topic area after every project. Instead, they focus their energies on building true expertise on their topic, and coming up with real innovations in their areas. The second is that the team members are persistent, in that they are assigned to this product area and they’re not just here for the specific project.

Of course management may choose to adjust the balance of resources by reallocating people, or by adjusting the Scorecard to reflect changing business priorities – this usually happens quarterly or annually. And of course people are not sentenced to work on this area for the rest of their career. They can and should move between teams, but generally people are working on a team for a year or so, and not just for a few weeks or months.

As I watch companies switch to this model, I consistently see the velocity go up as the teams gain expertise. I also see the quality of product go up dramatically which I attribute both to the relationships that are built and also to the sense of ownership that teams feel over their area. But most importantly, I see the business results that stem from the focus, the better product work, and from continuous and rapid improvement of the product.

A few notes:

- A very useful dedicated product team is the “rapid response team,” there to handle critical fixes and relatively minor improvements and functionality. I’ll describe this in more detail in an upcoming article.

- I also like a “new business opportunities team” that is there to explore new potential products or sources of revenue. In most companies, these opportunities will always arise, and if you don’t have a team available to pursue, then all too often other teams are raided for resources. Instead, plan for a small team to pursue these opportunities, and help them get good at evaluating potential.

- The one team and allocation that’s usually a given is the “infrastructure team.” This is a special team, usually comprised of just engineers and architects, and the allocation is typically 20% for consumer internet companies. You can instead intersperse this work into the other teams, or you can have a blend (a dedicated team plus some resources in each of the other teams). See http://www.svpg.com/engineering-wants-to-rewrite/.

- Moving to Scrum, if you haven’t already, will get you part-way towards dedicated product teams. It helps a great deal in building the personal relationships of an effective team. But all too often, Scrum teams are still handling backlog items from many product areas, and not being given the ability to focus on an area as a team. That’s the difference really between a project team and a dedicated product team.

While I typically recommend moving to dedicated product teams for the full product organization, be warned that this is not a trivial change and requires executive support. If your organization is not yet convinced, you can move just one or two teams to the dedicated product team model. If you give this model even 6 months I’m fairly certain you’ll see the benefits and hopefully make the switch at the next planning cycle.

You can find all articles at www.svpg.com/blog. />

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How to present like Steve Jobs

2009-09-27T12:10:00.004+08:00

You can watch the video here, and read my excerpt below.

This is from a book The Presentation of Steve Jobs by Carmine Gallo.
How to be insanely great in front of any audience.

5 key secrets

1. Introduce the antagonists

"Every great drama has a hero and a villain."
This is the key to great salesmanship isn't it. Sell the problem first, then the solution. Many people do it the other way round!
The villain here can be a customer problem, an ugly scene in the industry, or a competitor.
And make your solution the Hero.

2. Create Twitter friendly headlines.

"A really light, thin notebook with a 13.3 inch display and yada yada yada" versus
"The World's Thinnest Notebook". (Period).
That was the headline for MacBook Air. 140 character or less!
The next key is - how you communicate that consistently across your website, press releases, presentations, and what came out from your sales person's mouth. I think it takes good discipline and great leadership in the organization.

3. Sell Dreams, not Products.

Steve Jobs doesn't sell computers or hardware.
He sells transformative experiences.

"Music is a transformative experience. Music enriches people's life. In our own small way, we are changing the world". And the world was changed with iPod.

What is it about your product that will change your customers' life?

4. Zen like Simplicity

Simplicity is the elimination of clutter.
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
Get it?
There are no bullet points in Steve Jobs presentation, and hardly any words. But yet every slide of his presentation conveys a strong message and maximized the outcome.

That same principle applies in product design, presentation and I dare say - life!

5. Rehearse!

Steve Jobs practices over 100 of hours over period of weeks before he does 1 presentation.
If Steve Jobs rehearse relentlessly, what would you do? Depend on your natural born talent in presentation?

Ministry of Health Malaysia - Do you need a Usability Specialist?

2009-07-02T21:54:00.006+08:00

Mark told me about this not long ago.. but I get to see it myself returning from Singapore last week.

As part of Ministry of Health's measure to curb the spread of Influenza A(H1N1), they now require all incoming travellers to fill in a form (on the left).

And it looks like they could use some good usability advice when designing the form - because many people have issues filling it.

First mistake, asking Age in form of _____ years and _____ months. Sorry, but it took me a while to count how many months old I am (is it the fault of our education system?).

Here's the real bummer - "Have you been to any area of country with local transmission of Influenza A(H1N1) as indicated by the WHO over the past 7 days?". Does everyone remember the full list of countries with local transmission of H1N1? The WHO list, you know?

So Ministry of Health, if you need to hire a Usability Specialist, please go to http://www.jobstreet.com.my/ - the most cost effective way to hire in Malaysia.
Or, get a hold of the book Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition

The Marketing Discipline

2009-06-10T21:28:00.005+08:00

Recently Philip Kotler was in the country to give a talk.
And I thought he said something very profound - Marketing needs deep understanding of the following:

Economic theory.
Mathematics.
Organizational theory.
Behavioral science / psychology.

Does the marketing function in your organization capable in all these areas?

Assessing Product Opportunities

2009-04-06T09:55:00.002+08:00

"Complicated is interesting, Simple is useful' - I heard this recently. The best advice is normally the simplest one, isn't it?
So I was thinking about how can I systematically access the potential of a new product, and I found a good article in SVPG (yet again).

And here's the thought process - guiding questions to help discover the answer:
1. Exactly what problem will this solve? (value proposition)
2. For whom do we solve that problem? (target market)
3. How big is the opportunity? (market size)
4. What alternatives are out there? (competitive landscape)
5. Why are we best suited to pursue this? (our differentiator)
6. Why now? (market window)
7. How will we get this product to market? (go-to-market strategy)
8. How will we measure success/make money from this product? (metrics/revenue strategy)
9. What factors are critical to success? (solution requirements)
10. Given the above, what’s the recommendation? (go or no-go)

Moving from Enterprise to Consumer

2008-10-07T08:35:00.003+08:00

I found this article on SVPG and I think it's useful for my friends who are moving from creating / managing enterprise level products to consumer centric products:

Occasionally a company starts its life as one type of business but then finds that they need to change into another type of business. The most common such transition I see is to start by building products for very large companies (enterprises), but then decide you need to switch (or expand) to sell to consumers and/or small businesses.

Even before the recent turmoil in the financial services industry, I was often asked by enterprise CEO’s how can they change course to a consumer company. Or, I would be asked by product managers how to make the move from product management in an enterprise company to product management in a consumer internet company.

There are many potential reasons for this.

It may be because the company has saturated the enterprise market. Or because they determine that there simply aren’t enough companies out there with pockets deep enough to pay what they would need to survive. Or because their investors point to the dramatically larger market of consumers and small businesses and say that’s the new objective. Or sometimes companies simply tire of their fate being driven more by deals on the golf course, rather than the fruits of their product efforts.

For whatever reason, if your company decides it must evolve from an enterprise business to a consumer business, then I’ve learned that there are several things that you can do to increase your chances of success.

I will warn you however that changing your company like this might sound easy but let me assure you it’s not. In fact, most companies don’t survive the transition. Unfortunately, often this transition is necessary, so the business may not have any choice but to try to change.

Note that much of this also applies to product managers that wish to transition from working in an enterprise software company to a consumer software company.

Corporate DNA

First, realize that whether intentional or unintentional, your company is surely populated by many people that have spent their career in enterprise businesses, and that’s the world they know.

There are clues to this all over the office. Do you see anyone with ties on? Do you have a direct sales organization? Does the company have a box at the local arena to entertain clients? Do you have a customer briefing center? Is your company name along the side of some race car or sailboat? Is the role of marketing at your company to support the sales force? Do you see a lot of specials? Are there a handful of very big customers that cause the entire company to bend over backwards?

At a superficial level all of these things may seem easy to change, but they stem from deep down beliefs about how to run a business and how to attract and retain customers.

Start at the Top

The CEO must tackle this DNA issue head on and take a hard look at the culture and the organization and consciously set the new tone. This will almost certainly require some new blood on his or her staff with the new DNA.

But it’s also almost certain that there will be people in the company that will resist these changes, and push back hard. Many of them see the writing on the wall and know they are fighting for their jobs. Fortunately, many of them have long wanted to make the switch to consumer but with their enterprise experience have had trouble finding a company to take them. If your company is willing to teach them what they need to learn then they can often become strong supporters. But honestly those that don’t want to move will need to be moved out of the way.

Consumer Companies

I’ve written earlier about what makes a great consumer internet service (see http://www.svpg.com/blog/files/consumer_internet_services.html) so I won’t repeat that here, but I will emphasize a few key points:

- You only survive if you create a product that hundreds of thousands if not millions of people want to use.

- With consumer products, every customer is a user, and as such, every user makes the decision to purchase or use.

- It’s all about scale – the ability to scale the software, to scale the marketing/customer acquisition, and scale the customer support processes.

- In an enterprise company, it’s really mostly about sales and the sales organization. In a consumer company, it’s all about product, with a good dose of online marketing challenges as well.

- Because you can’t depend on training classes, online tutorials, or an SE to hold the hands of the new users, the product has to be dramatically easier to learn and use. This means building out a user experience team that knows how to design this type of software, and a product organization that knows how to work with this team to define, design, build and run this software.

- In an enterprise sale, you may have charged on average say $100K in license fees with $25K in yearly maintenance, and of course the marginal cost of the software is essentially zero, so there’s plenty of room for the sales rep, the SE, the big dinners with the client, the time required for custom RFP responses, the special visit the engineer makes to customer to help get the software working, etc. But for a consumer or small business sale, for say $25/month/user (and realize that most consumer or small business revenue is actually significantly less per customer), you obviously have no room for such luxuries on a per customer basis. Even at $250/month per small business you have no such room.

- In consumer products, the software absolutely has to actually work. No more leaning on professional services or SE’s or integration partners to glue things together for the customer. It has to work, work well, and work immediately. Exceptions to this will destroy your customer service costs and erode your margins.

Back to the Culture

Much of what I’m describing above has to do with skills and best practices, but a lot of this is really about the culture, and I think that not enough companies attempting to make this transition pay enough attention to the cultural aspects.

Remember that in the consumer software company culture, it’s not about ties or sales or big customers, it’s about how many people are loving the product, how do you make the product even better, how do you get people to engage even more with the site, and how do you continue to get the message out to others that will love the product.

Once companies truly get this, they usually end up significantly reducing the size of the sales and sales support organization, and significantly increasing the size of the product and marketing organizations.

You can find related articles at www.svpg.com/articles.

Entrepreneurial Proverbs

2008-08-17T09:47:00.003+08:00

Article by Marc Hedlund, Chief Product Officer of Wesabe.

Starting

It's good to be king -- being an entrepreneur is the best job I've had. Every day your job is new and different; you constantly have to push yourself in new directions. You no longer have to say, "Well, I'm just an engineer, but..." -- you have a great excuse to take an interest in everything. Working in an environment you shaped to your own beliefs about how a company should be run is incredible (and humbling!). And of course there are sometimes financial rewards, although it's still a great job regardless.

Losing sucks -- shutting down a company is unbelievably difficult. It affects your home life, your health, your job prospects, your financial stability. Professional investors are grown-ups, but it's still extremely disheartening to lose the money people invested based on belief in you. If your backers include friends or family, it's extremely difficult to have to tell them the company is closing and their money is gone. Most entrepreneurs fail several times before succeeding, too, so losing is both terrible and nearly inevitable. Fight as hard as you can against it.

Building to flip is building to flop -- this is taken from Jason Fried, and he's right. People who start out with only one goal, to sell to a big portal, will find their options are too limited. Plan as many paths to success as possible for your company, and always have a Plan B when acquisition (or whatever path you choose first) doesn't work.

Prudence becomes procrastination -- it's great to research your market and talk to potential buyers about your ideas. It's terrible to let an excess of this become a impediment to getting started. Too much prudence edges away from research and into procrastination.

Momentum builds on itself -- just start. Do whatever you can. Draw a user interface. Write a spec. Make something, anything, that people can see and touch and try. A prototype is worth ten thousand words. Once you start moving, you will find that people start to carry you along.

Jump when you are more excited than afraid -- lack of fear is irrational, and too much fear is debilitating. Make the jump into your business when you have considered the fear, and come out more excited than afraid.

The Idea

Pay attention to the idea that won't leave you alone -- this is taken from Paul Hawken's Growing a Business. Sometimes an idea catches hold of you and you find you can't put it down. Pay attention to that! Just start working on it. Can't get yourself to do anything on it? Move on. Find yourself waking up out of bed to write down new ideas about it? That's a good one to choose.

If you keep your secrets from the market, the market will keep its secrets from you -- entrepreneurs too often worry about keeping their brilliant secrets locked away; we should all worry much more about springing a surprise on a disinterested market (anyone remember the Segway?). To quote Howard Aiken: "Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats."

Immediate yes is immediate no -- does everyone immediately tell you your idea is great? Run away from it. If the idea is that obvious, the market will be filled with competitors, and you'll find yourself scrambling. One good test: when the New York Times Magazine puts out its annual "Year in Ideas" issue, is your idea in it? Then don't do it. You're already too late.

Build what you know -- this is the most basic advice of idea generation: scratch an itch you have yourself. To make a great company, stop and ensure that your need is broadly felt, and that your solution is broadly applicable -- not everyone spends their life in front of a computer, remember.

Give people what they need, not what they say they need -- interviews are tricky. People will swear up and down that they would buy a product you describe if only it were available, and then fail to do so as soon as it is. Likewise, in conversation an idea can sound terrible, but in actualization the idea can become a compelling product. You have to sherlock out the truth of the interest people express, and "yes/no" questions are usually less useful than "how much" or "how bad" questions.

Your ideas will get better the more you know about business -- engineers hate to hear this, but you can generalize up quite far from here: the more you know about everything, the better all of your ideas will get! If you want to start a business and your strength is in development, learning about pricing, sales, marketing, finance, and yes, even HR, all of it will make your product ideas stronger and better.

People

Three is fine; two, divine -- having too many co-founders makes decisions hard to reach; if you're on your own, you have to bear all of the stress and worry about the success of the company. In my judgment, three people can do well together, but having two founders is best.

Work only with people you like and believe in -- I once heard Eric Schmidt say something along the lines of, "The older I get, the more I think all that matters is working with people you like." If you're smart and talented, you're probably going to like a lot of smart and talented people. Working with people you like is so much more fun, and often more productive, than fighting against someone who may be smart and talented but just isn't a great fit for you.

Work with people who like and believe in you, just naturally -- maybe you are very persuasive, and can talk people into working with you against their better instincts. Especially for co-founders and early employees, don't try that hard. Find the people that naturally want to work with you, and nudge them into the roles where you need them. You'll have more fun and get more done.

Great things are made by people who share a passion, not by those who have been talked into one -- a corollary of the last; you can spark a passion in someone, but you can't do it without some fuel to catch. Better to wait, and find the person who is already inclined to believe in your cause. You may talk someone into co-founding a company with you, but will they stick with it through ups and downs if they had to be persuaded that hard?

Product

Cool ideas are useless without great needs -- this is the classic engineers' entrepreneurial mistake (or at least I'd like to think so, since I've made it). Techies love tech, and a new technology can produce a lot of companies that don't really meet a need. Better to start with the need, and then see how what you know can produce a better answer to that need. (Marketers tend to have the opposite problem: real, pressing needs with completely unworkable solutions.)

Build the simplest thing possible -- engineers have the hardest time with this, with not overdesigning for the need they're addressing. Make the simplest possible product that makes a significant dent in that need, and you'll do far better than you would addressing two or three needs at once. Simplicity leads to clarity in everything you do.

Solve problems, not potential problems -- you can waste a lot of money implementing solutions for problems you don't have yet, and may never have. Work on the biggest, most pressing problems today, and put aside everything else.

Test everything with real people -- it's unbelievable how helpful this is. Go find civilians, real people who use computers because they have to and not because they love to. Find them in Starbucks, or at the library, or in a college computer lab. Give them $20 for 20 minutes, and you'll be paid back a hundred times over.

Money

Start with nothing, and have nothing for as long as possible -- small budgets give big focus (probably another line I'm stealing from Jason Fried: it sounds like something he'd say...) Don't go out and raise a ton of money right away. Instead, give yourself just enough to get going, and use the limits that imposes to motivate yourself.

The best investor pitches are plainspoken and entertaining (not in that order) -- think about what this implies. A plainspoken pitch is the surface of a very solid business. If you have to fudge and lie to get investors interested, why is that? If you're running a great business, it is not hard at all to lure investors into it; the worse your business, the bigger (and more odious) your fundraising task is. Entertaining implies a fun person to work with, and VCs like working with people they like as much as the rest of us do. If you don't bring the funny, bring the person who brings the funny.

Never let on that you're keeping a secret -- telling an investor "I don't want to talk about that" is terrible. It's the natural converse of being plainspoken. It's good to be aware, though, that some potential investors will listen to you and then share your information with your direct comptitors, and not always because they're invested in those comptetitors. Knowing that, you have to keep some secrets -- but be as diplomatic about that as possible. Respond to the idea behind the question, without giving away more than you feel comfortable discussing. Learn to steer the conversation in the way you want it to go. And then give up more information as you become more comfortable with the potential investor.

No means maybe and yes means maybe -- you should never take a "no" from someone you want to work with. Accept the no, ask for feedback, and then just keep sending them updates on how much butt you're kicking in the market. During one company, three of the five term sheets I collected came from VC firms that told me "no" originally. Conversely, though, the only money in the bank is actual money actually in the bank. Everything else is just a possibility, and you have to treat it as such. Don't stop fundraising until you have a firm commitment for the funding you need, and don't accept halfway promises like, "We'll fund you if another firm comes in." Keep on driving until the wire transfer is complete.

For investors, the product is nothing -- the classic engineer's VC pitch has ten slides about the product and two about the academic achievements of the founders. That's a terrible pitch. One slide should be about the product, while the rest cover the market, competitors, financials, funding history, and the relevant experience of the team. The product matters far less to most investors than the reactions of customers, the properties of the market, and the credibility of the team. Obsess about the product on your own time; present your business in all of its parts.

The best way to get investment is not to need it -- if you have a running business with real customers and you're paying all your bills, you are much more likely to get a funding round than if you need the round in order to survive or succeed. The pitch that goes, "We could accelerate our growth with more money" is much more compelling than, "I need your money or our doors will close."

I'm sure other people have their own rules of thumb; what are yours?

Focus on Solutions, Not Problems

2008-07-30T16:42:00.003+08:00

It's a disease in many product companies to over-engineer products.
2 stories you might have heard of:

Difference between Focusing on Problems and Focusing on Solutions

Case 1

When NASA began the launch of astronauts into space, they found out that the pens wouldn't work at zero gravity (ink won't flow down to the writing surface). To solve this problem, it took them one decade and $12 million. They developed a pen that worked at zero gravity, upside down, underwater, in practically any surface including crystal and in a temperature range from below freezing to over 300 degrees C.

And what did the Russians do...?? They used a pencil.

Case 2

One of the most memorable case studies on Japanese management was the case of the empty soapbox, which happened in one of Japan 's biggest cosmetics companies. The company received a complaint that a consumer had bought a soapbox that was empty. Immediately the authorities isolated the problem to the assembly line, which transported all the packaged boxes of soap to the delivery department. For some reason, one soapbox went through the assembly line empty.

Management asked its engineers to solve the problem. Post-haste, the engineers worked hard to devise an X-ray machine with high-resolution monitors manned by two people to watch all the soapboxes that passed through the line to make sure they were not empty. No doubt, they worked hard and they worked fast but they spent a whoopee amount to do so.

But when a rank-and-file employee in a small company was posed with the same problem, he did not get into complications of X-rays, etc., but instead came out with another solution. He bought a strong industrial electric fan and pointed it at the assembly line. He switched the fan on, and as each soapbox passed the fan, it simply blew the empty boxes out of the line.

Moral: Always look for simple solutions.

Devise the simplest possible solution that solves the problems

Always Focus on solutions & not on problems.

Article: Avoiding Design By Committee

2008-06-23T11:32:00.001+08:00

Copied from http://www.svpg.com/articles.

One of the big advantages that startups have is that there aren’t many people.

As companies get larger (even a little bit larger), one of the very common consequences is that decisions become group activities. Stakeholders pop up from every direction. The notion of ownership gets diluted down to consensus builder. The objective moves from coming up with something great, to coming up with something that doesn’t get you fired.

And the result very often is that product innovation largely grinds to a halt.

There is no question that in larger companies there really are many stakeholders, and they really must be taken into account, as there is much more riding on your decisions than in a startup. But many companies struggle because they don’t know how to manage the stakeholders yet still make progress and innovate.

In this note I want to spell out the technique that I use to overcome this all too common problem.

But first, the key for every product discovery effort is to identify the three key people – the product manager, the user experience lead, and the product development lead. These are the three minds that must collaborate closely to solve problems in new and useful ways.

The product manager plays the lead role and brings to the table the knowledge of the functionality required, and is responsible for making sure the product has value.

The user experience lead represents the user’s behavior and mental model, and works to ensure the result is something that users can figure out.

And the product development lead brings to the table deep knowledge about what is possible, and is responsible for ensuring that the product that is defined is something that can actually be delivered.

Lots of other people are going to want to join your little party. Once in a while you may decide to include a guest or two, but it is absolutely critical that you keep this team small. You simply won’t innovate in a large group setting. This is not just a brainstorming session. You will be working through literally hundreds of small and large decisions, and your progress will slow to a crawl if you don’t have that small group of smart, empowered people.

It also doesn’t mean that your small group doesn’t have help. You have the resources of the company available to you as you need it. The most common resources are from the user experience extended team: especially prototyping, user research, visual designer, and user testing help. But you may need to go talk to legal about a sensitive issue, or the analytics people about how something is used today, or maybe you will talk to someone in site security about something you are nervous about.

The key is that your core team is empowered. Empowered to represent the stakeholders and to make decisions. But this doesn’t mean that you are given a blank check. You will have to review your decisions with the various stakeholders and make adjustments where necessary.

This is where I need to drill down to explain what I mean.

Each of the three members of your core product discovery team represent many different stakeholders:

The product manager as the overall product owner typically represents the business owner, company executives, sales, marketing, product marketing, legal, finance and customer support.

The user experience lead is very often an interaction designer but depending on the project may come from one of the other design areas, but in any case must represent interaction design, visual design, user research, usability engineering and often content/editorial.

The product development lead is very often from the architecture team or a lead engineer, but again, depending on the project may come from one of the other areas of product development, and must represent architecture, engineering, test automation, site operations, and site security.

For this model to work, the three members of the product discovery team really do need to be entrusted to give their best efforts while keeping in mind the needs of their stakeholders. But in truth it’s not that long of a leash. Your product discovery team still need to be able to show what you have come up with and are proposing before the product is actually built. This is one of the benefits of creating a prototype. You can show this prototype to any or all of their stakeholders so that they can see the reason for the decisions and what exactly is being proposed.

Often there is still some back and forth as stakeholders balance their issues against the potential of the product, but I can only tell you that the nature of the discussion is completely different when stakeholders can see the vision in a clickable prototype versus just talked about in the abstract or in some form of paper spec.

Moving to this model does require a little bit of a leap of faith. Management and stakeholders have to be willing to entrust you to represent their interests instead of being personally involved at the level they may be used to.

But the notion of a small group of talented and motivated people has always been key to coming up with great products. It is the basic ingredients of a startup, and you need to make sure you continue this as your company grows if you want to continue to create products that matter.

Great Products By Design

2008-05-22T00:17:00.002+08:00

I should be writing more often... but for today allow me to slack off again by using someone else's thoughts.

This article is from the Silicon Valley Product Group Blog quite some time ago and I don't know who the author was. I posted it here because I 100% believe in what it's advocating and I personally walk the talk. Here's the content of the article:

I do not believe great products happen by accident. In every case, behind every great product I find that there are certain truths. Today I want to share ten such truths. I try to keep these in mind on every product effort:

1. Engineering is important, but user experience design is more important, and usually more difficult

2. Engineers are typically terrible user experience designers; engineers think in terms of implementation models, but users think in terms of conceptual models

3. User Experience design means both interaction design and visual design

4. Functionality (product requirements) and user experience design are inherently intertwined

5. Product ideas must be tested - early and often - on actual target users in order to come up with a good user experience

6. We need to test (validate) usability, desirability and feasibility – before proceeding to engineering

7. We need a high-fidelity prototype, so we can quickly, easily and frequently test ideas on real users with a realistic user experience

8. The high-fidelity prototype is the most effective way to communicate the required user experience with the full product team

9. The job of the product manager is to identify the minimal possible product that meets the objectives and provides the desired user experience – minimizing time to market, user and implementation complexity

10. Once the minimal successful product has been designed and validated, it is not something that can be piecemealed and expect the same results.

To the author of this article - thank you for the inspiration.

How to innovate faster

2008-04-19T18:48:00.004+08:00

I came across this article on Harvard Business Online by Ravi Chhatpar

If they’re to do their job most effectively, designers should be brought into the innovation process at the very earliest stages. Too many companies still make the mistake of keeping business strategy and design activities separate. Typically, marketers conceptualize a new product based on company strategy; the project team gets input from various areas of the company and creates a business case; and senior executives make a final choice from among the possibilities they’re given. Only then does the idea go to the designers.

That sequential method ensures that the product is aligned with strategy, allows the team to create buy-in and build consensus, and gives senior executives an array of options. But it takes a long time, so even if the original concept drew on real-world data about users, the company is inevitably unable to adapt to rapid, unforeseen changes in markets and user preferences.

The solution is to bring in designers at the very beginning of the process, because designers (if they do what they’re supposed to) will put prototypes into circulation and share users’ responses and attitudes with the project team, even as the business case is being developed. That enables the company to nimbly adjust to changes in market opportunities long before the product concept is set in stone.

From concept through development, designers should function in parallel with corporate decision makers, creating prototypes for a number of variations on a product and then testing them with users and, if appropriate, partners. Tracking how customers’ ways of using a product evolve over time also makes it possible for designers to identify desirable new features and, in some cases, create new functionality in conjunction with users.

Planners should concurrently be considering the business implications, asking questions such as “How much would it cost to incorporate this new feature?” and “How should we respond to users’ changing needs?” The team should continually feed new information from user research and prototype analysis into the evolving business strategy. Constraints that emerge, such as price or a decision to offer standard versus premium features, may be used to inform the next prototype, which can then be evaluated through more formal testing. And the cycle repeats.
... You can read the rest of the article here.

Shared this article with my CEO and here's his advice:
It is a good idea to get as many people involved as possible.
However, to do that we first need..
1) A strategic direction and a blue plan so that everyone know where is the direction. Do we have that?
2) We need to hire smart designer who understand the business and can contribute their ideas. No point just get more people in the meeting if their contribution is minimum. How many of such designer we have. Can we get more?
3) We need capable managers who can handle the discussion and involvement of more people. Do we have such capable managers?

I won't tell you my answers...But it is the sort of questions you should be asking yourselves :)

Evolution

2008-04-15T13:27:00.004+08:00

Evolution has served mankind well, if you follow Darwin's theory.
It can be applied to organizations as well.

The 3+1 success factors of evolution are:

1. Variation - We need to allow variation to happen, aside from just appreciating differences. It is the variation in genes that have made mankind adapt to the changing world.

2. Inheritance - While we need to embrace variation, it is inheritance that made us who we are today and the reason why mankind is different from other species.

3. Selection - The process that ensures the strong survive and the weak eliminated. Like it or not - the environment, or the customers will enforce this process on businesses. In order to survive, organizations need to have the selection process within itself as well - keeping the strong people, process, product and weeding out the weak ones.

And the last one:
Be there.
What do I mean? Read this article on Forbes to understand more.

The Spirit of Performance

2008-04-04T09:01:00.003+08:00

The purpose of an organization is to enable common men to do uncommon things.

Morality, to have any meaning at all, must not be exhortation, sermon, or good intentions. It must be practices. Specifically:

The focus of the organization must be on performance. The 1st requirement of the spirit of high performance is high performance standards, for the group as well as each individual.
The focus of the organization must be on opportunities rather than on problems.
The decisions that affect people - their placement, pay, promotion, demotion and severance - must express the values and beliefs of the organization.
Finally, in its people decisions, management must demonstrate that it realizes that integrity is one absolute requirement for any manager, the one quality that he has to bring with him and cannot be expected to acquire later on.

~Peter Drucker, Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices.

Motivators and Hygiene Factors

2008-03-18T22:31:00.003+08:00

You might be familiar with Two Factor Theory (also known as Herzberg's Boby Motivation-Hygiene Theory). The theory states that there are certain factors in the workplace that cause job satisfaction, while a separate set of factors cause dissatisfaction.
In other words, the hygiene factors are those that prevent people from leaving your company, while the motivating factors are those that will keep people in your company.

For example, keeping the pantry well stocked with fancy F&B is a hygiene factor, while efforts in personal and professional development are motivating factors.
Both needs to be done, but many would agree that an organization needs to pay significantly more attention to the motivators, towards 80/20. Meeting all the hygiene factors does not mean people will stay in the organization at all.

The same theory can be applied to products. Many times we spend too much time and attention on the hygiene factors, working hard to keep customers "happy". The real question we need to ask when a product function is being developed, is "Is this going to help me sell more products to more customers?"

If the answer is no - then most likely you are only working on the hygiene factors.

Innovation and Risk Taking

2008-03-07T09:43:00.003+08:00

I have attended a few symposium on entrepreneurship, when the topic of entrepreneur character or personality is discussed - there are lots of different opinion but one of the popular and common one is the "propensity for risk taking".

Here's what Peter Drucker says:
"I know a good many successful entrepreneurs. Not one of them has a propensity for risk taking. Most successful innovators in real life are colorless figures, and much more likely to spend hours on cash-flow projections than to dash off looking for risks. They are not risk-focused, they are opportunity-focused."

Phil McKinney's Podcast on Killer Innovations

2008-02-29T18:37:00.002+08:00

If you are into product management and innovation you will want to check out Phil McKinney's podcasts (you can also subscribe from iTunes). Phil is the VP/CTO for Personal Systems Group in HP and well known speaker in the field of innovation and creativity.

SCAMMPER technique

2008-02-28T21:08:00.003+08:00

Used for idea generation, take any words, attributes, features, problems or ideas and:
S - substitute, simplify
C - change, combine
A - adapt, adopt
M - magnify, minify
M - modify, multiply
P - package, purloin
E - elevate, eliminate
R - reverse, rearrange

The 16 Hot Buttons of Marketing and Sales

2008-02-28T20:32:00.004+08:00

Today I learned about the 16 hot buttons that drive all purchase behavior from Mr. Barry Feig.
Here's the list

The desire to control - over one's destiny, finances, health, relationship and even food and shelter.
I'm better than you - the need to have status and feel significant.
Joy of discovery - joy of discovering is uncovering the unexpected joy.
Revaluing - as baby boomers enjoy a new phase in life, they are going back to the things they loved as kids.. but with a new twist.
Family values - quality time with families are still of utmost importance to many societies.
The desire to belong - people want to be associated with people like themselves, they show products like badges.
Fun is its own rewards - people want to have fun.
Poverty of time - nobody has enough time (but you can't substitute convenience for quality).
The desire to get the best that can be got - assert your product leadership position.
Self achievement - "be the best that you can be" is a strong motivating factor; intrinsic rewards are as important as extrinsic rewards.
Love of cosmo - sex sells, so does love and romance.
The Nurturing response - people like to nurture even more than being nurtured, make your customers the hero with your product.
Reinventing oneself - give them a chance to start over.
Make me smarter - people want to FEEL that they are smart for buying your product.
Power and dominance - aspiration to be more than in control of your environment.
Wish fulfillment - give the consumer to power to fly, market to aspirations.

Isolate and combine them, Push them!
You can read Barry's own description here.

Other wisdoms I've learned today:
"Perception is reality."
"There are no features - there are only benefits. Customer buy benefits, not features."
"Focus on delivering outcomes, not products."

And a note on measuring success (and all the talk about KPIs):
"Simplicity applies to measurement also. Too often we measure everything and understand nothing." ~ Jack Welch.

Valuable day indeed.

Crossing the Chasm

2007-12-26T22:25:00.000+08:00

I was hoping to get my hands on the book Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey A Moore. Then I saw this piece of review in Amazon:
Here is Moore's important insight in one sentence: "Don't celebrate your victory in a market after becoming the market leader with pioneer consumers; as the mass market develops and all the competitive offerings have adequate performance, the new consumers won't care about the advanced features that your organization is exquisitely tuned to produce but rather ease of setup, ease of use, and low cost."

Should I still read the book? What do you think?

Creative Leadership

2007-12-14T08:23:00.000+08:00

Just finished listening to the podcast from Accidental Creative on Creative Leadership - an apisode about product and process. It served me as a great reminder.

Responsibilities of creative leaders

1. Bust the black boxes, build trust.
Do you call out to your people on what the organization is about and what the product is about? Do they have absolute CLARITY on what it takes to succeed and what is considered a failure? How transparent is your leadership?
Do your people know their role in the bigger picture?

2. Beware of derivation creep.
Take a look at the work that your people are doing - how much of their work is actually aligned to the organization vision and goals? Even if they are off the course by 1 degree - which does not seems to matter at first - over a long period of time the distance from the goal will become significant.

3. Be the first to take the fall.
No.1 in the leader's oath - be accountable for all failures, no excuses.

4. Give credits when it's due.
Celebrate success - tell people when things are done right, tell people even when their thoughts are aligned with your goals or the organization's vision.

About the most successful product manager in history

2007-12-05T23:36:00.000+08:00

He had a salesman's enthusiasm for the product, an evangelist's bible-thumping passion, a zealot's singularity of purpose, and a poor kid's determination to make his business a success.

On Steve Jobs, from the book Icon (the greatest second act in the history of business).

10 Types of Innovation

2007-11-19T23:36:00.000+08:00

Had a team of associates who came and give the team a talk about innovation today. One of the new ideas (for me) shared is about the 10 types of innovation - created by Doblin Inc.
When people think about innovation - they often think about product and services only. There are actually many areas where innovation can be created and it's clearly illustrated in this model.
Fair to say that innovation is everyone's responsibility in an organization - although the leader do have to chose a particular focus area.

To know more about the folks who conducted the innovation dialogue, you can find them on http://www.kwerkus6.com.

Making choices

2007-11-12T23:25:00.001+08:00

Mark told me "Building great products is about making choices."
While he did not elaborate too much on what it means - here's my take:

A critical role product managers play is acting as a communication hub on product-related matters. That means the product manager will have to seek and understand stakeholders' / customers' needs and wants. While taking everybody's point into consideration, it is very easy to fall into the trap of "trying to be everything for everybody".
As a product manager, very often we have to make tough choices and be accountable for it. I can't think of any successful product that is "everything to everybody" - the only one that come very close is Google.
Microsoft isn't behaving like that anymore - they have, imho, recognized the space of opensource development.
Apple isn't like that - they know who their fans are.
Southwest, Air Asia - they made their choice first, then their customers chose them.

A leader is always the one who made choices and live up to it. It's OK to fail - but fail fast and move on :)

The Invisible Forces

2007-11-10T14:53:00.002+08:00

Build services where there are invisible forces that make users do what they should do - Don't do centralized control - It's too much work and don't work well.

In the communist economy, there is no invisible force but a centralized control to control prices of good etc. So, often there is imbalance in supply and demand (too much of something produced and not enough of others) and inefficiencies. Hence, the communist economy did not work as in China before they

move to the capitalism. With capitalism, the invisible and distributed forces of supply and demand determine the prices of goods. It's a lot more efficient.

In internet services, we have eBay reputation system that helps manage the behavior of buyers and sellers. It is not controlled by eBay but eBay provide a platform with mechanisms that makes the buyer and seller behavior transparent. eBay does not pass judgment on the traders' behavior, they merely make the information available for the traders themselves to make the judgment before entering a trade.
Similarly, Wiki is a distributed system where so many people contribute and it had build one of the largest knowledge base in the world. Other examples include Google where a distributed system based on page links and smart algorithm helps in providing good search results versus more centralized human categories of directories created by Yahoo when it started.

Also, pricing can be used as a control. For example, when things are free, people might abuse it or not used it appropriately or value it.
~Mark Chang