With the time limitations imposed by the webinar, I’m going to use this blog as a way to comment on current developments that may or may not get covered the next time I do this presentation.

Today, I’m going to discuss my cellphone purchase this past June.  I started out “wanting to want” an Android device, because I could choose from a variety of devices with different feature sets and price points, and also possibly a different carrier.  And in principle, I think the idea of Open Systems is the right way go to.  I’m currently using AT&T.  For me, as a committed Outlook user, excellent and easy-to-use Outlook integration is a key factor.  The other key factor is the overall “user experience.”

 What I learned from talking with sales people at the stores for Verizon, AT&T and Sprint was this:

 First,  Google doesn’t offer a real Outlook integration utility yet. There are hacks and workarounds, but that’s all, and they are very incomplete and non-“automatic,” as all hacks are.  As a “user,” I’m not interested in multi-step procedures.  I need a “one-button” solution.

 Second, the email portion of this Outlook integration requires that all my email go through gmail, which is notably NOT PRIVATE.  As  everyone knows, Google reads the contents of your email to be able to serve up targeted ads.  Combine the emails, many of which have private information, with all my Google web searches, and providing the combination of all this information to anyone, makes me very uncomfortable.

Third, by routing all my email through gmail, then all replies would come from gmail.  In effect, I would be locked into gmail.  I don’t know whether this is a deliberate strategy on Google’s part or just the same total unawareness of “customer requirements” that lead to the provisioning problems when the Nexus One was launched, the outcry over Buzz, etc. 

I think that if Google addresses these issues effectively, Android phones would be much more competitive.

Meanwhile, over at the Apple store, I discovered how “silky smooth” and intuitive and consistent the iPhone interface is.  And the virtual keyboard was very usable, even for fat-fingered me.  In contrast, many of the Android phones have screens that are too small to make those virtual keyboards unusable.  There are no models with physical keyboards (unlike the recently announced Blackberry Torch 9800).  And, the Android user interface is still pretty rough.

So, despite the controversies over “antennagate,” I ended up buying an iPhone 4, and so far, it has been very easy to use and Outlook integration is indeed a one-button solution, except for the lack of a Tasks application.

Great products and the strategy behind them are why I love product management, and it is going to be fascinating to watch what happens.

It will be interesting to see what will happen with Apple’s strategy given this fierce competition. Will their ATT carrier strategy prove to be a poor choice? Will lack of Flash support ultimately be a mistake? Will the market realize that with Flash and Android support there are just as many apps available on day one for these new devices? And will the other devices beat Apple market with features like video chat, taking away Apple’s first-mover advantage?

                          Samsung Galaxy

                                Toshiba Folio

Samsung announced a very interesting new tablet called the Galaxy. It has a few things that the iPad doesn’t – support for running Flash (which means that there are hundreds of thousands of apps instantly available, you can view websites that use Flash and my seven year old will be able to play all of the Flash games she loves on the Internet). It also has a camera for video chat (like the iPhone but not the iPad.) It will be sold through cell phone carriers (and thus might have limited distribution).

Toshiba also announce the Folio tablet, an Android-based tablet that will be sold through retail distribution. It includes Flash support and you have access to tens of thousands of Android applications.

The good news for Apple is that they have the most fanatical and loyal customers of almost any product ever (Harley-Davidson and Porsche might rank as high). They also have the marketing machine and the genius of Steve Jobs to lead the way.

I’m looking forward to writing a post ten years from now about what ended up happening.

It is a basic starter solution to help product managers capture and prioritize requirements.

If you like it let us know – we may release a newer version with lots of new features.

No doubt there are beneftis to having this turned on. Too bad they didn’t make their case to users about how great it would be and let them choose.

For now go to Facebook privacy setting and change it to Only Me. Then we can wait and see what kind of horror stories show up. For example, your co-workers can see that you are at the beach and not working from home that day. Or your boyfriend sees you are at a restaurant and shows up to find you on a date with someone else. Or you go on a job interview and all of your friends can see that you arrived at the company during the middle of the day when you were supposed to be working.

It used to be fashionable to call Microsoft evil and trash them. And they deserved it. Then there was Google. And they REALLY deserved it. And now Facebook is making both of them look like ethical corporate citizens.

It’s clear that unless users massively abandon Facebook or the government creates default privacy settings policies Facebook will do whatever they want and not what users want.

My hope is their valuation goes to zero.l

The PM Office 3.0 will help you:

• Be more effective
• Deliver more compelling documents
• Save time
• Avoid common mistakes
• Implement proven best practices
• Influence your team
• Be a better product manager and product marketer
• Accelerate your career

There are two versions of the PM Office: Standard and Professional

The Product Management Office Standard includes:

• Product Roadmap Toolkit v2.0 (new!)
• Product Launch Toolkit v2.0 (new!)
• Product Manager’s Toolkit v4.0.

 The PM Office Professional includes:

• The latest version of all seven of the 280 Group Toolkits
  • Product Roadmap Toolkit v2.0 (new!)
  • Product Launch Toolkit v2.0 (new!)
  • Product Manager’s Toolkit v4.0
  • Competitive Analysis Toolkit
  • Beta Program Toolkit
  • Product Reviews Toolkit
  • Developer Program Toolkit
• PDF versions of our three best-selling books, “The Phenomenal Product Manager”, “Expert Product Management and “Agile Product Management Excellence”.
• Reqs, a requirements database that makes it easy to capture and prioritize requirements.

Go to Product Management Office version 3.0 for more information

It will help you:

• Beat your revenue goals
• Position your product strongly against competitors
• Create maximum “buzz” with customers & the industry
• Save time creating launch & planning documents
• Learn best practices for product launches
• Avoid costly (and possibly fatal) mistakes
• Give your product the best possible chance of success
• Leverage traditional and social media marketing

The launch toolkit includes 20 templates (launch plan, analyst presentation, etc.) and a narrated training seminar that teaches you how to run an effective launch. The new version includes multiple styles/designs and updated versions of the templates, automatically generated launch timelines (requires Excel 2010) and timelines/gantt charts (Excel 2003/2007), a marketing programs worksheet to assist you with choosing with marketing and launch programs will be most effective and give you the best ROI, a “Getting Started with Social Media” white paper to help you learn about and set up blogging, Facebook fan pages, LinkedIn, YouTube and Twitter, and a “Getting started with Twitter” paper to help you set up up a Twitter account and start sending tweets to your customers.

For more information visit here…

The Product Roadmap Toolkit version 2.0  will help you:

• Create more effective and compelling roadmaps
• Influence and lead your team more effectively
• Communicate your product vision and strategy
• Save time and be more productive

Included are 75 roadmap templates with three different designs/style for each, a training seminar to learn roadmapping techniques, a feature prioritization matrix, a Four quadrant analysis matrix template, a Kano analysis matrix and an Excel Roadmap Generator.

Go to Product Roadmap Toolkit version 2.0 for more details.

1. Ethnography – observing you customer “in the wild”.  See what issues they encounter that you might be able to solve.
2. Interviews or focus groups – try to understand the issues and opinions of customer segments.
3. Opportunity score assessment –  once you’ve done the research above to identify problems that people want solved, you survey them to understand how important an issue is and how satisfied they are today with their current solution.  Find areas of large gaps, often with secondary capabilities because the primary ones are well satisfied. These are the opportunities (for more info you can read Anthony Ulwick’s What Customers Want.)
4. Kano surveys – separates out capabilities into three groups: must haves, would create more value if it worked better, and would delight the user but is not expected.
5. Conjoint analysis – help understand what combination of capabilities (and price) are valued. For example, this type of survey can help a mobile phone design team optimize the design tradeoffs for size, weight, and battery life.
6. Innovation games – this is the area developed by Luke Hohmann on collaborative play to get deeper into customer’s minds and needs than traditional interview techniques.

Once you’ve identified the right problem to solve, the next step is developing creative solutions and concepts.  I’ll discuss these techniques in my next post.

This discussion got me thinking because although I stated that product management should own the innovation process including the idea pipeline and innovation portfolio, I wondered how many companies take the time to teach their product managers how to be innovation leaders, equipping them with the skills necessary to facilitate the creative process in their teams and deliver innovative products and services.  In practice, the majority of product management work focuses around existing products and incremental improvement.  This makes it hard to get into the mindset of nurturing a breakthrough product that delivers substantially more value than the alternatives.   Further, there is little discussion within product management about the mechanics of innovation.   In fact, almost all my knowledge of innovation has come from adjacent fields to product management such as market research, strategy, psychology, product development, and design.

One practice that has been widely accepted in our product management discipline is to get out of the building and talk to customers. This is a great technique and one in which we often need to be reminded. But this method to identify new opportunities, which was a ground breaking idea in the early ‘90’s when many product managers spent all their time in the office, is widely adopted and practiced.  If you want to gain an edge on your competition, you need to go further, to gain more insight and tap the creative potential of your team.

I’ll be sharing more about innovation in future posts, but if your team is struggling to develop innovative solutions that are superior to the competition, give us a call.

Webinar Date: Friday, August 13, 2010

Webinar Cost: No Charge

Webinar Time: 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM PDT

Register/Archive: [here]

Webinar Overview:

Companies spend months or even years building great products that meet the needs of their customers. Yet when it comes to bringing them to market effectively and getting the biggest possible return for their investment, companies often do not develop an effective plan or execute it well. A high-impact product launch can set a positive trajectory for your product’s success for years to come. Do the launch right and you’ll reap the benefits of significant early revenues, industry and competitive
visibility and excellent press and PR coverage. This session will cover creating a plan, setting goals, budgeting, timing, positioning & messaging and other critical factors for
maximizing your ROI.

Webinar Speaker: 

Brian Lawley is the CEO and founder of the 280 Group, which provides Product Management consulting, contractors, training and templates. During the last twenty five years of his career he has shipped more than fifty successful products. He is the former President of the Silicon Valley Product Management Association, won the 2008 AIPMM award for Excellence in Thought Leadership for Product Management and is the author of the best-selling books, Expert Product Management and The Phenomenal Product
Manager. Mr. Lawley has been featured on CNBC’s World Business Review and the Silicon Valley Business Report and writes articles for a variety of publications including the
Product Management 2.0 newsletter and Blog.