Product Management Leadership

 Hello,

A recent experience highlighted something, again, that is worth exploring. How do we become Product Managers?  It is an apprenticeship and as such is unlike many or most other modern disciplines (higher education, are you listening?).  You can go to nursing school and become a nurse, law school and become a lawyer, but Product Management?  No.

I was recently asked by a recruiter to please speak with the Head of Product at a large wealth management technology offshoot company who wanted to hire some help.  I was immediately very skeptical as the industry is known (by me personally) to be well behind the times regarding all things tech. But the recruiter was persuasive.  I took everything said with a heavy grain of salt and went into the conversation having done some prep work.

She/him, the Head of Product, the executive at the company responsible for its products & services, has a background in economics and finance and decades with various New England wealth management companies.  I decided to dumb down my talk dramatically and see how it played.

Within 5 minutes I could see his/her head spinning.

She/he had essentially complained about the job of heading product management listing all the common areas of focus where we professional PM executives apply our frameworks, knowledge, processes, and people skills, then stated she/he had no idea what to do about it and needed help.

This executive told me she/he had no idea how to do their job. As Head of Product.

I then stated I'd had interviews where the CTO ripped off my ideas, assured this person I didn't believe it was happening today, then said I'd give these couple "for free" and listed off the basic frameworks I would use to handle the situation presented.

Head spinning.

Lesson. There really is an enormous gap between people who are in the position and what they actually needed to do to get there at a technologically modern company. If you are an executive at a company that is not traditionally known as a "technology" company, or a "product" company, you have to do more than just say it.  There is real nuts & bolts to doing it.  The first step is accepting that you have much to learn. As we all do.

Best,

J.W. Gant

BRotD Entry 0265 - The Twitter Takeover

Best Reading of the Day

 Some people believe a person who's net worth is in the billions is naturally better than everyone else.

"Drop Elon Musk down in a third world country with no money and he'd be running the place within a year," is the typical hagiography we see around these folks.

True?

Hardly.

Here is a little piece (free to read for a limited time) about the Twitter takeover by the world's (previously) richest man:

elon-musk-twitter-takeover.html

Here is a snippet from that piece:

Alicia [part of the core engineering team] wasn’t reflexively anti-Musk. She respected what he had done at his companies and felt hopeful that, as someone who thought of himself as an engineer, he would support her highly technical work. But Musk had a different interest that day. Twitter, he said, should immediately get into video.

“We really should be able to do longform video and attract the best content creators by giving them a better cut than YouTube,” he said, according to Alicia’s recollection. The infrastructure engineers in the room agreed that adding support for longform video was technically possible, but their job was building stuff — not strategy or marketing. It seemed as though Musk didn’t understand the basic organizational structure of a social-media company; it was as if a rich guy had bought a restaurant and started telling the cooks he wanted to add a new dining room. Might he want to speak with the media product team instead?

Having been in tech and product for a few decades now I can say this use of engineering time by Musk is as stupid a waste I have heard of. Engineers should not be making business decisions, rather, they relate what is feasible, exactly as "Alicia" indicated during this meeting.  Any other discussion with the engineering team is a waste of extremely valuable resources.

Happy Reading,

J.W. Gant

Empathy in the Workplace

 Hello Everyone,

I am going to write up a little about a passion of mine and how it should alter your hiring and managing methods: empathy.

We have a hyper competitive environment in the United States where every executive learns the right thing to say and is sure to check those boxes.  I have unfortunately encountered too many executives who just check the boxes for areas such as "Servant Leadership", which they can define in limited fashion but can't practice, and have seen the dire consequences of these failures.

Empathy in the workplace is the single biggest differentiator a manager can bring to add value to the company.

It starts with recruiting and hiring with empathy and a little solution selling:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbeshumanresourcescouncil/2022/05/19/recruiting-with-empathy-how-to-succeed-in-the-war-for-talent/?sh=71899acc468d

Here is a snippet from that:

When was the last time a recruiter called you and said, "I have an opportunity you are going to love." I am? How do you know? You don’t know me. It’s a short-sighted approach that focuses on the what instead of the why. It doesn’t sound like an empathetic approach. Empathy is rooted in recognition and appreciation for the "why." It involves putting yourself in another person’s shoes. When done well, we can better understand and provide solutions.

Here is a nice Medium post I agree with that states we should hire for empathy and train for everything else:

https://medium.com/@ioanabelu/hire-for-empathy-train-for-everything-else-3b434ba06cae

Here is a snippet from that:

We cannot outrun a car, outfly a plane or outsmart a computer; it would be foolish to even try. If a machine can do it better, maybe that’s not where we should try to excel. We can instead choose to focus on that which I cannot imagine will be technologically replicated too soon — empathy, sensorial intelligence, introspection.

So, here we are.

If we know it is important how do we hire for it?

Think of your behavioral questions and look for those with an opportunity for the person to see another viewpoint.  Ask questions such as "when did you not get your way at something you really wanted? How did it come about and how did you handle it?"

Best of luck,

J.W. Gant

Tech to Help Loyalty

I had a number of discussions this last year, sometimes pushing a boulder up hill, trying to help business side digital interests understand what technology could and could not do for them.

The real key to these discussions is value.

If something can move the needle on revenue it will get attention, and some dollars behind it to enable action.

Here is a snippet from a piece that might interest you:

Research published in the Nielsen Global Consumer Loyalty Survey has found that 33% of European consumers (36% in the US) say they love to try new brands, while a further 56% – although more loyal – also admit that they can ‘be moved to experiment.’

This trend for brand-hopping among consumers is a relatively modern phenomenon. 40% say they are more likely to try something new than they were five years ago. Brand loyalists are a shrinking minority and companies are having to double down on enticing exploratory consumers and – crucially – retaining them.

Here is the full article:

https://www.clickz.com/martech-stack-customer-loyalty/252627/

Happy Reading,

J.W. Gant

How Amazon Competes and How to Compete With Amazon

This will be a short article that may lead to a deeper investigation and white paper.

What is Amazon doing besides just selling stuff online that competes with other players?

How are other players competing with Amazon in ways that may or may not include selling online?

Let's take a look at a few examples.

First Amazon.

They are masters at taking something they already do and monetize it in a new way.  They had massive data centers providing web service to Amazon.com that was mostly not in use.  They needed the massive power for their busy times.  Why not sell it as a service?

Amazon Web Services was born and now you too can host anything you can dream of in "the cloud".

This was quickly followed by others.  Microsoft Azure has found its place and there are countless players in the space now.

Here is one way Amazon is vertically integrating, taking some upstream or downstream product or service and creating a way to do it themselves.  Package delivery.

Amazon Orders Vans for Prime Delivery

Next are a couple of players that took Amazon eCommerce ideas and started providing the same solution for others.

This company is called Mirakl, a Paris based company, that has created a platform for other eCommerce sites to add resellers, just like Amazon.com does. They're the only player in the space and are big already, especially in B2B, and will be growing dramatically in the years ahead.  I promise you.

https://www.mirakl.com/

Next is a similar concept.  The product reviews that worked so well on Amazon.com became something you can add to your own eCommerce site.  Now there are multiple other players in this space but the original may still be the best.

https://www.bazaarvoice.com/

I think these responses are the correct path for all but the largest retailers.  I used to refer to retailers in a Tier level segmentation, Tiers 1 to 5.  Tier 1 was Walmart while Tier 5 was the local YMCA Christmas Tree sellers. I think there is now a super-tier reserved for those who do brick & mortar well, digital well, and eCommerce well.  How can smaller and regional players compete?  Third party providers.

Here is a great example:

https://www.retaildive.com/news/perfect-corp-rolls-out-makeup-ar-tool-for-small-businesses/559242/

Hope this gave you some food for thought.

Happy Reading,

J.W. Gant

BRotD - Entry 0260 Product Development Hubris

Best Reading of the Day

The following read is about video games, one specifically, and the design & development process it has been going through.  However, it is really a story of project scope creep, hubris, arrogance, and the problems of unlimited resources.

This is not a new story and is applicable to any project you encounter (that link I provided leads to one of the best stories of this kind you'll ever find).

The game in question is titled Star Citizen and its development efforts launched with great fanfare to a Kickstarter campaign that quickly became the most successful of its kind ever.

Years later the "game" has received over $300 million in funding and ... still hasn't launched anything out of alpha stage development.

I was initially intrigued having enjoyed founder Chris Robert's other efforts so I watched and waited.  What I kept seeing alarmed me.  Usually a Kickstarter campaign includes a goal that will result in "full funding" so a project will result in a product in your hands, and includes stretch goals that will get included if enough people pony up money.  This campaign, however, had no limit. As the funding increased the scope increased, seemingly endlessly.  I saw scope creep beyond belief and concluded I would have no part in the project until scope, and release dates, became solid.  7 years later I am still waiting.

Read more in this snippet:

Rough playable modes—alphas, not betas—are used to raise hopes and illustrate work being done. And Roberts has enticed gamers with a steady stream of hype, including promising a vast, playable universe with “100 star systems.” But most of the money is gone, and the game is still far from finished. At the end of 2017, for example, Roberts was down to just $14 million in the bank. He has since raised more money. Those 100 star systems? He has not completed a single one. So far he has two mostly finished planets, nine moons and an asteroid.

This is not fraud—Roberts really is working on a game—but it is incompetence and mismanagement on a galactic scale.

Here is the full story:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattperez/2019/05/01/exclusive-the-saga-of-star-citizen-a-video-game-that-raised-300-millionbut-may-never-be-ready-to-play/#3e2d26c75ac9

Let this serve as a warning.  Managers, always provide resource constraints beyond what you actually have.  Developers, always listen to marketing to identify need.  Leaders, get out of the weeds to provide vision and let your people work.

And on

and on

...

Happy Reading,

J.W. Gant

Digital Product Management - Modern Definitions

What is Product Management as it relates to software development, digital?

This is a question with quite a few answers so I've decided to lay out some of my thoughts.  This will be a sketch of what may become a White Paper.

For those readers who look to me for retail, digital interactions for businesses, future technology ideas, etc., this post may not be for you unless you are curious what the process is behind the work that drives those items.

What does the title mean?

Product Manager - Product Owner - Product Team Lead

Most shops run some form of agile development method in today's world.  There are many flavors of that some looking more like traditional waterfall SDLCs, some running in a Lean Startup way, etc. Most software development is attempting to create value for some user who may be a customers The Product world bridges the gap between the users/customers and the engineers who build them.  I like to say, a Product Manager is most focused on everything leading up to the point where a team of engineers has to build something.

Product Manager

A manager should be managing something.  Some process.  Adding value in some way.  The Product Manager role is about as diversely defined as anything I've ever heard of.  Some are "Strategic" product managers focusing solely on understanding the market, crafting the product vision and managing the product roadmap.  Some then handoff to a Product Owner who manages the SDLC process writing user stories to ensure the software gets written.  Some do the user stories themselves.  Some have more senior Product Managers owning the roadmap and only contribute ideas in to it, maybe a Director.  Some even own the P&L though that is rarer.  Most have some ownership and often a bonus structure emphasizing the profit their product brings to the company.

Product Owner

This is the one that creates the most controversy outside looking in.  A shop decides what the role is and often can't imagine anything else.  However, outside of that shop you can find many flavors of Product Owner. I'm going to split it in to two definitions.

Product Owner - Senior Product Manager

This flavor is most often a Product Manager who writes user stories.  However it may also indicate a very senior Product Manager, more of a General Manager who owns the P&L.

Product Owner - Agile

Epics, Themes, user stories, the backlog are all the items this Product Owner focuses on.  Often this flavor does not have direct ownership of the roadmap and is not concerned with P&L or profitability of the product.  This Product Owner focuses on managing the SDLC from the perspective of product.  In many ways this person is the modern Business Analyst.

Product Team Lead

This is another one that might have radically different flavors.  The "Team Lead" indicates someone who may be a group manager, maybe managing other Product Managers.  However some shops place this role as the literal SCRUM master focused on managing the SDLC from the perspective of product.

Where do the opportunities lie with these definitions?

A complete vision of Product Management for software must be end-to-end, from the customer to the engineers.  Along the way there are opportunities for better or worse fits.  Here are a few:

Lean Product Management

If you need quick, iterative, product development this should be your focus.  It is an extension of the more familiar Lean Startup methods that focus on bringing value to market quickly.  This is a mindset that marries with agile product development and should result in increased throughput from the engineering team.  Where it varies slightly from Lean Startup is mostly on the focus of the Product Team and how to best utilize an agile development shop.  Otherwise, it is the same mindset you'll find throughout Lean Startup thinking.  You the Product Manager only has a hypothesis of what the customers in the market will find valuable.  Working with customers you should be able to scratch out an idea that may have value.  Create a simple mockup and get it in front of some customers for feedback.  Put together your best informed guess, make it as small as possible to add value, and write the user story to get the engineers to build it. Then get it in the hands of those customers who most wanted the new product/feature.  Then iterate based on how they actually use it and don't be afraid to scrap it all together.

Here's one I got from a CTO recently.  Take the typical agile user story, now recognize you really want to get a MVP to market as quickly as possible to begin the iterative process of identifying value for your customers.  Do you, as the Product Manager, really need 5-10 acceptance criteria or is there actually 1 or 2 that most likely result in a minimally viable product (I'm looking at you InsightSquared)?

Your embrace of Lean Product Management should be a natural fit to the company's culture, maturity of product line, and SDLC processes.

Roadmap

If your product line is young you should have a flexible roadmap under most circumstances.  In some cases the clients and the capabilities of the industry map out the roadmap to great detail even for young products (I'm looking at you TRUX).  In others there is no defined idea of where the value is and flexibility is a must.  Finally, if your product is mature and well-established you may want to introduce a quantitative approach to product roadmapping where a variety of data inputs might result in a top 10 list of product features to focus on.

Customer Interactions

The definition of a customer and what constitutes "sales" can vary greatly but basically these are the people paying money that keeps your company around and the sales team is focused on growing that area.  If its a platform for social connections you may have a "growth" team instead of traditional sales (I'm looking at your Alignable). The Product Team that has incentive to see their product profitability rise will likely have interactions with Sales and Sales Engineering to help close deals and make the customers happy.  They may be out at trade shows as the voice of the product and bringing back their interactions to be the voice of the customer.  Maybe thought leadership can be displayed in the space by blog posts, white papers, or a CAB - Customer Advisory Board.

UX

The User Experience a customer has with a product can make or break a product depending on a variety of factors. Generally business power users are more forgiving of lesser quality UX design.  They just want the results afterall.  However, UX is important in this area as well as you may inadvertently hide features in a poor UI and lose customers over the poor experience.  Further, as the product matures it is likely features will be added and a lack of UX vision can result in some kind of Frankenstein product with a poor UX that results in lost customers.  Generally, the more mature a market space the more important UX is to differentiate a product and the more consumer-facing a product is the more important UX is.  Product comes in to play as owners of the roadmap and the overall product vision.  Have knowledge of UX and have a plan, but be flexible in achieving your goals and remain focused on the customer.  A company that isn't growing is probably declining.  A product who's sales are not climbing is probably seeing diminishing sales.

There are a thousand more points that could be made on this subject but this outline is my start at defining a modern Product Management shop and helping folks understand the varying definitions for the titles out there and the varying processes available to them.

Happy Reading,

J.W. Gant

BRotD - Entry 0265 Physician Computer Systems

Best Reading of the Day

There is something for everyone in here if you have a passion for digital.  Systems. Platforms. Medical.  Product Management. Professional. Whatever your flavor this is a must read.

Here is a snippet from the piece:

The next time I saw Cameron was on the day of his operation. He lay on a stretcher outside the operating room, waiting to be wheeled in. A computer screen on a boom loomed over the bed, showing the safety checks I still had to do.

I shook Cameron’s hand and was introduced to his wife, who was in a chair beside him. They smiled nervously. It was his first time going under anesthesia. I told them about who would be on the surgical team with me and what was going to happen. I reached for the computer. But then I hesitated. I remembered when I’d turned my back on Cameron at our last encounter.

“Let’s go through these checks together,” I said.

I angled the screen toward the couple. Side by side, we confirmed that his medical history was up to date, that the correct surgical site was marked on his body, that I’d reviewed his medication allergies. His shoulders began to relax. His wife’s did, too.

“Are you ready?” I asked.

Here is the full story on the New Yorker (paywall enabled if you read more than a few articles each month):

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/11/12/why-doctors-hate-their-computers

Happy Reading,

J.W. Gant

Vendor Management for the Cloud World

Cloud based services mean less in-house IT work and more vendors to deal with.

This little article caught my eye as extremely relevant in today's world.  Maybe you'll find a nugget from it that you can use.

I have tons, tons, of vendor management experience for exactly this reason.  If your company doesn't do it in-house you'll be managing a vendor.  Chances are you'll need at least one vendor to help with some competency the in-house team is lacking. If you're a startup or launching a new area in a legacy company, chances are you'll need the help of one or more vendors.

Everyone in tech can get something from this article.

Read on here:

http://www.zdnet.com/article/how-to-manage-vendors-in-a-cloud-first-world/

There is an emphasis on service level agreements in this article that is dead on. Read this entire article and think about it a bit.

You get what you pay for, no doubt.  How does the famous project management saying go?

Good.
Cheap.
Fast.
Pick any two.

Yes.  Yes indeed.

Happy Reading,

J.W. Gant

App Marketing in 2017

Great little read that should help update your (and my) understanding of how to market mobile apps today.

Here is a snippet from the piece:

In the early days of apps, life used to be so simple. You built it, released it into the app store(s), spread the word about it and waited for the downloads to roll in. That was in the days when apps were novelty items and people were still amazed at the utility and functionality that could be coded into something they could keep on their homescreen and use whenever they wanted.

Fast forward a few years – nine to be exact – and things look somewhat different. While mobile phone OS fragmentation has eased somewhat, leaving iOS and Android as virtually the last men standing, the fact remains that there are more than 2m apps in Apple’s App Store, and another 2m+ in the Google Play store.

Here is the article:

http://mobilemarketingmagazine.com/app-marketing-101

Happy Reading,

J.W. Gant

Too Good, Too Efficient?

Is this possible?

Have you ever used a physical typewriter before?  If so you may know a bit more than the current generations know about this question.  The old long-handed key typewriters had one problem when the first "keyboard" was laid out: it was too fast for the physical hands to keep up.  The reason the letters were jumbled up a bit in to the current version of a keyboard is because the typists were too fast on a more straight-forward set of keys and the old typewriters couldn't keep up.

Fast forward to today with modern UI work for websites, mobile apps, etc.  Can these interfaces be too fast and efficient? Is there ever a benefit to slowing down?  That is the question posed in this excellent article:

https://econsultancy.com/blog/69101-why-increasingly-efficient-ux-might-not-always-be-a-good-thing/

Here is a snippet from the piece:

A recent leader in The Economist raised my interest in the little discussed area of ‘facile externality’.

The Economist summed up the concept as follows:

"Efficiency is at the heart of progress. Yet just as too much of a good thing (travel, say) can yield a bad (congestion), so excessive ease in transactions can generate costs, known in the jargon as a “facile externality”, such that less efficiency would actually be more efficient. In academic circles…. the notion is well established that innovations which eliminate too much hassle could do society harm."

The article continues, stating that "a few companies have recognised the benefits of restoring friction. Research into “the Ikea effect”, named in honour of those happy hours spent with an Allen key, a Billy bookcase and a rising hatred of Sweden, shows that people put extra value on things when they devote their own labour to them."

Happy Reading,

J.W. Gant

BRotD - Entry 0246 Yahoo Finance App Update

Best Reading of the Day

Wow.  Any in-place update of a popular customer facing app like Yahoo Finance is a major undertaken and not to be taken lightly.  This little article is a fun read, and pretty quick.

Take a look:

http://www.businessinsider.com/yahoo-finance-product-boss-controversial-redesign-backlash-2016-9

Here is a snippet from the piece:

The product team at Yahoo Finance had a hard time sleeping for the whole week leading up to the big redesign in July.

It's not because they weren't confident, says Michael La Guardia, the head of product for both Yahoo Finance and Sports, but because of the drastic changes he was about to bring to one of Yahoo's most popular products ever.

"We knew what we were doing was the right thing," La Guardia told Business Insider.

Happy Reading,

J.W. Gant

BRotD - Entry 0242 Startup Employment Experiences

Best Reading of the Day

I don't recommend books too often in these pages, and this book hasn't even been released yet, but this article about and excerpted from this book is well worth reading.  Even if all you want is a bit of amusing fun you'll enjoy this.

A fellow named Dan Lyons, who has been a writer on the hit HBO comedy show "Silicon Valley", is about to publish a book mostly about his experiences in the startup world when he worked at HubSpot.

Here is the story on Fortune.com:

http://fortune.com/disrupted-excerpt-hubspot-startup-dan-lyons/

Here is a snippet from that piece:

Dogs roam HubSpot’s hallways, because like the kindergarten decor, dogs have become de rigueur for tech startups. At noon, Zack tells me, a group of bros meets in the lobby on the second floor to do push-ups together. Upstairs there is a place where you can drop off your dry cleaning. Sometimes they bring in massage therapists. On the second floor there are shower rooms, which are intended for bike commuters and people who jog at lunchtime, but also have been used as sex cabins when the Friday happy hour gets out of hand.

I have a bit of experience in the world of startups and I've seen some of what Dan describes.  Also I feel validated in the analysis I made of one startup that recruited me recently.

This nameless company saw a few areas of expertise in my background that fill their needs very well in their product area.  So the CPO requested a phone interview and we talked quite a few times via email and phone.  The first flag for me was when he stated they don't allow titles at their little startup company, said the Chief Product Officer before he corrected himself by naming the C-Level folks with titles.  He went on to assure me they are very well funded with at least 2 years runway, before he mentioned how little room they have for the cost of salaries and related they would be at the very bottom of the pay scale for someone with my experience.  The list went on and on, including a lack of an equity plan, as I grew certain I was speaking to more of a confidence man than a CPO I would respect and learn from.

I've seen company founders dangle the carrot of eventual payout and am not particularly enticed by such things, and never was, but please ... offer me something.  I told this CPO to reach out to me when they are better established and don't expect to hear from him again.

The reasons to join a startup or to invest in one should be quite simple: the quality of their offering and the quality of the team.  Startups typically suffer from cash-flow problems regularly so don't expect a great salary but equity is a must.  Titles are cheap and often a key requisite for working at a startup is the need to wear many hats so Director or VP titles should be easy to get in to for folks with good training and experience.  You can do more, learn more, and expand your wings more than at well-established companies so putting in some time at a startup can be very good for careers.  However, too many young people are being taken advantage of, to put it harshly, by founders looking to build more of a pyramid scheme than a company.

Choose wisely.

Happy Reading,

J.W. Gant

PS  Season 3 of "Silicon Valley" starts in April.

BRotD - Entry 0236 WalmartLabs Impacting Mobile Retail

Best Reading of the Day

This story over on PC Magazine is a really excellent read.

If you don't know much about Walmart you should know that everyone on the planet comes to Bentonville, AR if they want to do business with Walmart, and many people do.  One notable exception is the technology arm of the retail giant.  That is WalmartLabs outside of San Francisco.  What have they been up to?  Just leading the world in the bricks & mobile work (a quote taken from a Target representative to be a bit ironic).

Read on:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2493418,00.asp

Here is a snippet from the piece:

At this year's inaugural TAP Conference, representatives from start-ups, big tech companies, and venture capital (VC) firms came together to discuss the state of the mobile app economy, and the evolving nature of online shopping and mobile commerce. The point of sale (POS) landscape is changing as context and in-app purchases drive a new wave of mobile conversions.

Large enterprises and retailers are as acutely affected by this shift as start-ups (which are, arguably, more so); this made the afternoon panel entitled "Connecting Fortune 500s to the Mobile Economy" one of the conference's most fascinating. In some cases, Fortune 500s are propelling more mobile commerce innovation than start-ups. Onstage, panelists from Citigroup Inc., Walgreen Co., @WalmartLabs, and 7-Eleven, Inc. talked about the ways in which their companies are innovating—from launching new apps and partnerships to rolling out smart features around beacons, push notifications, and user experience (UX).

Happy Reading,

J.W. Gant

How to Make Quality Products

The title of this article caught my eye.

The secret to first-rate mobile apps for customers? Iterate, iterate, iterate
While I've spent the last 3 years on mobile apps and couldn't agree more with this, it struck me this statement could be applied to just about any product.

Here is the full story:

http://www.computerworld.com/article/2985653/mobile-apps/the-secret-to-first-rate-mobile-apps-for-customers-iterate-iterate-iterate.html

Here is a snippet from the piece:

Take four heavy-hitting brands -- Allstate, Hilton, United Airlines and American Express, all of which place a premium on customer loyalty and retention. Mix in the customer-pleasing form of mobile devices and the ever-advancing function of mobile apps.

What you get are four organizations using mobile to connect better with customers by leveraging their well-organized IT structures and well-skilled IT staffers.

"Mobile is really about supporting your overall business objective," says Forrester Research analyst Julie Ask. "Sometimes it's around revenue or sales, sometimes it's about influencing sales in stores. It could be about customer service." But to be successful, she adds, "mobile has to be an enabler of a better customer experience."

I really like the work Forrester is doing in this arena, by the way.  If you can afford their services they are worth taking a look at.

Happy Reading,

J.W. Gant

The End of Mad Men Begins

If April 13th is not yet marked on your calendar then either you don't recognize the ominous signs of the number 13 or you aren't a fan of the incredibly successful show 'Mad Men'.

The Thagent 21st Century blog is about technology products and the participants that engage with those products.  If you love all of that you should love 'Mad Men'.

Here is a great little article about the coming end of the show:

http://www.wired.com/2015/04/mad-men-end-of-drama/

Here is a snippet from that piece:

TV IS AN odd mishmash of a medium. It shares enough qualities with film that we can use the word “cinematic” as a blanket compliment, yet its traditional broadcast model more closely resembles radio. In fact, with the advent of original programming from online-only platforms, it’s increasingly difficult to tell what, exactly, TV is. Maybe that’s why, dating back to The Mary Tyler Moore Show, TV is so often about itself. There’s a long history of scripted TV that’s about making TV. Yet, for all the literal examples of it—Sports Night, 30 Rock—Mad Men, which returns for its final seven episodes on Sunday, is the most self-reflexive series of them all.

Happy Viewing,

J.W. Gant

Best Reading of the Day - Entry 0158 Game Design with Sid Meier

Computer.  Geeks.  Games.

They all go together, and in the guise of Sid Meier you find it all and then some.  Products in the digital space are all related in one common way, the 0's and 1's behind the scenes.  That makes this read quite compelling.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/10/the-road-to-civilization-a-conversation-with-sid-meier/

Here is a snippet from that piece:

One of the keys to being a good game designer, according to Meier, is the ability to throw out ideas you thought were good. "You can't have a lot of ego," he said. "If you have an idea you thought was great, you put it in, [and] it's no fun, you've got to be willing to take it out."

Sounds like something any Product Manager should be proficient at.  Well done Sid!

Happy Reading,

J.W. Gant

Best Reading of the Day - Entry 0149 Facebook Product Design

This is a very interesting problem written about in the article below.  How do you make changes to Facebook webpages?  The 'Like' button is clicked approximately 22 billion times per day.  Do you make a change to that button lightly?

No way.

Here is the article:

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-08-20/facebooks-product-design-director-redesign-for-1-billion-users

Happy Reading,

J.W. Gant