Product Matters

Disclosure: This was an internal post I wrote and shared with my colleagues back in 2015. While cleaning out my Confluence space, I came across it and thought that I'd share it with everyone. There is a much more recent and polished post by my good friend Glenn Block on Mind the Product that you can read here:  https://www.mindtheproduct.com/2018/01/need-quantitative-qualitative-data/ What Data Is/Not Data cannot  compensate for bad design or replace good design, but it can inform designers. Data cannot compensate for listening to actual users, but it can inform the kind of user research we conduct. Data cannot tell us what to build, but it can inform what we should investigate. Example If you can visualize a funnel report where visitors are leaving a buying process during various stages of the journey, quantitative data can give you information about where you may have a problem. In the above example, the quantitative data ( QT ) informs you that 36 pe...

Interviewing candidates is never easy. There's a lot at stake . Many notable managers and companies will bloviate about their hiring processes; often in self aggrandizement but occasionally to share tidbits of wisdom. A successful hiring process requires that a lot of pieces be firmly in place. Corporate messaging. Job descriptions. Salary ranges. Benefits packages. Application process. Referral programs. The list goes on... One very important yet often overlooked item is scheduling, and that is the focus of this post. While interviewing a candidate recently, I was doing my routine pre-interview preparation and reviewed with whom and when the candidate had already spoken. To my confused dismay, I learned that the candidate had spoken to 5 people already on three separate days . I was to be the 6th interviewer (on day #4), and there was still one more interviewer scheduled for later that week. That's 5 distinct interview periods!!! After conducting the interview, I ...

Wow, it's literally been YEARS since I've posted something on this blog. I'd like to blame the fact that I've been too busy at work, or that I've been spending too much time on Twitter...but blaming anyone or anything but myself would be disingenuous. So with that, let's get back to posting!

Still here at the Gartner Local Briefing. In a session with Richard Fouts about customer win rates. Sharing Win/Loss Data Sales teams tend to advertise their wins, yet contain their losses. Why is this so? Q:  How many global IT companies conduct win/loss on an enterprise scale? Less than 5%? About 10%? About 20%? A: Less than 5% Why? CEOs and Sales people say "I know why we win/lose".  Some politics are touchy; people don't want you to expose what they did well/not (especially in competitive environments).  "I clicked the won/loss checkbox in Salesforce.com" One company evaluated their win/loss data. They looked at 140 wins, and 55 losses. Looking at this data, they noticed a correlation between the wins and the fact that they beat their competition to market with compelling announcements in over a third of the scenarios. An IT services firm attempted to sell a more sophisticated solution. Upon evaluation of the win/loss data, they fo...

Sitting here in a local Gartner briefing in San Francisco, where they're describing the Marketing Investment Model. As usual, a lot of sensible information presented that is unfortunately not always followed. One of the interesting aspects that was discussed was the typical marketing message style employed throughout the tech industry. "At [company name], we..." "We work the way you work..." "We're platform agnostic..." "Hold the pickles, hold the lettuce..." OK, I inserted that last one...but you get the point . Many companies employ a very passive message in an attempt to put prospective buyers at ease with the promise of flexibility. This boils down to: "Don't scare away any prospective buyers; let's appeal to them all!" What often transpires, however, is that companies fail to sufficiently entice a buyer with a clear, firm, confident, focused position bolstered with a sound approach and success stories. When...

Recently I opened a Word document from Outlook. I worked in it for a while, tracking changes, etc. Then I did a "Save As...". The prevous three Word documents I had saved automatically went to my Desktop. However, because this one originated in Outlook, I didn't notice that the destination folder was set to "Outlook Temp". Needless to say, I went looking for it. Lo and behold, Word didn't have any recollection of this being a recently-opened document. So I couldn't open it from Word. Very lame Word. Very lame . Suspecting something was amiss, I opened another document from Outlook and did a "Save As..." and then noticed that the save folder was set to "Outlook Temp". No problem, I thought. I'll just go to that folder and fetch my file. Actually, this turned out to be a problem. I searched in vain for "Outlook Temp" via Spotlight to no avail. I searched for the file name in Spotlight. Nothing. I then went back t...

Over the past few years, I've championed the idea that smartphones are by-and-large consumption devices; not creation devices. Someone asked me recently: Do you send email from your smartphone? Isn't that creation? I suppose that it is. But I typically send bite-sized emails, SMS, and Tweets; not long-form content. But when you also share photos and videos and links and likes and plus-1s, smartphones are clearly creation devices. This reflection challenged my previous perspective from thinking of content exclusively as robust documents to include rapid-fire info-blurbs. Where now is the dividing line between smartphone content creation expectations and those of laptops and desktops? This question prompted me to try the previously unthinkable; to write a blog post on my mobile phone. This is clearly long-form, but still distinct from the rich authoring experience I enjoy on my full-fledged computers. Perhaps then the discussion ought not be about content creation, but...

Heading out of the 2012 Gartner Portals, Content, and Collaboration conference in Orlando in about an hour. Over-all, a good experience as this was my first Analyst-led conference. Had face time (actual, not the Apple variant) with several leading analysts in my space, including Nikos Drakos, Susan Landry, Jeffrey Mann, Carol Rozwell, and Tom Austin; which proved collectively useful in some unexpected ways. Some sessions were good, especially The Social Workplace: Rethinking Communication and Collaboration in the Age of Social Networks . Others, however were simply too rudimentary. This seems to be the common trend with conferences that cater to both customers and vendors alike; the majority of sessions cater to the neophyte customer who knows very little about the space. It would be helpful if conferences had multiple tracks; "I'm New", "I'm Buying", "I'm Selling", and "I Want the Bleeding Edge". They should also include dedica...

Today we lost a luminary. Steve Jobs died this afternoon, leaving a hole in the beating heart of Silicon Valley, and a virtually unparalleled legacy in high-tech history. Steve will be remembered for many things. What I will remember him for is perhaps something...different. He didn't design all these lauded products we covet. He didn't invent all the great technology Apple is known for. What he did do, however, is transform Apple into a product-based company and instill his philosophy of quality and simplicity in the teams that he assembled. Apple is a great company because they have great internal processes for product development, they exhibit outstanding execution with regard to production and delivery, and they have one of the best marketing teams in the world. Steve Jobs didn't architect or design all of these components, but he recognized the business value of them, hired the right people to get the job done, and invested the required time and effort to get thin...

As the 2011 season of the National Football League approaches, so does the rabid anticipation of its parasitic counterpart; fantasy football. Anyone who knows me knows that I love football (not fútbol); particularly the NFL . I grew up a dedicated Patriots fan and have since become more of a fan of the game itself rather than just a New England loyalist. I tend to keep up with NFL news throughout the year, and regularly download the Rich Eisen Podcast for listening during my morning commute. Rich's guest on the most recent episode was Michael Fabiano, the resident fantasy football expert at NFL.com. At one point during the podcast, Rich and Mike were exchanging viewpoints on what constitutes being an expert and how no matter how much of an expert you are, you need to be lucky to win a fantasy league. A similar sentiment was expressed during a 2010 podcast by one of the guests (I forget whom); that it's all luck and you can't really predict anything. I take exception t...

Email: Dead Man Walking. We've all heard this quite a bit recently. The most recent claim came from a Cisco blog titled Why Email's Days Are Numbered . While email's reign as King of online communication is clearly diminished, I don't believe that it's going away anytime soon. Although many contemporary products provide rich, multi-media experiences that make email seem quaint (anybody remember having a pen-pal?), I contend that email is still necessary and highly useful. Before I explain why, I must digress somewhat... I recently started reading World Wide Mind - The Coming Integration of Humans and Machines  by Michael Chorost . As the title implies, this book examines the extent to which humans and machines are currently integrated (pacemakers, cochlear implants, etc.) and the extent to which additional integration may be possible (optogenetic neural implants, etc.). Many concepts are discussed in the book, including psychology, neurology, nano technology, o...

For those of us who play, have played, or are fans of sports, there is a phrase that is used when a coach or player has lost the trust and/or respect of her/his teammates: Losing the Locker Room . In the 2010 NFL season, Brad Childress lost his locker room. Some say that he lost it long before that, but it came to a head midway through November when he was fired from his job as the head coach of the Minnesota Vikings. Poor decision making and the inability to effectively communicate cost him the respect of his team, the team owners, and the fans. " Without a foundation of trust and loyalty, Childress watched as his players reached near-mutinous levels at the first sign of adversity this season ", wrote Kevin Seifert on ESPN.com . It also resulted in an abysmal collapse of the team that, during the previous season, was a coin-toss away from advancing to the Superbowl. It resulted in failure. Unfortunately, this phenomena is not limited to realm of sports. It exists in ...

Just the other day, I read a story about how LinkedIn hit 100M users. That's a great accomplishment, and one that they should be proud of. They also took the opportunity to thank their early adopters; the first million people (1%) to join by sending out an email. I got mine today. Things like this are a nice touch for users. People want to feel involved & acknowledged, and even a token acknowledgement like this can go a long way in terms of customer perception and loyalty. As a Product Manager, I applaud LinkedIn for recognizing its customers, and hope that we all--not just product managers, but all of us--can remember to acknowledge our clients, colleagues, partners, families, friends, and acquaintances more often.

There's been a lot of hooplah and unrest over Apple's recent decision to take 30% off the top of all subscriptions to digital content (the language of their T&C implies that it's not restricted to "print" media, but also music, movies, etc.) purchased via iOS Apps. Google promptly countered with OnePass , a move that will certainly appeal to content providers. Of course, Google doesn't have Apple's footprint in the tablet market (although Android currently ranks #1 in terms of smartphone operating systems ), but if any of the budding hardware manufacturers can hit the market with a good device that doesn't cost more than the iPad, things could get interesting. A friend of mine recently took a job as a Product Manager at Redbox , the company that puts those giant red  machines ("red boxes") in grocery stores that vend DVD rentals at $1 each. It's the alternative for people who either don't know about Netflix or who prefer p...

About 2 years ago, I was in the middle of a Project Management sequence at UC Berkeley Extension when I got the news. My employer would no longer be sponsoring employee education. While I understood the rationale; we needed to run a tighter ship and offering tuition reimbursement was deemed a luxury the company could no longer afford. Fortunately for me, employees already enrolled in a program/course were eligible to complete them; the policy change would only affect requests to reimburse new programs and/or courses. During one of my SVPMA meetings last year, a 5-day Product Management course was advertised for the UC Berkeley Center for Executive Education. It sounded great, except for the $6,000 price tag. If only I was still eligible for reimbursement. Alas, you can't catch every ship that sails; you can only try to catch the ones available to you. I now have two Product Managers reporting to me, and I often wish that our reimbursement policy was still in place so that I c...

In case you haven't noticed,  Chatter.com  went live (strange, considering that they took out an ad on the front page of Monday's WSJ with a date that indicated February 6, 2011). This is Yammer's Page This is Chatter's Page Notice how similar it is to Yammer? I even read in an article today about Chatter and how they are calling it "Facebook for Business" ; a ripoff of Yammer's claim of being "Facebook for the Enterprise" (which itself is just a marketing piggybacking on Facebook's name). Yammer, not sitting idly, launched a very clever Youtube video in retaliation: I haven't seen this much of a direct assault since the " No Jive Talkin' " camaign. OK, that was a shameless plug for Clearvale , I know.

It has been a long time since I've been able to sit down and write a lucid blog post.  This one will not be one of them. I've come to realize that my full-time job as a Product Manager, my other full-time job as a husband, and my newest (and most demanding) full-time job as a parent (to a delightful son) consume roughly 100% of my time; leaving precious few moments in the day in which to gather and synthesize my thoughts.  Thus, I've been using Twitter more often and blogging less. " Blogging less?  What?  You only have 3 prior entries! " I used to blog quite a bit under a different moniker.  However, as a parent, I have come to the realization that composing longer, thoughtful essays are a luxury that I generally cannot afford. With that, I've added my Twitter feed to the left, and will make an effort to write "larger-than-micro" blogs here on at least a weekly basis, if not more frequently. And now it's back to full-time job #1, follo...

In a previous blog entry , I wrote that Starbucks was at risk of becoming Dunkin Donuts.  While the green giant is undoubtedly more successful than its northeast competitor, my suspicion that they were sliding off the fidelity axis and reaching down the convenience axis (there is, after all, usually a larger market share on the convenience axis) was recently confirmed during a recent trip back to Boston. The coffee served at conferences—is predictably lousy.  Therefore, I knew that I didn't want the complimentary coffee provided by the Westin Boston Waterfront hotel, and instead made my way up and out to a nearby Starbucks (the only coffee shop within walking distance). I waited in line, and then ordered my usual; Double Americano, No Room.  Despite the short walk, I was still foggy, and was eagerly awaiting my caffeine fix.  Given the size of the line, I told myself that it might be a few minutes before my drink arrived.  To my astonishment, they had my ame...

Today was the first day of the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston .  Unfortunately, I only have an Expo pass, so I wasn't able to attend the majority of Monday's sessions .  However, I was able to attend the Evening in the Cloud session that took place at 4:00pm. From the description : David Berlind will open the program with a 30 minute overview of the cloud collaboration market, the major players in the market and touch on why the market is changing so rapidly . The "major players", unfortunately, were limited to Microsoft and Google.  Rather amusing considering that the event was sponsored by IBM.  The talk was rather high-level, and the key takeaways were as follows: How could an ideal cloud application improve collaboration? David began with a nice "what if" scenario in which a person just opened a word processing application and was able to save the document, share it, send it, publish it, etc. all from one spot.  He then posed the question as to...

On June 2nd, I'll be attending an open session hosted by the Silicon Valley Product Manager's Association (SVPMA) entitled Best Practices for Product Management for V1 Products .  (If that link is out of date, it's because the SVPMA doesn't create unique URLs for its workshops.) Having a mere few years of direct product management experience, this workshop interests me considerably.  It's not that often that PMs get to work on V1 products.  The ability to discuss and define the business objectives, to formulate a strategy , and to work with a clean slate presents itself.  Having managed Vx products, this seems like such a novel and exciting idea.  Of course, it's also fraught with peril. I recently read the book Trade-Off by Kevin Maney in which he explores two factors that can determine whether a product is successful or not: Fidelity & Convenience.  The idea is rather simple; successful products either have high fidelity (quality, caché, brand,...