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business

Metrics and Product Management

I always thought social science and language arts were the most important courses to have mastered for life and your career until I became a product manager.  In product management, I quickly learned that math and specifically the ability to use excel based on your fundamental math skills was critical.  Fuzzy value props and interesting word choice when positioning your product internally will only get you so far.  Ultimately you need to find a way to validate the impact you and your team is having on the business.  This presentation looks more at the value of roadmapping features/release value, but you have to start somewhere to define in a concrete fashion what is being delivered and this presentation directionally works.

In the end it’s just math and process, plus it’s always a good idea to instrument your processes anyhow and prioritize deliverables or the market, the business and your existing customers.  While Olsen’s position that Product is in the middle of the market and development covers the main concept, the reality is Product owns the interface across all functional groups where it relates to their given product.  Even with that concern with the presentation, which starts early on, it is a very accurate way to look at how to define meaningful metrics on Product Management execution and putting an important variable into the mix, the customer.  As an aside, slides 29-38 can be ignored, I’m sure the talk track makes it more meaningful, but it transitions into some UI wonkiness and online specific design uses cases.

Product Management by Numbers: Using Metrics To Optimize Your Product

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December 28, 2008 by
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The year in review blog style…

New York Times Square New year celebrations in...
Image via Wikipedia

So I always like to take the time and read stuff I wrote earlier in the year to see if I have gotten any better and to see if there are opportunities for improvement.  As part of this annual continuous improvement exercise I find pieces I like more than others and numerous areas for improvement.  I really should do it more often, but this is time of year when I have the time and the inclination.

On critical thing I did notice was I may have went back on the Less Fluff promise.  To rationalize a little, I no longer define links and videos as fluff, so there.   I know I’m changing the rules a little, but it is always about context and at the time my links WERE FLUFF.   Now that I have finally found a more crisp focus on Marketing, Brand and Product, it’s easier to transition these into value, than random stuff I found.

I guess there is the off chance I’ll publish something in the next couple of which should be on the list, but probably not.  That that end, below are 10 posts I really liked, some y’all liked too, some you probably haven’t read.  No particular order

  1. 10 Tips for Dealing with the fact you will never leave your job – A piece on how to continue to look for ways to improve your job satisfaction, even if you have been there a while.  A little off topic, but one I really liked writing it.
  2. $1 coffee a sustainable model – This might be when I really started to think the economy was goofed.  When an ROI model for buying a fancy coffee pot is interesting to other folks.
  3. Complexity: The context of Identity – A piece I didn’t on the overwhelming burden of identity management and the rewards for engaging in as meaningful a way a possible.
  4. Enabling Persona Based Sales – This is about when I started moving towards a theme here.
  5. Stories in the Village: Everyone Must Understand the Brand – I’ve spent a good deal of time this year working on positioning and the ability to scale positioning and this piece is probably when I realized that the whole org has to be able to tell the story, not just the smart folk.
  6. Principles: Shading Strategy and Execution – Situational definitions and personal world views can change what you do when it comes to principles, but it shouldn’t.
  7. What’s Your CRM strategy? Social media is really interesting, it develops and help enhances relationships, so this piece posits that maybe you need a little social media in your customer relationship management strategy.
  8. Who are these people and why are they Following me – I was goofing with Em and talking about Widespread Panic not being around for New Years and I regurgitated a thing we always say at shows: “Who is this band and why are they following me?”, next thing I know I’m cataloging profiles on Twitter.
  9. Steve Johnson Interview – The whole Marketing IS in the Middle series was great, as I got to connect with friends, thought leaders and former colleagues, which was a great time all around.
  10. Chris Brogan Interview – This is also from Middle series and was an interesting take from an accidental marketer with some great insights.

Hope you find these of interest and there are some new one’s you haven’t read.  Cheers!

~jon

December 26, 2008 by
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Stuck in the Middle: The Committer

I haven’t done a piece around leadership personas for a while.  The main reason is things haven’t been that slow to think about leadership styles of late and I have just been getting things done, rather than thinking about things.   What a quandary, so I’m writing another piece on leadership, perhaps just to feel a little better about myself or to help a friend out.

This series is basically a pragmatic look at leadership, management and execution as it relates to dealing with specific leadership personas and how to get things done effectively inside a given management mode. Some of the other one’s I’ve addressed are The Collaborator, The Geologist, The Amoeba, The Visualist, The Fence Mender, The Vassalizer, The MBIFM, and a couple of other ones.

It is always an interesting set of problems to solve when thinking on how organizations can communicate better, develop their people, how to look at executing as an organization more effectively and how contributors can create excitement in a given role, even if they have been there a long time.  It might be important to note, that everyone needs to contribute – leadership is as much about a team and doing what needs to be done, as it is about “managing”.  It’s the last concept which got me back to thinking on this series based on a conversation I had with a friend the other day. Karen is consistently having items thrown into her queue without regard of any other items in progress and it is done via a series of ad hoc commitments which are cascaded down via email with no other interaction.

The challenge/situation is how can you keep up and be successful when someone continuously delegates new tasks without acknowledging capacity/understanding the effort to produce or providing additional context/assistance to ensure success.   I can certainly understand the troubles associated with this type of situation, which brings me to writing on this leadership persona.  Over commit and under deliver – not sure how this helps anyone – the investors, the customers or the associates.  At the end of the day, you have to manage expectations and deliverables – even if they are outside of your control.

As a product manager, I quickly came to grips with the reality that you have none of the authority, but all of the accountability, so working effectively through others is a keen skill to have no matter what role you have.   That being said you need to have an environment which allows for achievement and the opportunity for meeting the needs of the key stakeholder and constant agreement and confirmation that you will get it done while positive can lead to issues down the road.

So how do you deal with this? Communicate, communicate, communicate.  It also helps to make sure everyone understand what is being work on, who owns it and when it can be done.  Transparency is the key to success in this leadership model.  If everyone knows what needs to be done, is aware of the current prioritization and is aware of value for the folks who benefit from what is currently in the queue you have the opportunity to drive to closure the right items for the business, the customers and your employees.

November 8, 2008 by
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