ProductMarketing.com

Writing Correct Requirements

Scott Sehlhorst of Tyner Blain updates Writing Correct Requirements:

We ran a series called 'Writing Good Requirements: The Big Ten Rules' in May 2006. The original series started with a summary of the ten rules to writing good requirements, and then we followed up with ten articles with details of each rule. And now we add another one--writing correct requirements.

Read Writing Correct Requirements plus the entire series of articles on writing requirements.

Develop your online personality

Companies have a personality, whether conservative or not, friendly or not, kooky or not. The voice of the company should be consistent in positioning and messaging, in documentation and online help, in printed collateral and electronic.

My friend David writes, "It is important for all organizations to create a distinct, consistent, and memorable Web site or blog, and an important component of that goal is the tone or voice of the content. As visitors interact with the content on your site, they should develop a clear picture of your organization. Is the personality fun and playful? Or is it solid and conservative?"

Read more in Develop your online personality.

If Architects Had to Work Like Programmers

Does this sound familiar to anyone?

"Please design and build me a house. I am not sure of what I need, you should use your discretion. My house should have between two and forty-five bedrooms. Just make sure the plans are such that the bedrooms can be easily added or deleted. When you bring the blueprints to me, I will make the final decision of what I want. Also bring me the cost breakdown for each configuration so I can arbitrarily pick one." Read more in Todd's Humor Archive.

Sounds like when execs ask, "When can I have it?"
"Uh, well, it rather depends on what 'it' is."

(Also, here are 35 things that I hope you'll never do to us during a seminar.)

on the zone of mediocrity

Kathy writes,

Today, the more you try to prevent failure, the more likely you are to fail.

That wasn't always true, but geez... how many more [whatevers] do we need today? There are way too many of all the things we already have and not enough introductions of things we don't have. We all know the reasons why companies play it safe, and why employees are often forced to play it safe, but this me-tooism isn't helping anyone.

Read more in Dilbert and the zone of mediocrity.

On push vs pull promotion and pricing strategies

from You pull, Wii push: "With the launches of Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii only weeks away, speculation is running high over who will win the next-generation console war. Some interesting data has come forth from an anonymous source at CompUSA, one of the top retailers in the US. According to the information, Microsoft and Nintendo are pursuing two very different strategies for their game consoles at retail."

Microsoft uses their promotion capability to get consumers to pull the products through the channel while Nintendo is relying on the channel's ability to push consumers to one product over another.

Read You pull, Wii push for a discussion of these two strategies.

What was the question?

“Daddy, where did I come from?”

Every parent knows the gut-check that happens when a child asks, “Where did I come from?” Your mind races through the possible ways of illustrating the birds and the bees, “when two people love each other…,” how to offer medical explanations without getting too graphic.

Always answer the first question with a question: “Why do you ask?”

“Well, my friend Tiffany comes from Atlanta. Where did I come from?”

The customer asks Kevin, the world’s worst sales person, “How is the product priced?” Immediately, Kevin offers a diatribe about pricing and discounts. “The cost is $20,000 per year but for you, I’m willing to drop down to $17,000. In fact, if you need me to, I can probably get it down to $15,000.”

Customer: “Uh, well… thanks, but is it priced by usage or by storage?”

A developer asks, “What do you mean?” and the product manager designs a solution. “It should be a dialog box that invokes the API to issue an email to the address in the contact_name field.” We give detail when developers need context.

At a demo recently, an attendee asked, “how is it packaged?” The instructor went into a 10-minute spiel that I couldn’t follow—and I already knew the answer. I leaned over afterwards and said, “the software is bundled with the hardware.”

Maybe we answer questions based on our fears rather than on the question being asked. I fear the “parent talk” with my daughter; I fear our pricing model; I fear that I’ve not been detailed enough. We answer the question that has not been asked.

Communication is a two-way process. Understand the question before the answer is given. We all need to learn what is being said, not just what we’re thinking about when the question is asked.

Make Your Meetings 60% More Effective

While effective meetings may not be the key to success, ineffective meetings are inarguably one of the largest time wasters in corporations. Scott Sehlhorst offers these tips to make your meetings 60% more effective.

The SME Revolution Starts In Dubai And GCC

from The SME Revolution Starts In Dubai And GCC: "The Western economies realized decades ago that small and medium enterprises are really the main drivers of the economy. While big businesses are necessary to preserve and maintain structure within the economy, surely they have considerable problems of their own. Mega corporations of the earlier era have increasingly lost their edge to smaller, nimbler organizations, which have spouted all over the Western landscape. The Middle East is now a new turning point for SME's to begin a grassroots revolution."

Wants and Needs

Scott Sehlhorst discusses the difference between customer Wants and Needs.

Barbara Nelson at SoftSummit 2006

For those in the Santa Clara area, come hear Pragmatic Marketing instructor Barbara Nelson discuss Extreme Product Management (XPM) at SoftSummit 2006. Pragmatic Marketing will also have a booth in the exhibit hall so come by to visit.

The Gobbledygook Manifesto

David writes, "When I see words like 'flexible,' 'scalable,' 'groundbreaking,' 'industry standard,' or 'cutting-edge,' my eyes glaze over. What, I ask myself, is this supposed to mean? Just saying your widget is 'industry standard' means nothing unless some aspect of that standardization is important to your buyers. In the next sentence, I want to know what you mean by 'industry standard,' and I also want you to tell my why that standard matters and give me some proof that what you say is indeed true." Read his analysis in The Gobbledygook Manifesto.

Cheaper isn't better

Seth explains why cheaper isn't better in Seth's Blog: Cheaper: "She sent me a note asking me to persuade her bosses that the best way to grow their resort was to lower prices. When I responded that perhaps she ought to consider raising prices and using the extra money to create a remarkable experience, she got really angry with me."

Product Beautiful

A new blog on product management and designing great products is online at Product Beautiful: "Product Beautiful is all about what makes products great, their inner beauty that only a Product Manager might think about or consider. That's what matters most, right?" Indeed.

The recipe for a brand

Laura Ries offers this recipe for Marketing a Non-Profit Brand. She writes, "They are really the same as building a strong for-profit brand since the goal is the same -- to own a position in the mind." It's a clear straightforward list of things we should all be doing.

21 Dysfunctional Definitions

Scott Sehlhorst offers these 21 Dysfunctional Definitions. My favorite is "Innovation: What happens when managers fail to do their jobs correctly."

focusing our efforts... on the customer

from Work together to increase your sales: "The secret to getting your salespeople and marketing people to work together is to stop the interdepartmental, political arguments about the selling process and start focusing everyone's attention on the customer's buying process. This is the only way to stop the political tug-of-war."

Read the whole series of articles on Revenue Journal.

Sandhill on Product Management

Nilofer Merchant writes,"In my opinion, there are two really hard jobs inside a company. One is being a CEO, and the other being a product manager. A few reasons why I believe this. Both the CEO and Product Managers are expected to be the most flexible acrobatic kind of leaders-- adjusting to people's styles, making sure to communicate with clarity the requirements of what is needed, translating vision into specifics and constantly at the beck and call of many constituents. It's a wonder someone would take the job. Either one." Read more on the role of product management in Best Practices: Sales & Marketing.

on Bad User Interfaces

LeeAnn pointed out these Golden Rules for Bad User Interfaces from SAP Design Guild:

The SAP Design Guild Website is full of guidelines and tips for good user interface design, and it's not the only one on the Web. Nevertheless, we see examples of bad user interface design everywhere--many more than users would like to see. As people like to do just the opposite of what one is proposing, we thought that it might be a good idea to promote bad user interface design. Therefore, we collected "Golden Rules for Bad User Interfaces" on this page--please help yourself (and do the opposite). We started this page with ten rules and are continually expanding our collection.