Entries tagged as ‘Productivity’
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
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
This Forbes article is almost 2 years old, but it is still worth reading.
“You see, as the more heroic, charismatic styles of leadership were grabbing the headlines over the past decades, another more silently effective leader has been taking hold. Jim Collins in Good to Great calls these individuals “Level 5″ leaders, and he once referred to them as “tofu leaders”–executives who are somewhat bland, mix really well with everything around them, and still provide necessary sustenance. Sure, a more heroic, Welch-esque approach is still needed in some circles and business environments, but in a by-gone era, results aren’t enough.”
I think that we’ve all been taught that a good leader has to be really charismatic and results oriented to be effective. I think that in some instances it can help, but in others it really doesn’t. In today’s environment caring only about the results and not the relationships will really hurt a leader. Right now employees are not feeling particularly loyal to their employers in this age of downsizing, outsourcing, and paycheck and benefits reductions. If their leaders just continue to push hard for results and maintain their larger than life personas without any regard to how it is impacting their teams there will eventually be mutiny in one form or another. Productivity will go down. Morale will be affected. When the job market opens up people will leave.
The corporate leaders that I found to be most effective were the ones that were pragmatic and open. They expected results – no doubt, but I would not say that they had a movie star super high energy personality. They engaged the companies that I worked at by sharing almost everything that was going on, allowing all the employees to contribute to solving the problems in their own unique ways. By fostering this openness in the entire organization it helped forge stronger relationships across the various teams. When employees knew exactly what the sales pipeline and revenue numbers looked liked and what the corporate burn rate was on a month to month basis it helped them make much better decisions when it came to spending money. Knowing what problems the sales team was running into in the field informed the product management and engineering teams as well. Being open about the strengths and weaknesses of the product helped marketing and sales do their jobs better. In these companies the silos were limited, and communication was good. There was a distinct sense of “we’re all in this together” and we all know what the company priorities are. We didn’t need a ra-ra leader to spin tall tales full of hype. In fact, the times that I worked for companies with those kinds of leaders it seemed that the organization as a whole recoiled from slick messaging as if touched by a hot poker.
My advice is that leaders should reward and promote the quiet influencers and relationship builders. They can get so much done without leaving as much as a ripple in their wake. They aren’t noisy, they aren’t polarizing. What they are is effective and their people will generally do whatever it takes to be successful because of the relationships that they have within and across their teams.
Categories: Leadership
Tagged: Leadership Types, Productivity, Relationships, Transparency
Have you ever worked on a high-stress project where it seems like the entire team becomes ill? Typically a cold or flu runs rampant through the organization. It hops from one key person to another and it seems that nobody is spared. People work until they drop, making others sick. I’ve found that this happens near the end of a long hard push. Everyone is tired. Everyone has been working long hours. It seems to be at its worst when a deadline just isn’t being met no matter how hard the team works. Everyone is disappointed, people feel like they are failing, no matter how audacious or impossible the goal.
I firmly believe that the people affected this way have some key characteristics in common.
- The first one is that they care. I mean they really care about the success of the project and they will do everything within their power to ensure that success.
- The second is they don’t have experience with failure. I’ve found that once you’ve looked into the ugly maw of a botched project or a failed company and survive that you realize that no matter how much you want to succeed that sometimes you can’t force that success no matter how hard you try. There are times that these things quite frankly are out of your control.
- The third is that they don’t take care of themselves first.
I’ve been in situations where I’ve worked 100+ hour weeks. I’ve worked 6 and 7 days a week for long stretches at a time. I’ve spent death march weekends and holidays in the office. I’m not proud of it, it doesn’t reflect well on work-life balance. At the time it was necessary for company survival. When I made sure to spend some time to take care of myself – eat right – exercise – get enough sleep I fared much better. Yes, that meant that a lot of things got dropped in my life. My yard was a wreck, my house didn’t get cleaned, my husband had to pick up all of the slack and his job isn’t a cake walk either.
I’ve learned through personal experience that the third item is key. Well, at least it is for me. I put exercise pretty close to the top priority in my life. It improves my outlook on life, reduces my stress and helps me sleep well at night. These days I work out every day at lunch including weekends. I lift weights twice a week, I do body weight exercises (pushups, chinups, dips, burpees etc) twice a week, I play volleyball for a few hours on Sundays, and I get some sort of interval training/aerobic exercise two to three times every week. Now that the weather is getting nicer I try to walk for an hour now and then, or I do yoga inside instead in the evening.
Most people resort to other tactics to survive long stretches of overtime. They live on caffeine, sugar, and fast food. They stop exercising. They get little sleep. Unfortunately this not only makes one less productive it also makes a person much more likely to get really really sick.
Remember – take care of yourself first. You’re the only you that you’ve got.
Categories: Tactical
Tagged: Balance, Productivity, Stress
Well, it is always entertaining when snow is forecast in the South. It is even stranger when this happens in March – it’s supposed to be warm in March, this is when Spring starts.
How many accidents will there be on our highways before 7am? Will there be any bread, milk or eggs left at the grocery store? Doubt it! I grew up in the Northeast. I am used to making it to work no matter what. I also have fond memories of taking “snow” days and driving 4 hours in the worst possible conditions to Vermont to go skiing for the day. I was like the postman…. neither rain nor snow nor dark of night (or something like that). Boy times have changed. Now I won’t venture out if we get 2″ of snow. It’s not me – I still can drive in the stuff, I just don’t trust that anyone else around me has a clue. Here in Raleigh we had an event a few years back where over 3,000 school children ended up sleeping at their schools because the snow started during the day. People spent 8 hours on the roads trying to get home. It was insanity. I do my best to avoid it if at all possible now.
That said – a snow day isn’t all fun and games. I find that there is nothing better than a good snow day to catch up on work that I have been putting off. A lot of times these items need a long block of uninterrupted concentration that is hard to get at work. Some of those items are the ones that I’ve been dreading. I know they’re important, I know that I’ll be better off once they’re done, but they are difficult to start. Recently I spent a day creating custom reports that gave me the information that I needed to better assess product quality. My team already had a lot of reports, but none of them were giving me the high level dashboard that I wanted to be able to glance at and get a good feeling of the health of our software at any given moment. It was well worth the effort. I use those reports every day now.
Snow days are also really great for taking a break from the day to day work and looking at the bigger picture. I love being able to spend a day planning for the future and assessing risks. It’s great preparation that helps keep product on track longterm. Having the ability to disassociate myself from my regular work environment makes this type of thinking easier to do.
Categories: Tactical
Tagged: Problem Solving, Procrastination, Productivity
