Last post at the blog

This blog is no more. It has ceased to be. It’s expired and gone to meet its maker. This is a lateblog . It’s a stiff. Bereft of life, it rests in peace. If you hadn’t nailed it to the perch, it would be pushing up the daisies. It’s rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. This is an ex-blog.

A year ago I changed from product management to Solutions Consultant. At the time I had the idea to continue writing, but it seemed like I never got any ideas about what, and why. So here was he blog. Resting, nagging on me for posts, always the guilty concious.

I have therefore decided that I will just stop this blog here and now.

I hope this will make me able to revive my talent management blog, that has also been resting for a year. See you all there instead.

From the view of an delivery consultant

Ok, I got requested earlier to write about the professional service side of business, as I now work in that side. So here goes

It’s interesting, when working in project to deliver a product you get squeezed between the deal the sales did and the product that the product managers have developed. You are supposed to deliver on the deal, make it come true, keep the customer happy. And you have to do it with the tools given.

No more defining the tools.

And we all know what happens. There is something sold that is not in the product, or the expectation from the customer is not what we can deliver, interpretation of the deal differs.

As a good delivery consultant you then try to make the customer happy. Try to convince the product manager to deliver what you need.

And here is where it all goes funny.

As a former product manager you know the buttons to push, and you know the response even before you get it. You write good emails to the product manager trying to convince it to make the feature you need, and 9 times out of 10 you will know the answer before you get it.

All good and rational answers, but does not really help you out.

So whats the conclusion?

All product managers should really try to deliver the product without being able to cheat. Its really a learning experience. If we also could get the sales to do the same (that won’t happen) world would be a better place.

Later I will write about the good and valid reasons and give some tips to the delivery consultant

Why I will post less here

Sometimes things change, and now is one of these times. I will chnage from product management to actually implementing software at real customers.

 

If we look at my career I have been

 

• Developer
• Systems Architect
• Presales
• Done operations
• Product Management
• Training

 

But I have never actually implemented any talent management software at a customer.

 

Now I will do that.

 

I will use my knowledge about the processes, about the software and my experience from over 16 years in Talent Management world to help customers make the best use of our software. I will train them, listen to their fears, listen to their expectations and make the best possible project for them that will end in a successful implementation.

 

Ambitious?

 

Maybe, but I am sure that I can contribute in this part of the talent management world.

 

That however will lead to that this blog will see fewer posts.

 

So for more frequent posts head over to my other blog. Http://silofreetalentmanagement.com

 

Internet Checkin could enhance customer experience more

You might think I am applying for a job at some airline company. I am not, but make me an offer;-)

Anyway. I dont know how many that checkin on internet, I allways do. And if you make it better even more might do it. And reduce time at airport and increase airline profit as a result.

When doing a long haul flight you get food. Often with some option. Veg or non-veg, or some other options. Make those choices part of he internet checkin and you will get two positive effects.

1. The food of one choice will not run out. Everyone will get wat they want, as you will know that hours before the take off.
2. Customers will use internet checkin even more as it gives them an advantage.

Yes the chicken was all taken when they got to me last trip. So therefore I offer this solution and way of increasing profit for airlines.

Let a product manager be a product manager

We are struggling in a profession with no definitive answer about what it is, but lets be honest. Most of us does to much. Lets go back to basic and do what we are best at. 

A product manager should steer the product. Have a vision. Somehow know where the market is going, or even better where it needs to go. prioritize, interact with customers, look at competition, write requirements, think about marketing and make sure Sales and Delivery have something really good to sell and deliver. (I might have missed some things also).

 

 

Is that not enough?

 

So why do we insist on adding so much else to it?

A product manager is not a product owner. Product owner is the developer role. Its day to day interaction with the development team, go down that road and any time to actually meet customers dwindle. So let the Product Owner be the day o day expert who gets our vision, and then sort out the details when needed. We trust them and they make sure our vision is brought to life.

A product manager is not a designer. We know what we want, why we want it and have a good idea on the road there. But most of us are not experts in user experience (we are probably good at spotting a good or a bad one). The User Experience experts will listen to us, interact with us and come with proposals and different versions for us to comment upon and react to.

 

A product manager is not the tester. We know enough about QA to keep those experts in high regard. They know what they are doing. When we do the same we test that we got what we wanted, we don’t test all different use cases in detail and setup tricky data to see if the analytics is working 1000% time of the run tests. QA are experts on that.

A product manager is not the documentation and user guide expert. Far from it, we today strive to get systems that don’t need much of that. But when we do need it we know enough about it to hand the actual writing and sorting and layouting to experts.

 

So lets make sure we have experts around us. People who are as committed to their expertise as we are to ours. That way we can really shine in what we are good at. 

Boarding privileges as a way of attracting customers, or just a relic from the past?

Anyone that has been in a gate waiting for your turn to board? Everyone else seems to get on before you. Its platina that and gold this, silver something and all kinds of plus. And it takes ages.

 

So is it any good?

 

The people paying most board first, then the rest has to pass them to get to the rear end. Which means the sitting ones get bags banged in their heads. Its just stupid. Would you pay to get your head smacked by bags?

 

Another version is. We fill it up from the back. But any platinas/gold/whatever member or business/plus/paying extra passengers can board anytime. Which they do and just stop everything so no one can pass. Another version of the same stupidity.

 

A couple of times in the US they have done it in zones. First all window, then middle seats and last aisle seats. Much more effective. And research shows you can get on board much faster that way.

 

So why continue to do it in stupid ways? I dont think that its worth the cost of doing this for premium class first. Some airlines are even stopping to have one.

 

It was ages ago premium class was freely available for business travelers anyway.

 

Make it fast and efficient. Make the turnaround time faster and lower the fare.

 

And that’s how you adapt to changing customer needs. Don’t deliver today what the customer wanted and was prepared to pay for yesterday.

 

Deliver what the customer needs, not what you want

It could be just one of these obvious things. Off course we deliver what the customer needs, we are product managers, right?

Why do we then see strange things. When I last sat on an airplane it hit me, they even have different clothes. No on the passengers (although they do off course), what I talk about was the cabin crew.

Lets be the customer! You buy a flight you want to

• Get from A to B
• Check in
• Get a seat
• Get something to eat and drink
• Get off

More or less. So to what benefit for you are the numerous titles the cabin crew use ?

They are flight attendance, purser, head waiter and blah blah blah. They supposedly do different stuff, they even have different clothes to signal who is who.

And we passengers just don’t care.

 

We want coffee, we grab nearest cabin crew,

we want wine, we grab nearest cabin crew.

 

So all their titles, what good is it. For the customer none at all. For themselves obviously really important.

But hey, why are they there, for us or for them?

So make sure that what you deliver is of value to the customer, if is not, stop delivering it and find out what you should deliver instead.

I’m a hands on down into detail product manager, I admit it.

But is that so bad? Or is it good? I dont know. I just know that I want to have control of the whole chain from idea to delivery. And off course I don’t, but when I loose control of some details I don’t trust that they are done right.

 

Does that make me a control freak? Or just a freak? Or someone who thinks he is best at everything so better do it myself? You judge.

 

I am now back to running teams in the dual role of product manager and product owner. The 2 roles we have debated now for a couple of years and that are overlapping. One way of ending that debate is to just combine them in the same person, Who cares where the line is drawn then?

 

Anyway. I will now be running 2 sprint teams, 2 teams I have worked with before and that I love and respect. But with 6 months of team absence I have come to some conclusions.

 

1. I will require to not be first instance for approval of design and stuff. Come to me when designers have approved them, when you are sure they follow the guidelines. Unless you have a totally new idea.
2. Stories are either DONE or NOT. Its binary, nothing in between. 0 or 1. May sound hard, but good for all in the long run, It makes it really easy to know what will happen, no speculation. Are they DONE, tested, and pass the PO test with acceptance critera, then they are approved. Fail just one bit, and they are Not passed.

 

These 2 items are my intentions this time.

 

Face 2 face beats phone/internet 10 times out of 9

I had a surprisingly good day yesterday

• Not surprisingly because I was surprised by the level of professionalism of my collaegue, I knew that already.
• Not surprisingly because it was a creative day  that was expectedNot surprisingly because we got good results, I expected that

But surprisingly that just by spending a day face to face we proved that 1+1=3 and achieved more than I expected

We worked on navigation and user experience,

• We had made some first mockups,
• And a requirement spec

And then we discussed. Not always structured, but allowing us to go off on some side discussion. At the end of the day

• We had a good understanding we shared
• We had an enhanced spec
• We had some really good ideas
• We had covered short and long term.

Sometimes a good creative unstructured day, workshop, is all you need. And don’t try that over phone. I have and it is never the same.

Now we just need to sell the result to the other stakeholders.

Christmas time, again

So its Christmas time, and right thereafter New years eve. And its time to summarize 2012. Or not.

 

I will not summarize a year that probably was so diverse it cant be summarized. I will however reflect over December and Christmas.

 

For some December is the last month to actually get the deal signed so you reach your quota.

For some December is the month that is rather slow, and you can get done what you dont have time for the rest of the year.

For some its simply a good month to have a bit of vacation.

 

Which category you are I dont know, but most product managers ae probbaly the middle one and most HR professionals probbaly want to prepare for next years Talent Management processes and therefore bordeline category 1.

 

So please, when you are done, make sure you land in category 3 at least some time. The human body and brain need time off. And by time off I dont mean connected to the office through your phone. The only reason that is ”needed” is that everyone else thinks the same. If we all turned them off and did not read email. There would not be any emails to read.

 

So a merry christmas and a email free holiday