product and technology, cto circle berlin april 2015

Product & TechnologyDr. Thomas Boltze

About Me• CTO for a while

• reservebar.com, floranext.com, tuanpin.com, yiqilai.com, dailydeal.de, zencap.de/es/nl

• Zoyto (fulfillment center & enterprise suite)

• Philips: Professional Audio Products and Standards, Run Development / Research lab in China

• Intel: Classmate PC + 20 other ideas

Product Talk?

• Kai’s hats were missing the product role

• Were here to implement product

Matrix of Inevitability

founder / pm actual technological knowledge

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logi

cal p

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ess

😄

💨

?😞?

???

low/low == happy

• Founders / PM focuses on understanding and explaining the business problems / questions

• Realises he is not good at technology, so he does not attempt to make designs

• Fruitful discussions, little waste

low/high == lots of work

• Founder / PM focuses on designing solutions, which are typically wrong

• We need to gently lead them away

• The actual business problem does not get explored and decided

• Lots of wasted time, energy and goodwill

How do you deal with this?

A/B ⇒ TestFounder (opinionated): This layout is shit, it is killing conversion, you must change it like this immediately ….

A/B Test (unbiased): There is no statistically significant difference, would you like to continue the test?

A/B II• Hypothesis ⇒ Test ⇒ Adjust

• Only works if you have very tangible clear goals

• Perfect tool (read weapon)

• against endless discussions

• ‘smart’ founders/marketers/product/customer

Vision

Five years from now, Computer Services Ltd. will have annual revenues of over one million by

consistently providing timely, reasonably priced repair and instructional services.

⚡️

Let’s try that again

A world where access to clean drinking water is a reality for all people.

Your Mission?

We will strive to enthusiastically monetize interdependent resources so that we may continue to professionally leverage high-quality technology to set us apart from the competition.

⚡️

Better

I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon

and returning him safely to the earth.

GoalsFounder: Build your department agendas and present to me

Head of X: But what are our company goals for this year?

Goals II

• Focus on achieving measurable success metrics

• World leader ⇒ top three by revenue in 20 countries

• Coolest place to work ⇒ ??

• Defect free software ⇒ ??

On USP’sPeter Thiel (Zero To One): Aim to be at least 10x better than any current solution

Even Better:Only game in town

USP II

What are your USP’s?

Do they matter?

To Whom?

Why?

Examples• Head & Shoulders: "You get rid of dandruff"

• Anacin "Fast, fast, incredibly fast relief."

• Domino's Pizza: "You get fresh, hot pizza delivered to your door in 30 minutes or less—or it's free."

• FedEx: "When your package absolutely, positively has to get there overnight."

• M&M's: "Melts in your mouth, not in your hand."

• Metropolitan Life: "Get Met. It Pays."

• Southwest Airlines: "We are the low-fare airline."[5]

Source: Wikipedia

Roadmaps

Who has a six-12 months committed roadmap?

Why (not)?

How did you get there?

Roadmaps II

• Scope: everything the company does so there can be alignment and achievement

• Business value of feature (measurable)

• Dependencies

• Priorities

Roadmap Tools

a <=> b

Why? * 5

http://radiantminds.com/10-tools-to-create-impressive-product-roadmaps/

Three Horizons

What is success?

MVP?Value to X

ROI

Persona

Persona

A user persona is a representation of the goals and behavior of a hypothesized group

of users.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persona_(user_experience)

… include behavior patterns, goals, skills, attitudes, and environment …

Customer Journey

Mapping all possible contact points of a user and a brand

On MVP’s

Have you built an MVP?

Or Two?

Or Three?

Are they still MVP’s?

UI(X) Design

Can Must be learned

Clarity

⇒

Bootstrap + Balsamiq + Relentless Testing

The Gifted

• 10,000 hours of practise (Malcom Gladwell, Outliers)

• Practise ⇒ perfect

• Lack of practise ⇒ ?

Just one last scare

http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2015

More than 100% of developers have no

formal education in SW engineering

Thank You!