Don’t Get Paralyzed
One of the most important things about getting products out the door is being able to call it and…actually get it out the door. The tough part about doing that is not letting yourself become paralyzed by whether or not features are perfect, or competitors have already released them, or they have all the bells and whistles.
The key thing to answer is: does the feature solve a problem? Keep the requirements true to that problem and don’t waver. A feature will never be perfect. There is no such thing as a “silver bullet.” Or, if you believe there is, you can’t rely on them. Make sure you do the work to align features being implemented with your roadmap and go heads-down on them.
One of my best friends Cory taught me about analysis paralysis when I was just starting out in my career. It may sound like something totally cliche, but it happens all the time. PMs must not be afraid to push through this and draw the line. If you don’t have a ton of user data coming in, don’t get discouraged. Someone has to make the call or else things will never really be done. You’re expected to keep the product glued together as you go - not everyone can see this like the PM, and it’s not their job to do so.
Sure, large features can be implemented in stages. Of course. No one should expected anything less. You never get it all in or totally right the first time. But what you can absolutely nail is the fundamentals and actually executing. Does it add value? Is it aligned? Does it have the fundamental capabilities it needs to? Is it usable and clear? If all answers point to “yes” then you have nothing to worry about - just get it done and release it.
Twitter Summaries
I am a regular user of Twitter, as I’m sure anyone visiting this blog can tell. I’ve toyed with using Twitter Tools for my blog to get a summary of my tweets posted everyday, but I really didn’t like the idea of having a plug-in do this and futz around with creating an actual blog post on here.
So, I’ve found a solution. Actually, 2. If you really want to see a summary of my online activity you can check out:
The Tumblr is only Twitter and and RSS summary feed of Write That Down. The FriendFeed really includes a bunch of other things within the summary. I also have a FireEagle account that I can’t wait to include in the sidebar - they just need to get some of their widgets (and mobile application!) all finished off and released before that happens.
Presentation This Morning
I had a presentation this over via conference call; from my point of view, it went great. I’m going to get some survey results later in the week that could either prove me to be somewhat right or completely off the mark.
Jeff Lash was kind enough to contact me about taking part in an ongoing session he organizes for the product management teams at Elsevier. We decided that I would discuss working with development; a subject I am quite familiar with from my time in start-ups to this point in my career, and having started out as a developer myself.
One of the interesting things I noted was that even though I’m a start-up guy and Elsevier is a much larger organization than what I’m used to, the concepts all held water. Some language was different or org structures were different, but 99% of what I wanted to say was still true. Very cool stuff.
In the same style as my talk with the Product Management View, I kept my deck very, very minimal. I figure, unless I’m face-to-face, I don’t want to have distracting pictures and other “hilarious” bits in there. Just the facts. 3-4 points or less per slide. When I get going, I’ll only use the slide headers as guidance. Sometimes I’ll reference points on the slide itself, but usually, I just keep it pretty loose.
You can download the deck if you are interested in checking it out.
Anyway, enough about what I like to do during presentations. The group that joined in on the call was amazing - they had some fantastic questions and really seemed to get something out of it. To the best of my knowledge, no one fell asleep, which is a metric I like to use when gauging my success of speaking to a group.
I know there are some PMs reading this out there. I encourage you, a lot, to contact Jeff Lash to discuss taking part in his sessions. It’s a great experience, Jeff is a super smart and nice guy, and plus you get to talk about something you (hopefully) really love - product management.
Thanks again for the great opportunity, Jeff!
New Mahalo Page
I know I haven’t been doing very much posting around here as of late - for that, I do apologize. I’ve been super busy at the new gig building out some key deliverables with the team and working on some getting some big initiatives under way for 2008.
Also, I’m writing up a new answer to a question from the Jeff Lash site Ask a Good Product Manager, as well as a presentation (How to Work With Development) that I’ll be doing for some of Jeff’s co-workers next week. I’m really excited about it, to be sure.
I just wanted to point out that I’ve contributed some links to a new Mahalo page for product management and wanted to encourage all the readers out there to add their own. I really believe in Mahalo and what Jason Calacanis and his team is building; I think it’s great and I’ve had it set as my home page for some time now.
Add whatever links you find valuable to you so we can have another great resources for the PMs out there looking for information and knowledge.
UPDATE: I received an e-mail from a Mahalo guide that the page has been recognized internally and they are buiding it out / adding it to their “official” set of pages. Keep recommending those links, everyone!
Product Management Surveys
I wanted to send up a quick post (I’m working through some longer, more thought-out ones at the moment) regarding the great work Tom Grant over at Forrester is doing with their Product Management division.
I’ve stepped through both of the surveys they have up currently - they are well thought out and will surely produce some great data points for us all to use. I encourage everyone to swing by and answer the questions. The two that are currently up are:
I’ll post links to more of them as they become available…
