Entries tagged as ‘Priorities’
Having held both product management and product architecture roles I’ve had a lot of experience determining product requirements. One thing that I’ve learned is that there are never enough hours in the day to implement everything that you’d really like to deliver to your customers in the time frame expected. Releasing a product can be compared to a 3 legged stool. You have the requirements or content, you have the amount of resources available (people and machines to do the work), and you have the amount of time it will take. One or more of these has to give in order to ship a product.
In this economic environment adding resources is unlikely – companies can’t afford to add to their payrolls. Many are reducing them. Adding too many resources really doesn’t help anyway. We’ve all seen the impact of too many new hires – everything actually takes longer to get done because of the ramp up time and the rework.
Typically a release is scheduled to occur at a set time as well. Many industries have large trade shows at which you want to demonstrate your product’s new features. Sometimes you have a large potential customer with a tight deadline and that will drive a release as well.
The one thing that is left is winnowing down the product features or content. How do you do that? Well, you have to prioritize and decide what is “good enough”. This can cause a lot of friction in organizations.
A lot of arguments over “good enough” are a symptom of a fragmented corporate culture. Disagreements about what is really necessary come about when the various teams involved have completely different understandings of what the customer’s needs and wants are. This usually happens when information coming directly from customers either wasn’t obtained at all (so the teams were making it all up on their own), or the information wasn’t disseminated throughout the organization in the form of priorities.
Questions to ask in prioritization:
- Is the functionality an integral part of the product as a whole? Is it a way to showcase the product and sell it? Is it the “hook” to get customers with?
- How frequently will the customer use this particular feature or bit of functionality? Always, frequently, often, sometimes, rarely, never(!!!)?
- If this feature fixes a problem, how likely will it be that the customer hits it in their use of the existing product?
- How difficult is it to access this feature or functionality? Number of screen traversals? Clicks? Custom programming or scripting? Does this make sense based on how often a customer will use it?
- Do competitors have this functionality? If so – is it a major selling point of their product? Is this a feature that the company wants to compete with? (or is this not an area of focus?)
- Are there standard performance requirements for the functionality that must be met? (UI, networking) If not, what will the customer tolerate? What will delight the customer? How hard will it be to delight them vs satisfy them?
- Is this a feature multiple customers are begging for? (might be a reason to give them an unpolished version for feedback)
- Is this a feature that your biggest and best customer (or potential customer) really wants?
- Is this a problem multiple customers are complaining about? (and how vehemently? Might be a reason for some extra polish)
Product roadmaps and feature prioritization are living documents. As you learn more about your customers and competitors your product has to change and grow. Make sure you concentrate on the right things first.
Categories: Corporate Strategy · Tactical
Tagged: Priorities, Problem Solving, Productivity, Taking Responsibility
Thanks to The Mad Peacock’s Is It Safe? post for my inspiration today.
In small companies there isn’t a lot of focus on redundancy and reliability in personnel nor in infrastructure. How many people have worked for a company where the corporate e-mail system has gone down for an entire day – or more? I have. Has anyone had a failure in their source code control library that lost a day or more of work across an entire engineering organization? Yup – been there too. Have you ever had someone quit on the spur of the moment and someone else had to figure out what they were working on and what it did? Oh yeah.
Companies are running lean these days and that means that every penny is scrutinized. Unfortunately a lot of times decisions are made that can lead to catastrophic consequences. Consider this scenario – due to budgetary reasons you determine that an automated $40,000 backup and restore system is too expensive, so you have IT run scripts to backup critical data on a weekly basis. Near the end of a weeks worth of work, a critical server goes down. That means that every bit of work your 20 person engineering team introduced has to be mentally recalled, reimplemented, and retested. If your average loaded labor rate is $100k (very low) your average weekly cost for those engineers is ~$38,000. One outage would pay for the entire system – a system that could protect not only engineering data but other corporate data as well. You may argue that a server failure is unlikely, but do you really want to play Russian roulette with your information – especially if it is the intellectual property that makes your company valuable?
There are certain areas that should never be single points of failure.
- Product Development Repositories
- Gold Masters for Released Products
- Financial Records
- Customer Contracts
- Customer Support Issues
- Expertise in Crucial Systems Development
You may be thinking that I am focused on redundant data. That is key, but I believe that the last item in the list is the most important. It is expensive to have two people know exactly the same things – most times it just isn’t feasible. However, through careful dissemination of information through design and code reviews (and the associated documentation) you will be able to piece together developer intent and methodologies much faster than if someone comes in completely cold.
Remember to consider the opportunity cost of NOT protecting your resources, not just the outlay for the processes and tools to do it.
Categories: Corporate Strategy
Tagged: Financial Prudence, Priorities, Problem Solving
I recently read the Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christensen. 
Some parts of this book feel a little bit outdated due to the primary case study that is used: sustaining vs disruptive changes in the hard drive industry from the 1970s until the 1990s and how the companies in the industry coped with the changing business landscape. However, the messages that are represented are still valuable.
Key points for me include:
” Most managers learn about innovation in a sustaining technology context because most technologies developed by established companies are sustaining in character. Such innovations are, by definition, targeted at known markets in which customer needs are understood. In this environment, a planned, researched approach to evaluating, developing, and marketing innovative products is not only possible, it is critical to success.
What this means, however, is that much of what the best executives in successful companies have learned about managing innovation is not relevant to disruptive technologies.”
In a nutshell, if you are going after the same customer base or market segment you always have – with a known set of needs you won’t get any market research information to help you create disruptive technologies. In reality this data will discourage your attempts.
-and-
… the vast majority of successful new business ventures abandoned their original business strategies when they began implementing their initial plans and learned what would and would not work in the market. The dominant difference between successful ventures and failed ones, generally is not the astuteness of their original strategy. Guessing the right strategy at the outset isn’t nearly as important to success as conserving enough resources so that new business initiatives get a second or third stab at getting it right. Those that run out of resources or credibility before they can iterate toward a viable strategy are the ones that fail.”
Here, the message is that no one gets disruptive technologies right on their first attempt. Make sure to conserve resources and iterate repeatedly until you find that market or that strategy that works.
-and-
Not only do you need the right people to be able to develop your disruptive technologies, you need the right processes, and you need the right values or priorities. This is what makes it so hard to succeed in large companies which have qualified people and the money for the resources. However, the bigger the company, the more rooted in existing processes it is, and the more likely that the priorities of the organization as a whole are tied to large percentage gains in revenue which a new disruptive technology in a nascent industry is unlikely to provide.
Categories: Book Reviews
Tagged: Creativity, Innovation, Management, Priorities, Problem Solving
Well, here is day 5, on my What is Really Important? series. Once I finish this post I will be half way there. Good thing too – only a few days left before the end of the year and I promised myself I would get all of these posts written before January 1, 2010. I’ve got my work cut out for me.
There are all different types of collaboration and anti-collaboration (is that really a word? doubt it!) that can occur in a company. Some companies are really good at one kind, but really bad at the others. It is really unusual to find an organization that is good at all of them.
Here are the types of collaboration that I find to be very important.
Internal Collaboration
- Team -This type of collaboration is the easiest to achieve. This typically is a group that is working on a project together. If these people aren’t working together well, nobody is going to succeed. Here it is clearly in one’s best interests to put the needs of the team first, because they strongly correlate with one’s own. Sometime you’ll get someone who tries to make their team look bad so that they come off looking like the hero who saved the project. That person is likely to get shunned and to get a reputation that they are difficult to work with over time.
- Hierarchical or Vertical -A lot of people forget this one, but it clearly exists. This is collaboration up and down the management chain. This is different than command and control where an order comes down from on high and everyone follows it. We all know that typically doesn’t work. People may follow it, but they won’t own it. Vertical collaboration has people at all levels of the organization taking responsibility for future direction and decision making and it requires a significant amount of trust.
- Cross Department or Horizontal - Most people think of this one when collaboration goes bad. This happens when you have team silos and instead of looking out for the organization as a whole, the teams are only looking out for themselves. This is insidious and hard to break, especially when team goals make up a large portion of a person’s performance review or bonus structure. Here you find managers hoarding resources (people, equipment, money) in order to have their team succeed. What typically allows these types of silos to be broken down is a set of corporate wide priorities. If your team is working on priority #4 and someone at priority #1 needs help – you better provide those resources so that the company as a whole is able to deliver.
- Cross Cultural or Geographic - In the world of offshoring and outsourcing this type of collaboration is necessary, but it also is fraught with issues. People are afraid to collaborate in this way because they fear losing their jobs. In many companies this is a definite possibility, but this is a management stance. Being able to collaborate with people from other cultures and in other time zones is a skill. It is a valuable one. One is always better off learning this skill and taking it elsewhere than worrying about losing one’s job because of it. As our economy grows more and more global this ability will be essential
External Collaboration
- Customer - Working closely with customers is important to the livelihood of any company. If you don’t provide good customer support and your competitors do, you are dead. Key customers should also be asked for their input, this is key for prioritizing new product capabilities.
- Vendor - On the flip side, as a customer, you should strive to have a strong collaborative relationship with your key vendors. The bigger a customer that you are, the easier this is. However, many companies are looking to learn from their customers who are really pushing the envelope in how they are using the vendor’s products. Many times the most creative customers aren’t necessarily the biggest ones. Wouldn’t you like to drive requirements that you need into your vendor’s product development roadmap?
- Partner - Lastly, you must consider companies that aren’t necessarily your customers or your vendors but whose products are complimentary to your own. Is there a way that you can resell each others products to have a more compelling offering? Is there a way that you can integrate the inner workings of your products so that when they are used together it is seamless? This is called a partnership because it benefits both parties equally.
Categories: Corporate Strategy · Personal
Tagged: Attitude, Collaboration, Competition, Priorities
I recently read a blog post written by a friend and former colleague of mine that made me think about how important focus is. For background – see Don’t Die in the Wrong Lake by themadepeacock. He describes a scenario where his former employer was so focused on one particular industry that she killed the company by ignoring all of the other possibilities. This is when too much focus – or even more specifically the wrong focus is very bad.
To play the devil’s advocate, I have to say that normally, strong focus is very good. There is nothing worse than working for a company with very limited resources (time, money and people) that is trying to be everything to everybody. Diversity in focus is great for profitable companies and especially profitable companies that want to grow into other industries and have the means to do so. Too much diversity can kill a small company just as quickly as the wrong focus can.
First of all, small companies are highly dependent upon each one of their customers. This is because typically small companies only have a few of them. If you only have 10 customers it is really painful to lose 1 of them. For a bigger company losing one customer is only bad if it is a really high profile large customer.
If you are a customer of a small company, you know that you are taking a risk in buying from them. If you are working with Joe’s Software Emporium you don’t know if the company will be around for the long haul or not. Joe is clearly not IBM. The reason you *are* working with Joe is because he can provide you with something very specific that no one else can provide. This may mean a particular piece of functionality, a particular customer service capability, or even just the fact that you can get something small and simple at a price point that larger companies may not be interested in selling as an independent product (it’s not worth their effort). Joe’s customers are dependent on his focus. They care about what he is providing to them now, and how it will meet their needs in the future. What if Joe decided to put most of his resources on another product that his customer’s aren’t interested in – splitting his focus? He might lose his current customers trying to get different ones.
I’ve worked for a number of companies that decided not to focus on the product that they were successfully selling in the market place even though it could be improved and its revenue could be grown significantly. Instead, these companies started multiple new efforts, sometimes it almost felt like the flavor of the week. What this caused was significant alienation of their existing customer base as well as frustration at the employee level. Some employees could clearly see the customer problems and were powerless to stop them due to a lack of resources. Other employees were getting whip-sawed among multiple top priorities and were never able to focus (there’s that word again) successfully on getting anything done.
Remember – focus is good. It’s only the wrong focus that is bad.
Categories: Corporate Strategy
Tagged: Culture, Leadership, Priorities, Productivity
I recently came across this article on the Harvard Business Journal site. Boy did this resonate with me.
This topic is one of my pet peeves. Over the years I have heard so many people complain that they aren’t getting to important tasks in their home or work lives. Quite frankly they aren’t setting their priorities correctly. Usually it goes something like this: “Right now I don’t have time to eat right and exercise – but once things settle down at work I’ll get to it.” or “I should get some training or learn more about that, but I barely can get through all of the tasks in my day job right now.” or “In order for me to be more effective I need to start doing ‘x’ but I am too busy trying to get ‘y’ done.” That last one is my personal favorite. It has bitten me more than a few times now and I vow that it isn’t going to happen to me again. Typically the thing that I should be doing is something that I’m not comfortable with. It is a new skill or it is hard for me based on my personality type. Sometimes it is a lack of confidence that holds me back. I think that the best advice I ever got in those instances is to “fake it”. Yes, seriously, pretend that you are competent and capable in that area and do what you think someone who is would do.
Something else that I thought was valuable in this article is that you need to make a conscious decision about which items to pursue and which to just let go. There’s no point in beating yourself up about not getting to something that you know is highly unlikely. It is a fantasy if you think you’ll get to it. Who needs to drag along that baggage for years? The amount of stress that adds over time is just not worth it. I worked with a career coach who had a favorite saying – the best way to let something go is to visualize it. Put the thought in a bubble and visually pop that bubble. How do you feel once it is gone? Relieved? Happy? Sad? That first feeling you have is key to the issue.
So – two things.
1. GET TO IT! This is for those items you really just need to incorporate in your life. Stop procrastinating.
2. LET IT GO! Stop carrying around unwanted items in your head that you know you’ll never prioritize to the top of the queue.
Do both and you’ll feel much better.
Categories: Tactical
Tagged: Confidence, Motivation, Personality Types, Priorities, Procrastination
This article from Business Week brought back a lot of memories for me about the dotcom bust. Jason Calacanis talks about a lot of very difficult decisions that he has made and that he suggests that CEOs of startups should be considering in this economic environment.
“A lot of CEOs with less than 12 months of capital left in the bank have been asking me for advice about what to do, given the massive economic turmoil we’re facing. I thought I would take the time put these various conversations into one place to help those who are “up against it,” as we say in Brooklyn. The result is intended for the entrepreneurs behind startup companies who know in their hearts that their investors have lost faith, and that Google (GOOG), Yahoo! (YHOO), or Microsoft (MSFT) aren’t going to pick them up on a magic M&A carpet ride.”
From 2000-2005 I worked for a now defunct networking equipment maker. During the heyday we grew to over 350 people with 3 engineering offices spread across the US plus sales offices in Europe and Asia. All told the company spent hundreds of millions of investment dollars trying to build some really amazing next generation networking technology. A lot of that cost was due to the sheer amount of resources required to build such a product, and the exorbitant cost of developing custom ASICs. There also were a lot of bad decisions made. We had the swankest office digs I have ever seen. We had a company car at each site. We had salt water fishtanks and water walls. We had massage chairs, espresso machines, foosball tables, and pool tables. We thought it would be wise to start working on a second product line before the first was even close to completion. All in all we were going through a lot more money that we should have, and I think some of the employees recognized it early on. Back then every company was doing it. You had to have all of the perks to keep people interested in working for you in Silicon Valley.
Once the dotcom bust settled in, the board switched out most of the executive team. We developed a fiscally conservative policy and things really changed. We went from 350 people down to a little less than 100. We closed one development site and subleased a significant portion of the other two. We looked for every way to reduce costs to the minimum to survive. Unfortunately we had blown through a huge cash cushion that could have helped us weather the path to profitability. I still admire the strength of the executive team and the hard decisions that they had to make back then. They didn’t run and hide from the problem. They attacked it head on. If that type of conservative management had been in place from the start I am sure that the company would have survived and been successful. Once the dotcom bust ended the company had gone to the well one too many times and the investors sold off the IP. I saw the writing on the wall well in advance of this event and I left about a year before it occurred.
This part of my work history is really sad for me. We built a great product. We had a terrific team – and it was a very tight knit one after the company shrank. We had clear corporate goals and priorities. The economy killed us, and I believe that happened because of the sheer amount of spending that occurred. We didn’t prepare for a rainy day.
I hope your company is ready to weather the worst and is planning for survival.
Categories: Corporate Strategy
Tagged: Culture, Financial Prudence, Priorities, Resilience
I recently read this blog post by the CEO of zappos.com Tony Hsieh talking about developing a brand based on your company’s culture.
“So what’s a company to do if you can’t just buy your way into building the brand you want? What’s the best way to build a brand for the long term?
In a word: culture.
At Zappos, our belief is that if you get the culture right, most of the other stuff — like great customer service, or building a great long-term brand, or passionate employees and customers — will happen naturally on its own.
We believe that your company’s culture and your company’s brand are really just two sides of the same coin. The brand may lag the culture at first, but eventually it will catch up.
Your culture is your brand.
So how do you build and maintain the culture that you want?”
I’ve always been a proponent that the culture of a company is what drives its success. Employees all need to be on the same page as to what the priorities of the company are, and they really need to stand behind those priorities instead of providing lip service to them. This is a time for strong leadership. If the top executives of the company aren’t aligned on these priorities, the rest of the company will also fracture along divisional or departmental boundaries. If the leadership team isn’t bought into the priorities it will be next to impossible for the rest of the organization to be excited and driven to support them.
Categories: Leadership
Tagged: Branding, Culture, Priorities
