product and technology, cto circle berlin april 2015
TRANSCRIPT
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
perc
eive
d te
chno
logi
cal p
row
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!