Greg's Blog

Success is not final...

2011-11-30T09:08:00.001-08:00

Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts. -Winston Churchill

You cannot...

2011-11-21T08:32:00.001-08:00

You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by encouraging class hatred. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn. You cannot build character and courage by taking away man's initiative and independence. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.

-Abraham Lincoln

A family that builds together...

2010-11-13T17:49:00.001-08:00

Really proud of my boys. They all pitched in and counted pieces, read the instructions and built a couple of kitchen islands from IKEA tonight for their mom. They worked together and they are incredibly proud of the result. Maybe they will spend time in the kitchen just to use their creation. I doubt it, but we'll see

I had a terrific date with my daughter today.

2010-09-18T20:02:00.001-07:00

Thank you Emily for indulging me in a Japanese lunch while I indulged you with Eclipse. I had a terrific day with you. I love you and I am so proud of you. I hope you will always consider me one of your best friends.

I love my iPhone...

2010-02-10T20:35:00.000-08:00

First of all, you need to know that I am a loyal Apple customer and I have been since 1992. With that said, I have owned a lot of Macs, iPods, and I am on my second iPhone. My iPhone has been one of my favorite Apple devices I have owned. I thoughts I would take a few minutes and share with you what I use on my iPhone. There are lots of applications out there...but this is what I use on a regular basis.

Main Menu: Phone, Mail, Safari, Calendar

First Page: Messages, Photos, Camera, Maps, Notes, Voice Memos, Clock, Calculator, Settings, Contacts, Evernote, iDisk, Google, Bloomberg.

Second Page: Dictionary, Classics, B&N eReader, Kindle, Stanza, ScoreCenter by ESPN, NPR News, USA Today, Bing, The Weather Channel, Google Reader

Third Page: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitterific, WebEx, Foursquare, yelp, Skype, AIM, MobileMe Gallery, Bump, Google Voice, Google Buzz.

Fourth Page: App Store, Amazon.com, eBay, AT&T myWireless, PayPal, E*Trade, Fidelity, Mint.com, Cheap Gas!

Fifth Page: iTunes Store, YouTube, iTunes Remote, iPod, Sol Free, Sudoku, Tetris, redBox

Sixth Page: Weather, Stocks, TagReader, iHandy Level, Seadragon, Compass, Urbanspoon, Google Earth, NASA, VNC, RDP, Dragon Dictation, TouchMouse, Spanish Essentials

Scott is a "Fun Guy"

2010-02-10T13:51:00.000-08:00

SaaS is hard, but rewarding

2009-12-02T11:25:00.000-08:00

From an Engineering and Product Perspective…what makes SaaS applications so different from traditional software applications? Let me count the ways…

1. Provisioning. The SaaS approach lowers the barrier and makes it so that you don’t have to buy and install anything from software to hardware to get the benefits of the application. With a SaaS system the customer can dream up whatever they want and get it quickly and easily from the system. From a SaaS ISV perspective, it means that the provisioning must be built to easily turn on new customers and not implement a bunch of new hardware or software to do it, you can create the account, the customer access, and they can get started…in fact, it is even better when the whole implementation process is automated. It must be done in an automated way; otherwise the economics of implementing new customers with lots of people don’t work.

2. The Application: SaaS means that the application is the same for everyone; they aren’t independent implementations that are unique for each customer. However, because every customer needs a unique set of features and tailored customized functionality, the single set of applications needs to be built to be flexible enough to allow for each customer to leverage the same application servers without modification but yet tailored and customized for their specific implementation. Permissions need to allow for customers to use sub-sets of the functionality as well based on what they have purchased, so that a single application can be virtually delivered as multiple tiers of products based on customer needs. The application services also need to scale in a much bigger way. Because this is a single implementation, it will have a much greater usage since so many people are using it and it is being utilized to much greater degree than in traditional implementations where there is so much excess bandwidth and cpu because systems are used privately. SaaS vendors don’t just create an application that is mastered on CD…but they are building and maintaining a live system that is constantly being used and updated at the same time. Most SaaS ISV’s have multiple sets of these application servers set up to move their dynamic applications through the process of testing and finally into the live production servers that the customer actually sees. There is a lot of investment there.

3. The Database: SaaS means that the database is also set up in a way that allows for a large scale deployment that is bigger than a traditional private implementation and since the data exists in this massive database infrastructure, the data must have the appropriate security and permissions among not just individual customers, but also the user permissions and roles within a customer based on the functionality that they are buying from the service. SaaS ISV’s don’t just have database driven applications…they are experts in large scale database implementations with all the security, uptime, and replication issues that come along with it.

4. The Connectivity: The users must be able to get in and out of the systems that are now located remotely. That connectivity will need to scale and be highly available since it is shared. Private connectivity isn’t usually a problem and is “free” since they are leveraging the private networks within the office. However, when you reach out and do a significant amount of work across a WAN, that bandwidth isn’t free and you will be buying more of it than you have had to in the past. SaaS ISV’s are not just experts in their application, but they are also experts in networking and connectivity.

5. The Performance: The users expect the system to perform with perfection…very little tolerance for failures or downtime. Now you would probably think that is true for non-SaaS applications, and it is true. However, the difference is that the performance of software application running on a computer has a luxurious amount of CPU, memory, and disk space that is nicely dedicated to just the single set of eyeballs sitting in front of it. On a SaaS system, the performance has many more variables involved with the same or better performance expectations. Other variables include the connectivity the local network, the connectivity over the wan, internet performance, cpu and memory and i/o of the multi-tenant system being used by other people at the same time in a datacenter that is who know how many miles away. These are all considerations that are built into SaaS applications.

6. Collaboration: When you have installed an application on your computer and it is doing what you want…how do you use that application and its output to collaborate with other people? Some people argue that some software activities are an individual exercise and don’t require collaboration. They are wrong. It is shocking to find out what new value is created by innovating around collaboration. The collaboration doesn’t have to be always real-time, but it should require anything special to allow multiple people to participate together in whatever activity you can dream of in the virtual world. SaaS applications are best suited for this collaborative activity and the innovation that exists out there are still immense.

Not every software company can make the leap to SaaS. Not because they don’t want to, but because it is a different way to develop and deliver software that requires a much greater investment in areas that are not traditionally strengths of an ISV. When software companies can invest in the equipment, connectivity, multi-tenant architectures, and collaborative innovations…then they have a shot at successfully playing ball in SaaS.

Emily was able to tie a cherry stem in her mouth…

2009-11-29T17:14:00.001-08:00

Her biggest accomplishment this weekend. Tying a knot in a cherry stem with her tongue.

Book Review – Tribes by Seth Godin

2009-11-24T08:54:00.000-08:00

I meant to read this a while ago and I just never got around to it. I came across it the other day and thought now is as good a time as ever to read it.

I follow Seth’s blog and tweets and I found this book to be basically like following his blog. The only difference is that the posts all seem to be related to defining, justifying, and leading what Seth calls “tribes". Don’t get me wrong, I like what Seth writes. I love the short quips and stories and experiences he shares. But the book did seem to meander. You definately need to make highlights in the book that you can refer to later.

Seth encourages you to share the book with others when you are finished. So, I figure he really wants you to just get the gestalt of the ideas he shares and then pass it along. I agree with him. The format of the book makes it difficult to refer back for wisdom.

As product managers, it is important to realize that as leaders we are responsible for many of the actions that Seth refers to in Tribes. Here are two examples of these actions: first, lead out even when it is uncomfortable, when you have fear, or you don’t have “permission”, there is no idea approval committee. Second, communicate with your group members and let the group members communicate with each other.

Overall, it is a good fast read and inspires you to get up and see if you can get a microgroup working on something that you care about.

Product Management Training…

2009-11-19T22:50:00.000-08:00

Nobody that I know of has gone to college to be a product manager. Believe it or not there STILL aren’t any courses in college that are designed to help business and technology professionals-to-be understand the nuances of managing ideas and turning them into profitable products. (I wonder why; but that is another topic for another day.) So we product manager understand our trade and perfect our skills through on the job experience and sharing those experiences with others. While this is all good…it is nice to have formal training that you can buy and feel like we now understand product management.

I have been around long enough to have been trained in Pragmatic Marketing by Craig Stull himself and repeated the training at different companies enjoying the knowledge offered by the trainers that Craig has hired to succeed him and scale the Pragmatic Training organization. There are other training programs available as well, such as those offered by ZIGZAG Marketing.

I particularly enjoy hiring product managers from other companies so that I can collect some of the best thinking and benefit from the experiments run by other companies within my product management group.

In the end, you know who really needs the product management training? The people who aren’t product managers. No, really. Hear me out. If you are a college graduate in business or technology, you still had to take some accounting classes or some ridiculous philosophy classes. At the time, you probably thought to yourself, “Interesting, but what does this have to do with what I want to do for a living? I’ll never use this stuff again.” But the truth is, having those classes gave you enough of a background in accounting or finance or social work or whatever that you don’t question those people in your organization. You trust that the accountants are doing double entry accounting and paying the bills properly.

But since nobody has any background or understanding of product management, they question it all the time, “What exactly do you do?” Other people, even CEOs and executives wonder what value product management brings to an organization because they just don’t understand. I would love to see some sort of training done for the non-product manager types to help them understand the context for product management.

Product Steering Teams…

2009-11-19T22:28:00.000-08:00

It is no secret among product managers that one of the biggest struggles we have is to gain buy-in from all level of the organization on the roadmaps and strategic direction of the products we manage. While some companies are small enough to have the elite group of leaders who collaborate and champion the direction with the rest of the organization, other companies are so big that they require formal processes to ensure that the direction is thoroughly vetted and approved. This is where the product steering teams come in.

I have tried a variety of product steering teams in my time as a product leader because each organization needed a little different level of involvement and formality to the whole buy-in process. Here are a few of the examples I have seen:

The CEO as product manager. This one is very common in the small companies and start-ups. The product steering team is essentially the CEO. You will find this is the format when people throughout the company drop the CEO’s name in conversations like, “John really wants us to make this happen.”, “John said that this is the most important project that we should be working on.” etc. For a small company with a single focused product line…this can and does work. However, remember that as the company grows and more product lines are introduced…it is physically impossible for one person to steer the direction of too many products.

The functioning Product Management organization. When a product management organization is well staffed and organized, has the trust of the company executives and has all the data to make product decisions, this is the core steering team for product direction. You will find this group in the small to mid-size companies that have some real growth momentum. Many people sharing the load of market and customer research, product planning, and product delivery is appropriate and very common in software organizations. Not much more formal buy-in is required when the product group is functioning and communicating well.

The bureaucracy. This is the formally designated product steering committee that you will find in large and small companies where there is a lack of good communication, lack of trust, or too many cooks in the product development kitchen. This format is the last resort for product organizations who cannot seem to get buy-in, so a formal committee is setup to hear all of the ideas and approve them. Some committees work well and some don’t. The committees that work well are those that are practiced because it is a part of the company culture. The company is so big that there are committees for everything and they know how to think as a group and get things done. Unfortunately, for small companies that don’t know to successfully run committees, they are just excuses for mass participation and opinion slinging and nothing gets done. The formal product steering team will work in companies that know how to get it done in committee, however, if you are not one of those companies then you need to find another way to get the product management organization to function better with the trust and backing it needs to make decisions confidently and get the company behind the decisions…even if they weren’t part of the “committee”.

Vision...

2009-11-01T17:18:00.000-08:00

A product manager is responsible for doing many things...especially if you reference frameworks like pragmatic marketing and zig zag marketing. But over the last week or so I have found that much of what the product manager is doing has to do with vision. Creating a vision for others is good leadership and essential for creating teams of people who must work together to produce something...like software.

Vision for product managers starts with the vision to see software that doesn't exist yet. You need to understand the needs of markets and hear all kinds of people giving their suggestions for new features...but the whole vision must be articulated by the product manager. This vision is used to get financial funding for the project, it is used to get the team excited and understanding what exactly it is they are building. As the product development progresses, the vision is used over and over again to make sure that you don't get distracted by the details, but accomplish the details while staying focused on an end result that is still many sprints away. Vision is used to decide at what point the product is complete enough for an initial v1 launch into the market, and when it does launch, vision is used to articulate to the sales team how to communicate and articulate the benefits of this product so that sales can be realized.

Vision and the ability to communicate that vision is clearly essential for the product manager. If this is something that you would like to be better at...I would highly recommend the book, Leading at a Higher Level by Ken Blanchard. Yes, he is the author of the One Minute Manager. Leading at a Higher Level has some great practical advice for developing and leading with vision. It is very relevant for product managers.

Who knew Wal-Mart could be so much fun?

2009-11-01T16:09:00.001-08:00

We were at Wal-Mart the other day and ran across this lego statue. Of course we couldn't resist getting a quick picture. This reminded me of a website that I ran across the other day http://www.peopleofwalmart.com/ It is hilarious.

Pleasing many people and groups...

2009-10-16T07:49:00.000-07:00

Wow. Talk about trying to please everyone. This week alone, there have been several groups who have expressed their frustration about not being part of the product management process more regularly. The truth is, they are part of the product management process, just not included every day.

What is clear is that product management must first and foremost satisfy the customer or user group of people. They pass the ultimate judgement as to whether or not something that product management has done is successful or not. However, with that said, here are the other groups that are critical to the success or failure of product management: sales, sales engineering, marketing, engineering and software development, billing, implementations and professional services, and executives. Frankly the list could go on right? Everyone wants to have a say in product management and everyone wants to feel like their influence is driving the direction of the product.

It is impossible to please everyone...but that is not the point...you need to "include" everyone in the product management process. The only constituent that you need to please is the customer.

Include sales: obviously they want a product that is easy to sell, they want all of the features for the lowest price possible. I would suggest including sales in the selection process of prospects and beta customers for new product development or even research. Keep the sales team informed on the progress of product development month to month or quarter to quarter with regular roadmap updates. This will help include them...it may not please them...but they will love you for including them.

Include sales engineering: the people who really know the product inside and out and consult with the customer to solve their problems want to be included in the nitty gritty of the product. They are your best champion and mediator with the sales team. They can help the sales team understand the nuances of product decisions. Include them early and often.

Include marketing: Obvious, right? Well, all too often marketing is treated as simply a service bureau for marketing communications. However, including them early in the development of a product and helping them understand the whole portfolio will allow them to help develop even better messaging that is aligned with campaigns and overall brand management. The products are a huge influence on the brand and it isn't right to just throw new products over the wall at marketing when they are finished...include them early and take their advice as free consultation on messaging.

Include engineering: This goes without saying...however, scrum and agile shops fall into the traps of only feeding the engineering team the next sprint of work and focusing on the increments. Include the engineering team in the long term vision of the portfolio so that can see where they are going and not just work in the weeds from sprint to sprint. You will find that better architectural questions are asked and better engineering decisions are made to speed development rather than just delivering the next increment.

Include billing: Most of us aren't product charities. You need to generate revenue with your product. All too often, we ignore the billing aspects of our products and simply stick with the status quo of what we have been doing. Include the billing team early in product management processes to discuss new ways to bill, new pricing models, new metrics for usage and make it easy for the customer purchase your products. I think you will be surprised at the wisdom that comes from including your billing department in the product management process.

Include implementations and professional services: Many products are complex enough that it requires an implementation team to help the customer get up and running and professional services to help tailor the product to their needs. These groups are traditionally expected to just pick up the pieces and fill in the gaps on demand with the customer once the product has shipped. However, including these groups in the product management process will actually help flesh out requirements that aren't spoken by a customer, but absolutely make their life easier and more satisfying in the early stages of using a products and the ongoing customization and tailoring of the product to meet their changing needs. Include these groups to get this feedback specifically, and you will find that the customer satisfaction of your product implementations will go up.

Include executives: Without regular updates of the lifecycle of all product development projects, the executive team will begin to make assumptions and imagine for themselves where the projects are...and inevitably they are usually more optimistic than realistic. If it feels like you are always sharing bad news with your executive team, it means you aren't communicating regularly enough and their expectations have wandered into unrealistic territory. Communicate regularly and it will always seem like your projects is doing just fine.

With the need to include so many people in the product management process you wonder how a product manager can actually get his day job done. Or maybe, just maybe, that is your day job.

Another great weekend with Travis and Hollie...

2009-10-12T19:07:00.000-07:00

We had a four day weekend with Travis and Hollie and Gavin and we enjoyed every minute of it. Travis and I were able to get some fishing in, Daniel found a heart shaped rock and put it on the heart tree, we had family pictures, and we cheered on Travis and his team for the 100 mile bike ride. The time always goes way to fast...but it is time well spent.

Thanks again Travis and Hollie and Gavin for your hospitality.

The art of segmentation...

2009-10-12T18:07:00.000-07:00

I am in the middle of another segmentation project and constantly being reminded what an art it is. Segmentation is helpful for product managers because it helps to divide up the potential market for the product into rational buckets that have very little overlap with one another. These divisions are meaningful for measuring the cost of product marketing spent in a segment compared to the revenue that is drawn in by the segment. The performance of one segment compared to another is helpful in prioritizing the ongoing development of the product. I would much rather invest in new product development for the most profitable segment in terms of finances and customer satisfaction. In addition, the alignment of the whole business around segments helps to focus the business around opportunities that are directed by strategy, supported by marketing and sales efforts, and a product roadmap that is tailored to win the segment over. Anything else is just an opportunistic, hopeful approach to selling your product to anyone who you think would buy it and tailoring your product roadmap to those who happened to speak up first.

The ultimate goals of creating segments is to group like minded customers into the same segment. Customers within a segment benchmark off of each other and see each other as peers and sometimes competitors. They like to use the same portfolio of products or features of the product. They buy your products in similar ways. The read the same magazines. They are all attracted by the same value propositions and messages. The members of these segments will generally be found across vertical industries and across geographies. A segment needs to be broad enough that a business plan can be written about the segment with a substantial contribution to the companies revenue stream. You can expect a segment to be broken down into sub-segments as well if the segment leader can justify additional fine tuning of the messages and sales targets. But you don't want to define segments that have a lot of gray area or overlap. When a customer is being discussed, it needs to be clear what overall segment they belong to

When a business is able to organize themselves around segments you will find that not only are product development and marketing efforts aligned, but customer service departments can service the customer even better by tailoring the service to the nuances of each segment, consulting can service customers in each segment differently, and even sales can specialize and send expertly trained sales and sales engineers to prospects with a toolkit of tailored messages and references to win them over.

Building great products and marketing them to the entire market is very tempting...but very opportunistic. I know that I would rather be in control of my destiny and not just build it and hope that someone will come and buy it. Segmentation is an arduous, but rewarding activity that will benefit the business and the product in the long run. Just be aware that getting everyone on board in selecting the magic segments to start with is challenging to say the least.

Crucial books...

2009-10-11T16:45:00.000-07:00

I have a couple of book recommendations for any product manager out there to read. VitalSmarts has a website that promotes the books and the training. The books are Crucial Conversations, and Crucial Confrontations. I found the books to be very relevant to the job of a product manager because so much of what we do is about communicating. The communications are almost always conversations where there are either hard decisions to be made or confronting some performance issues in the development of the product. Obviously, we all want to see our products ship...so taking the messages of these two books to heart can help you navigate the hundreds of conversations that are required from start to finish.

Crucial Conversations focuses around having meaningful conversations with the people around you by creating a safe place for the conversation and focusing on getting the facts before reacting to bad perception or perceived facts. It is easy to see silence and violence in conversations that are not safe. Finally, once everyone has had a chance to completely understand and agree to the factual events move forward decisively and follow up later to monitor the results.

Crucial Confrontations focuses around having those conversations that are even more charged. There are many similarities in the approach described in Crucial Conversations, but there is added emphasis on the idea that the issue in question can be overcome by finding the proper motivation or making it easier to actually act on the issue.

All in all, there are many examples that you are sure to agree with or have seen in your career with some very practical guidance on what you can do to be a better product manager and lead conversations and confrontations that are impacting your product, your career, and perhaps your personal life.

You want to influence people? Communicate with them.

2009-10-09T19:49:00.000-07:00

For all of the work that a product manager does...it is all entirely wasted if it can't be communicated effectively to the rest of the organization. You listen carefully to customers, prospects, the competition, and more. You propose ideas that can be reality. You assign a value to the product development output. You articulate the messages and reasons why the output has value. You continually evaluate the product portfolio and look for additional ways to create more value for the company.

The interesting think about the work that you do is that it does not have intrinsic value. The value is only realized when the functional groups within the company act on the work you produce. Software designers and developers actually build the product. Marketing and sales actually sell the product. You are constantly struggling to influence people to contribute to the development of your products. This is especially difficult because the contributors often aren't directly accountable to you.

The secret to influence is simple...communicate, communicate, communicate. This communication is the influence that is required to get people to understand the priorities, the vision, the next steps, their specific contributions, and the progress of the entire organization around delivering new products to market.

Communication isn't just verbal. The communication is written in site visit reports, collections of wishes and ideas from customers, business cases for new functionality, financial projections, prioritized product requirements, standup meetings, marketing briefs, and product training meetings. You should spend the vast majority of your time communicating.

The bottome line: The time a product manager spends communicating is directly proportional to the influence the product manager has. The more influential the product manager, the more likely they will be to deliver value to the company, innovation to the market, and advance their career.

User Conferences are hard work, but worth it...

2009-09-17T21:28:00.000-07:00

Whenever you bring your customers together, always, always, always take advantage of the time to get feedback from them. Run focus groups on your products, demo your new features, hold an advisory board meeting, do product feedback roundtables, and train your customers how to better use the products. User Conferences are great for the customers, but they are even better for the product management team. Do not let the opportunities to get close to your customers pass you by.

Enjoying the Heber Valley...

2009-09-06T17:02:00.000-07:00

We stayed the weekend in Heber and enjoyed the time away as a family. We stayed in the little RV camp below the Jordanelle Dam and dropped the girls off at Swiss Days on Saturday. We had plenty of time to fish, explore, and play Monopoly. We drove to the top of Memorial Hill in Midway enjoyed the 360 degree views of the entire Heber Valley on a beautiful day. It was a bit windy on top of the hill so Daniel faced the wind and pretended that he was flying.

Utah Geode Beds...

2009-08-23T17:15:00.000-07:00

Me and the boys took a drive out to the Utah Geode Beds while the girls were in Idaho. We figured they probably wouldn't enjoy the trip. Boy were we right. We weren't sure if we enjoyed it. First of all, it is 90 miles down a dirt road over two mountain passes. We could see the salt flat out in front of us and there are absolutely no trees or bushes (or people) out there to speak of. We pulled up to a spot to dig for Geodes and when we got out of the truck the boys discovered that my right rear tire was completely flat. Grrrrr. The boys dug for a few minutes and then lost interest while I proceeded to put on the spare tire, hoping it had air for the really rough 90 mile rocky road back to civilization. We left for home early just in case we had another problem. Fortunately we had a cooler full of water and junk food that we took with us. We could have easily spent the night if we needed too...but we were glad to get home and take a shower. Daniel found a couple of geodes...but we really didn't give it a good dig...maybe we will stop by again in the future...but we aren't planning the trip yet.

Happy Birthday Nathan!!!

2009-08-16T10:08:00.000-07:00

We love you and hope you have a terrific day! We are so happy to have you as a part of our family. You are such a clown and you keep us laughing. The picture above is Nathan sleeping in the back seat of the truck on our sleeping bags after a 15 minute drive home from the Father's and Son's overnighter.

Roadmaps are a moving target...

2009-08-07T18:37:00.000-07:00

Over the past several weeks we have been trying to put together a roadmap that can be communicated and shared transparently throughout the company. We have found throughout this process that the roadmap will need to satisfy audiences with different demands for the information. Some stakeholders just want to have a high level perspective, others want just a little more detail. And still more detail is required by another segment of the organization. So the roadmap needs to be created and shared in a way that delivers the right amount of information to the right audience.

Compounding the issue is that fact that a roadmap is a "living document". The roadmap is continuously changing and adapting to the the conditions of the market as well as the organizations ability to deliver on the goods. The complication comes when people get either too much information AND interpret the roadmap as a prediction of the future as opposed to guidance of a desired future.

Fortunately I work with some top notch product managers who are stepping up to the challenge and we are attempting to deliver a multi-dimensioned, living roadmap, of a VERY wide product portfolio. We are looking forward to the reaction of the organization to the roadmap.

Two days at the amusement park...

2009-08-06T19:23:00.000-07:00

We spent two LONG days at the amusement park as a family. The first day we were there we hit the rides that the kids wanted to do at least one time each. And then when we returned on Saturday for day 2 at the park we spent the time going on our favorite rides over and over again. Daniel and Nate really like the Turn-of-the-Century and the Wild Mouse. Tyler, Emily, Rachel, and Dad loved Wicked. It was, well, wicked! Of course, a family favorite is Rattlesnake Rapids. We had a great time. I can handle it about once every two years. So, we'll return in 2011.

What's in a name...

2009-08-06T19:12:00.000-07:00

What is in a name. A lot. It shouldn't be a surprise that a product's name and the strategy behind the naming conventions, is critical to a the overall product plan. For example, the product name associated with a product communicates not just the brand, but could also communicate where the product fits in time with version. Perhaps it communicates who the best user is for the product. Perhaps the name communicates how robust the product feature set it. Perhaps the name communicates where the product fits in the overall portfolio of the companies other products.

The name of the product is also critical for search engine optimization. The more specific you can name your product in some of these areas, the better the SEM will be as opposed to just hanging a modifier such as Pro or XL.

Also, it is true that the name better be easy to say, otherwise, you will end up with a name that you don't want...or an abbreviation that you better be happy with.

Finally, when choosing a name you need to think 3 moves ahead. What implications will this name have on the next version of the product, how would you treat the next version, and so on. Does the product name open you up for expansion or does it limit you and require reinvention each time?