Part of the Process

One of the interesting things running a "state of practice" survey is finding out (or being reminded!) of organisations. In my previous round-up of professional bodies , I had missed out two in particular - Mind the Product and Women in Product. Women in Product From the Women in Product website : Women In Product connects women in the product management field through our online platforms and live events. Our robust global community empowers women with opportunities to collaborate and resources for advancement. We align with organizations driving innovation through inclusive policies and practices that encourage mobility for women in product.  so, it's more the community angle than a professional body per se. From the website it still seems to be heavily weighted towards North American chapters. That and not reallt being the target demographic and it's not surprising that I hadn't thought of them when providing professional bodies that survey respondents might be...

A while back I shared a version of this rough and ready systems diagram looking at a system to manage new product development priorities where the situation of interest is the need to create new revenue streams to diversify.    Note: It doesn't fully follow the conventions of Systems dynamics and is firmly grounded in a B2B SaaS context.  This formed the basis of a Systems Thinking assignment that I did, so sharing a bit more here in case anyone has any comments or suggestions on my exploration of this space. It kinda felt right, yet the focus felt it was off. So, I then used the 12 boundary questions from Critical Systems Heuristics ( CSH ) to think about the system again from other viewpoints. Source of in fluence Who should be the stakeholders? What’s at stake? Stakeholdings: constraining or developmental? Motivation (beneficiary) Business owners   Business sales team Software users (purpose) Maximise profits from customers   Solve the business problems of t...

Doing background desk research for my final MSc project and I fell down a bit of a rabbit hole. It started with looking at the different industry bodies that look after computing fields. I have been a member of the  British Computer Society (BCS) for a number of years, mainly because of their Project Management group and local branch meetings. But they are lagging a bit on modern development practices and roles, such as Product Management. Although they do have a Digital Product Management book coming out later this year! This got me to looking at associations that specifically support product roles, and building a " body of knowledge " like the project management world has. I found quite a few out there, and some names I had seen in academic research started popping up. I also fell down a rabbit hole in terms of the difference between a certificate and certification ! I have joined a couple, and ordered copies of all of the "bodies of knowledge" books I can since ...

2020 has been a strange work year, it has exposed some underlying issues such as benefits of remote working. Here I take a look at a couple of practices that I think 2020 has shown some clarity. Impact of 100% utilisation Photo by Elena Mozhvilo on Unsplash One thing that really became clear was how 100% utilisation impacts team work. I think this creates an organisational bias towards individual contributions, unilateral decision making, and knowledge silos vs team work, collaboration, and shared understanding. This is due to overlapping free time in the team reducing as you have other constraints, such as reduced working hours, and other unexpected work. That being said Rich Mironov has some warnings around what happens when you think " We [should] keep some overflow engineering capacity for emergencies. ". The tiny fix example he gives is IME usually a signal for a bit of an outsized time sink, due to the knock on effects it can have in the product due to increasing testi...

It's a well known phrase with software developers that "naming things is hard", but what about hardware products? What are the worst offenders and how should it be done?  This post was prompted by a couple of social media posts, taking a look at two culprits. The first was camera model names Whoever designed the Canon's camera naming schema deserves a good talking to. Impossible to know what's newer/better, and all the models have multiple names across the world, making searching for info really hard. — Ben Sauer (@bensauer) August 5, 2020 and this one humorously takes a peek at how monitors get their names View this post on Instagram How companies name their Monitors 😂 Via @system32comics Follow @techgang_ for more . . #programmerhumor #gamersofinstagram #gamersunite #gamerslife #programmerlife #codinglife #programming #programmingmemes #codingmemes #computerscience #programmingjokes #computerengineering #workfromhomelife #gamerlife #ga...

First day of a new conference - SofaConf 2020 "A stay-at-home conference"  - that came about in reaction to COVID-19 and lockdown/travel restrictions. Overall very good content so far, lots of sessions that speak to real issues in doing product development in the real world. Slight technical issue with quality of Andy Budd's broadcast that was quickly sorted. The Secret Weapon to Finding Focus - Melissa Perri Melissa explained the build trap, where features are not seen as "what is the business value I want to provide" but rather "here are some features we want as  output". Netflix realised that they were in the build trap with Roku, and getting into competition with hardware companies that they could partner with. So they spun it out and so that they could then double down on their core competency. Now is the time to focus, what can we do to win? .... first you need a good product Strategy framework. alignment builds autonomous teams. The right level ...