Important Stuff
About Carl
I'm a London based Product Director and co-founder of lovemoney.com. I blog about product management, agile web development, social media and things that catch my eye on the internet.

Search
Configure
Behold, visitors


Wednesday
13Jan2010

hamsters on a wheel


The New Year brings with it renewed focus and, for the majority of us 'normal' product managers, a few simple things we should be doing:

  1. Spotting new business opportunities and threats.
  2. Iterating and innovating on the core product. Creating new solutions to old problems.
  3. 'Steadying the ship' and spreading the love. Keeping customers and stakeholders happy (in that order.)

Nothing much changes regards the essence of product management and development. At it's heart product management is a cyclical process, the key tenets being those listed above. The cycle may well widen, but essentially, what we focus on remains the same.

So, if you feel like a hamster on a wheel in 2010, it's because you are!

Happy New Year fellow hamsters!

Carl

Thursday
17Dec2009

can you 'see the whole?'

'Seeing the whole,' or being a good strategist and leader, are the most important aspects of being a successful product manager.

It is hard to summarise what great product leadership and strategy is so I’ll start my post with my thoughts on what it is not:

  • Getting stuck in tunnel vision. Time and time again product managers suffer from fixating on an undeserving aspect or feature of a product. Ask yourself, regularly, is their value in what I am currently doing? If there isn’t, focus on something else.
  • Not recognising when a problem is solved (related to the above.) Some problems need a simple solution, don’t overcomplicate them.
  • Discarding planning. Working agile is not an excuse not to have a plan. You sooo need a course or a mid- term plan. If you don't, the chances are you will slip in to tunnel vision and by extension overcomplicate things.
  • Going it alone. Sometimes this is appropriate but more often than not, it isn’t. Product roadmaps must be tied and woven to overall business strategy and goals. Product management is not about coming up with your own ideas and implementing them. We all know there is nothing more horrible than a vanity project or product.

Conversely, here’s a few of my thoughts on what great product leadership and strategy is:

  • The ability to create a vision and define a product to be built. In essence, this is what product managers are there for.
  • The ability to plan, prioritise and deliver the vision. Sounds straight-forward, but it is the mixture of visionary and delivery ability that make product managers so important in businesses.
  • The ability to assess success and failure and treat them with equal vigour. Product managers need a natural instinct to step back from a product and see it for what it is. If a product is on vision, is succeeding, great. If it’s failing, this should be clocked and dealt with swiftly and appropriately.  
  • The ability to continually spot new opportunities and weave them in to your vision. (Not to be confused with scope creep or ideas for ideas sake, all of the above points need to be considered.)
  • Finally, products are all about people. People build and use products. You want both the people you work with and your customers to be happy. You are dreaming if you think you can sustain products without having both!!

That’s it. Can you 'see the whole?' Be interested to hear your thoughts on this one...

Friday
27Nov2009

keeping scope in sight is key


Just finishing up on a 'largish' project, working with esteemed colleagues Ben and Dave on lovemoney.com's  online banking service. This was a tricky one for a few reasons:

  • NEVER delivered anything like this product before. Transactions, currency, 'banks,' net income statements, gazillions of security features, consumer 'trust' issues. That's before you get in to features, usability blah blah blah.
  • A third party was involved.
  • Pressure. Pressure to 'get it right.' It's a niche and innovative service that simply has to 'work' for our customers.

The single guiding principle for tackling a 'largish' project like this has to be: 

  • Control scope
If you control scope, and stick to it, things are going to be ok

When controlling scope you have to decide:

  • What's the core idea or principle for your product?
  • What's the minimum functionality required to fulfil this core principle or idea for your product? (Note: I don't mean for Beta, I mean to actually ship a formed product.)

Once you know this, moving forward to a release is made so much easier.

That's it. That's the point I felt worthy of scribing. Defining scope and keeping scope in sight is key.

Any thoughts on the brand spanking new online banking service are very very welcome, I'd love to hear your thoughts. In particular, of-course, do you agree with my point on scope and did we get the scope of the online banking service correct for this new release?

Friday
13Nov2009

to beta, or not to beta?


I used to think that a Beta release indicated a couple of facts:

  • The software/website/thing being released is in a test phase. There may well be real concerns over whether the software/website/thing - is actually stable. 
  • The software/website/thing being released isn't all there yet. It isn't fully formed, or it doesn't quite have all the components or functionality it was required to have.

But, in recent 'internet times' the term Beta has become synonymous with a load of other things, most notably:

  •  Glamour. I think people in the internet community have come to love the term. Having a website in Beta is seen as fashionable, no doubt about it. The term is used with the mis-guided (in my view) perception that it will, in itself, create excitement and buzz around a product. Or maybe it just makes people feel clever? Honestly, I'm not sure anymore.
  • Pretty lame marketing tactics.Related to the above, the marketing ploy you see used is attempting to cash in on the promise of being privy to something really great, FIRST. Beta is very often now used as a viral method of attracting early adopters and generating referrals/word of mouth. Though there is nothing really wrong with this, and it can be really successful, I think metaphors for 'Beta' inevitably get mixed and confused.

In my view, the plain truth about most releases on the web is that they are just, well, NEW. Further to that, I think we should generally be more confident in the scope of what we release and leave the consumer to decide whether this product is indeed new, exciting, glamorous, worth telling friends about - all those things the more contemporary use of a 'Beta label' seems to want to claim.

So, when thinking about releasing the question is not: Shall we put our product out as a Beta release? It's really more answering the question: What's the minimum I can have to release my product and be happy?

Unsurprisingly, in answer to the ultimate question: to Beta, or not to Beta? I'm going to have to say; not to Beta.

What would you say? I'd really love to know what you think on this subject...

Thursday
05Nov2009

cup of innovation anyone?


Just want to get this off my chest:

1) There's nothing negative about innovation in a corporate/business context.
2) There's nothing negative about making a big deal about innovation in a corporate/business context.
3) It's OK to say you belong or reside within and have an innovation team within a corporate/business environment. Innovation is not a dirty word.
4) Creating processes to support innovation in a corporate/business context is not done to, nor should, promote elitism. Quite the opposite.

Overall, it has to be that innovation has a far more practical place within corporations and businesses.

Some observations:

  • It's OK to have an innovation team. You have a finance team. It's really no different. I am as confident I can organise my finances as well as our finance guy, but obviously I appreciate we need someone thinking about that stuff all the time on a business level. The finance guy doesn't stop me thinking about finance. Innovation is no different.
  • Innovation as a discipline and job spec. There are a few sustained qualities required by innovation. If Innovation were a person, that person needs to be a great networker, have bags of perseverance, be not afraid of experimentation,  be happy (and naturally) question status quo and (crucially) understand the business, what it is trying to do and make associations between different situations and find solutions.
  • Innovation and ideas generation. Sure, the innovation team would come up with ideas, duh. But, it is also about capturing and encouraging the development of creativity and ingenuity with whatever person, unit, team or outside influence it comes in to contact with. Your innovation team, if it is a real innovation team, will find a way to empower change and promote ideas from all over the place.
  • Innovation and strategy. Products without business cases or strategies are not products, they are projects, ill defined projects. Obviously, innovation has to be strategic and think strategically. Innovation for innovation sake is not viable (mostly), in a corporate or business context, so innovation has to be channeled. It has to fit. There's a gap that needs to be laced up between strategy and innovation, and the innovation team are the ones who should tie the knots.
  • Innovation and R&D. R&D is clearly part of innovation, and another very practical reason why you need a team or persons on it. Thinking 5 years ahead on the web is terrifically hard. but seriously, a year ahead should be an ongoing and consistent thread of exploration, theorising and most importantly, visioning.
  • Innovation and delivery. This comes back to innovation as a discipline. Bottom line, creative ideas that aren't realised are worthless. Another reason to look at how you ring fence persons for innovation.

Lastly, it's pointless to fear innovation, its challenges and what it entails.  Treat innovation the same way as going to the office kitchen. Keep it practical, anchored in the here and now. I'm actually off to the kitchen now. Cup of innovation anyone? It's my round...

(When I get back with my coffee I'd really like to here your feedback on this topic. Particularly on where you think innovation should sit within businesses and corporations?)