More Product Management

An interesting Day in the Life of a Product Manager

How to evangelise software 2: What do product managers do?

In continuation of CDF’s search for Product Managers who actually know something about that field, I thought I would post this fantastic writeup on the role of Product Management.

I would encourage everyone to go through this, because it is a very clear description.

This is what I would add to this:

• They need to be quick learners. Product Managers will also need to perform quick business analysis to measure industry trends and adjust their approach accordingly. Thus they should be able to effectively observe people and companies, identify new trends or business ethics, and use them in their day to day approach
• They need to keep up to date with the state of the art of modern business and marketing trends. Long Tail economics, Prosumer marketing, Permission Marketing, Edge-Centric Marketing and Product Design, Network Effect, etc…. each of these is a distinctive unique marketing and business model that is emerging and implemented by cutting-edge business leaders today. Any good Product Manager will be forward thinking enough to be able to learn these. It doesn’t matter if the company is doing business in Pakistan or elsewhere — cutting-edge business practice knowledge is essential. If a Product Manager today doubts that blogs are an effective communication medium just because they are on the edge of the industry, they are very seriously in the wrong career.
• They should not be afraid of disrupting industries. Although this is a very rare and very gradual incident, each highly effective product has the potential of disrupting industries, or changing the way people live or work. While this is not a day-to-day requirement of product managers, it helps to have a feverish urge to do that, as that certainly helps the Product Manager check his plans 3-4 times more carefully.
• They live, breathe and dream about the Company. It is just not possible to be a Product Manager if you look at work as a means of personal well being (i.e. if “the package” is how you define the work). If you are that person, you’re in the wrong path of life, and should consider Sales as a good profession to drive you. All Product Managers need to believe in their work over and above all else, and should consider their package as a compensation for the dedication they bring to their firm.
• They must be Multi-Dimensional Employees. This is almost a core requirement. You can read more here.

Ebay leaving China? Some related thoughts on PK

Not much to add of my own on this one, but Ebay has agreed to sell of Ebay China to tom.com

Here is the bit I found very interesting.

Two reasons are cited. First, eBay, which had as much as 90% market share in China for C2C transactions, has lost significant market share to upstart (and free) rival Taobao. eBay is now left with just less than 30% market share for C2C transactions, even after moving to eliminate transaction fees in China a few months ago.

The above would now be my response to every “bozo” I have met who thinks its impossible to sit in PK and compete against ‘the giant companies with more than 2000 engineers working on the problem’.

Three sentence answer to them:

• The market always accepts new value creation.
• Take the right product to the right people with the right message (the “story” from anyone who has taken my professionalism course)
• Focus on surviving through the long uptake cycle — i.e. keep your cash flows balanced.

So, does that mean that there is an opportunity for a local Ebay version to be successful? No. Not unless you deliver a solution relevant to Pakistan built around Pakistanis.

 

On a related but different stream of thought — there is one possible reason this would be happening.

See I have heard this briefly from some PK firms as well. Coming in to this country as a foreign investor is still difficult in some ways — if in nothing else, than because you have some more regulations, and have to be governed by the local embassy. (Side note : ofcourse foreign firms continue to pour money in Pakistan because there is so much growth and almost no initiative fails).

Some firms counter this by wrapping up the ‘PK branch of foreign company’ and register a new ‘local company’.

Maybe Ebay is doing something similar? Who knows.

Professionalism Series 4.4 : Pop-Quiz

What is the difference between making a PPT presentation that you will actually be presenting on stage, and making a PPT presentation that you will be emailing to someone?

How is the structure and text of it different?

What about presenting on stage VS presenting over an online (webex-like) session

Professionalism Series - 10: Different writing styles

This is a followup of part-2 and part-3 of the series.

Part-3 discussed the importance of accepting that you will be writing quite often.

Even when you are writing, though, there are many different styles, and rhetorical modes of writing.

Before you think elsewhere, knowing these styles and modes is not “the job of some english major, why should I care” [yes, I have heard that too]

The reason you have comprehension classes through college is for you to understand all of the writing that will be part of your life.

Rather than explain details, I will list down the different styles you could typically find in a company. I encourage you to research them in your own time.

• What is the difference between the styles of external and internal proposals?
• What is the difference between the styles of proposals and work specifications?
• What is the style adopted for feasibility analysis?
• How does a research publication differ in its writing style from a public article?
• How would you write a technical paper submitted to a conference? How does that differ from a technical paper presented to a journal?
• What is the most important rhetorical considerations of writing a patent application? How does that differ from design specifications?
• How would you create a document that pitches a certain advertisement design to internal managers?
• How should the rhetoric be for project reports? How would that different from a project post-martem report? How should it differ from future project enhancement documents?
• How would the writing style change if you were writing a white-paper?
• How would the writing style change if you were writing an article for a leading industry magazine? What about a leading general consumer magazine?

Finally, when and why are the documents above used in the typical company?

How long does each type of document take — on average– to create (assume that we already have templates)?

How much time, in %, should I spend on documentation every week?

Professionalism Series - 9 : Accountability

This is a follow-up part 3 of this series.

I have had the fortunate misfortune of meeting two types of individuals that I still do not understand:

1- “Dont put up this document in the collaboration system — that way people will know what you did, and so all of the blame later on could come to you… let someone else propose a plan so we can point to him when we fail.”

Notice the when we fail.

2- “No! It wasn’t my fault! The computer just wasn’t turning on… and then the lights went off… and then he told me I should hurry up so I hurried! If he hadn’t told me to hurry, I could have even tested my app!” (…forgetting the fact that I come to work at 11am and leave at 4pm and have never checked my project portal in the last three days…)

Everything that a person does in a company should be candidly accountable. No one is consciously looking for someone to blame. But 4-5 months later, someone should be able to track down a particular outcome with a single decision that led to that outcome.

Any professional working somewhere should be mature enough to accept responsibility for anything he does for that company, good or bad.

Accountability does not just portend to when things go wrong. You should be accountable even when things go superbly — a company should be able to track down the individual decision by the individual person that resulted in that boost to the business.

This is (or well, should be if it isn’t) used extensively for accounts auditing, for performance appraisals, bonus distributions etc.

Most importanly, this is relevant because it results in distirbutive justice when distributing bonuses.

If something does go wrong, however, being able to candidly say “I think this is because of me — I underestimated the latency on <component number here> and set my buffers accordingly” can save the company a lot of $$ in costs in trying to find out why something went wrong. It can also often impress your supervisors enough to reward your honesty.

One of my early mentors, and a person I respect deeply, had a great anecdote for a time he was working with Nasa during the space program. I dont wish to misquote him so I will see if he could comment on this later on.

Finally, if you feel that you do infact make yourself and your actions open, but infact that company unjustly uses that to blame things on you, then please leave. You deserve more dignity than that.

My Ideal Employee Series - 8: Multi-dimensional

I am sure you never thought a person could be described as being multi-dimensional.

Some of the best international company environments have multiple concurrent dimensions of work taking place at the same time. These “dimensions” can best be described as types of responsbilities.

There are the core operations and work, but then there are (often necessary) complementary functions that are part of the company culture, or part of their knowledge management framework, or part of their outreach strategy, or part of their professional training tracks.

One reason why this helps reduce some overheads is because it helps the company individually characterize how each individual employee in your firm differs, even if their basic job title is still “software engineer”. This characterization can help determine salaries, bonuses, leadership qualification, promotion qualifications, etc.

A company can certainly make a good environment where every individual has specific sets of responsibilities, but this depends on whether the person can handle multiple job titles and types of responsibilities.

I try to build these multi-dimensional areas whenever possible, because it lets me know the entire supply-chain of responsibility within my company. I can know who has supposedly taken the responsibility of an area, and how much I can rely of which person, for what.

The Multidimensional employee is the person who is mature enough to not shy away from multi-dimensional responsbilities. Also, the person does not get overwhelmed by trying to do everything at once, and understands how to manage his time between the responsibilities.

So if you work for me you wouldn’t be surprised to have a job title like:

Engineer Point, User input design, <project name>. <department name> +

Research lead, <complex problem area name> +

New Hire Mentor - documentation, Engineer-in-training track +

API Editor - <project name>, Communications.

Note: For me, your core responsibility (i.e. your first title) should always be the responsibility where all work is planned in WBS and put in project planning tools. The rest are areas where you will be building responibility over time, against milestones, but not necessarily against a specific schedule.

Letter to the "Career Online" show @ Geo-TV

Dear Sir / Madam,

I happened to come across your show on TV today, and watched it out of curiosity. However, I am a bit concerned about the authenticity of some of the content.

During a section, you had one of the show hosts answer email questions from your viewers regarding career decisions.

One particular question today was : “I have a BS in engineering… Should I go for an MBA or MS? …..”

I was VERY concerned when your show host answered “I suggest go for an MBA. It has many benefits…. (etc) “

Sir, please remember that since you are producing a show for a national audience, you have a responsibility to be objective and neutral. The people who ask those questions do not want your personal opinion on the subject matter, they wish to know what is the right thing to do.

You are not doing any industry, or the country, nor even the students, justice by recommending an engineer to pursue a management career.

The right answer, in my view, should have been the following:

“Son, remember to NEVER base your career choices on where ‘job scope’ is. If you wish to pursue an advanced degree, remember that you must be VERY sure of what you are passionate about. If technology is your passion, and you wish that your technical insight is the value you bring to a company, then focus your entire life on the pursuit of engineering. However, if – looking forward 10 years — you see yourself being able to contribute to a company because of your gifted abilities at organization, planning, strategy, or sales or marketing, then you could consider an MBA.

So remember, the most important thing is finding your passions and being sure of how you would like to help a company. Remember, that the future of the world and your country will lie in your hands one day. Choose the area in which you would like to demonstrate leadership and the pursuit of excellence.

Both engineers and MBAs will be invaluable to companies in our industries over the next decade, irrespective of current market trends. However, all industries and all companies require a person to bring to the job the greatest insight and dedication to his or her chosen line of work.”

Regards,

Osama A. Hashmi

Professionalism Series -7: Know your field, not your tools

This is almost a follow-up of part-1 of this series.

Despite what job postings will tell you, engineering, or marketing, or accounts, or anything is not just knowing the tools listed down in the post.

There is a real reason for this. If a company hires you for knowing Java tools, it is quite possible that in 2-3 years the industry will shift and the company would change their entire toolkit to something else, like Ruby.

Does that mean you have to start over again?

As a graphic designer, you are an expert at 3dsmax because you took 20 courses on the software, but the company you join uses Softimage, or uses Modo. What do you do?

It is of the utmost importance to be true to your field first, and the tools second. Even if you do not know a specific tool or technique, as long as you know pre and post-production visualizations, compositing, the physics of lighting and particle effects for ambience etc. you will be able to become a great animation professional.

As long as you know when static variables or templatized objects can help your design, the cost of using multi-threaded programming, interfacing with real-world linear systems, protocol and API design for high-performance or high-security systems, the design philosophy of real-time systems etc etc you will be a great computer engineer.

You can make similar lists for any and all sets of professions.

The reason tools dont matter is that any good company will hire well enough ahead of time that you can undergo training on the specific toolkits and interfaces after you join.

For me, the reason it is so important to find professionals that know their fields is that almost every tool I have used is limited in some certain features. In my teams, I expect the teams to be willing to ‘invent a new tool’ if they must in order to get the job done.

In fact, this is how most professional engineering environments must work! If the output they must create also requires them to first create a new tool, then lets do that instead of living with the limitations of the toolkits we have.

The most important thing is to create the value we need to create for customers and stakeholders. Whehter one tool can create or another is secondary.

Similarly, the most important thing to know for professionals is how to create that value — using one tool over another is secondary.

Professionalism Series - 6: Beyond the milestone

Work is stressful around deadlines. Sleep comes at a premium.

In fact, you work so hard for the deadline that any additional days you spent after (missing) the deadline gets that much more frustrating and tiring.

The problem is that often people will put all of that “last-home-stretch” effort for, say, their development deadline ; Or the deadlines for making v.0.1 of some deliverable.

This is a problem because they are inaccurately telling themselves “As soon as I meet this deadline, life will become a cool splat of monsoonal rain in the middle of summer”.

In work, the real work only begins with v.0.1 of something, or after the basic development is complete. Testing will cause a number of changes. After the alpha version we can start analysing, discussing and improving the concepts. We can start getting feedback on our work.

Professionals understand the entire lifecycle of the product, over the next 3-5 years.

• They understand that the “project” isn’t over until the software is launched and maintenance begins, and that the milestone is just one of many that they must achieve in order to complete the project. They also understand their role in each step

 

• They understand that the first launch is just the first version of the product, which will subsequently lead to other launches.  They understand what that means for the type of development and architecture that they must do today.

 

• They understand the importance of contributing professionally to each step in the process as much as they can.

Understanding the entire lifecycle that a project or product goes through is important, and balancing your stress from the anticipation of what is ahead is also important.

Lifecycles exist for software, for individual documents, for specifications, for plans, for strategy, for website designs, for ads, for brochures, even for people (i.e. their probation, work, and long-term growth at work).

It is also best to take this lifecycle as a way of building a sense of community. Just like in college you were able to divide the years according to semesters and breaks, at work you could end up saying “oh in two weeks are are starting code-camp again”