Newspapers struggle to get revenues these days, especially online. I empathize with their situation, and know that there are real jobs at stake and lifestyles to preserve. But it seems that some online publications confuse that situation with a license to screw over the user experience, and don’t understand that it hurts them and it hurts their advertisers (who probably don’t even know how their message is being delivered, since it’s obscured through mass purchases and deals with agencies who might be mis-guided in their attempts to get attention for their clients).

This morning I was reading about the “Lessons from eastern Euprope’s flat tax“, a fascinating topic that I’m very interested in generally (i.e. flat tax, and overall simplification of tax systems to increase fairness, reduce work and friction and minimize fraud) – however, as I open the website, the whole window suddenly grays out – I wonder if my computer is going to sleep – and then, after some pause, a slow animation opens a black box in the middle of the screen – what the hell is going on? – and then, after some more waiting, a video starts playing. It’s a Siemens ad. Fortunately I am given the option of closing the window (otherwise I would have just closed the browser tab immediately), but it’s already wasted more of my time than I had budgeted to actually read the article! And to make matters even worse, the publication has split the article into two webpages, and the ad shows again (with all the slow motion animation) on the second page!

I know all you die hard capitalists are now shouting: but this is free content, and it’s their website, and they can do whatever they want to generate some income. Absolutely right! But I don’t think globalpost (I’m writing their name is it appears on their homepage) realizes that they’re not increasing their revenue.

Let’s look at how I (and a lot of people I know) read news today. I find content by subscribing to various feeds from sources that I trust. One of this source is Hacker News which is basically an aggregation of various news from the web, probably a bit geekier than the average CNN or NYT feeds, but still great stuff. I skim the headlines of the feed in Google Reader and when something interesting grabs my attention, I click to read it. Sometimes the stories are interesting, sometimes not, and sometimes the experience of the website is good and sometimes (like with globalpost) it’s poor.

And here’s the challenge for new organizations. If I like what I read, I will share it with my friends. And occasionally, I like an article so much, or I see the news site bring interesting content often enough, that I actually add their feed directly to my subscriptions, but there’s a certain bar to be met in order to get there. A website which throws unnecessary obstacles in my way is not going on that list. News publications have to understand this (just like the rest of the media industry): if you screw your customers, they won’t stay as your customers – it’s that simple.

Back to the original problem, how can news organizations survive today. I think there are a few ways, all hard to master, but that’s life:

• Get people to pay for your content. Very few news organizations have this luxury, the most notable one being Wall Street Journal. They have great content, are a prestigious company with a long history of quality reporting, but their revenue is also driven by unusual factors, such as the fact that companies often pay the premium for their employees. There’s only room for very few in this category, so don’t expect to copy this model easily.
• Bring businesses and an audience together, and charge the business. The old golden goose for newspapers. Just get circulation up and then tell companies that you have an audience willing to listen and charge for delivering a message. Simple? Not any more. It’s not just newspapers being delivered by paper to people’s houses anymore, or even people going to your website. I might see the headline in my feed reader and decide not to look at your content at all if I don’t find it interesting. There’s also advertising fatigue (like I described above) where consumers are fed up with non-contextual ads being thrown at them all the time – people learn to ignore or skip ads through any means necessary (how many of you have a Tivo for that purpose alone?). Advertising can work, but for every dollar in revenue you need more readers by every day that goes by. And the more blend your news content, or the more aggressively you push advertising, the less likely you are to succeed.
  There’s room for a few very large, high quality publications (think New York Times-like quality and size), and probably a whole slew of niche or niche-local publications (think valleywag, TechCrunch or similarly obscure or specialized publications).
• Innovate. If you can’t succeed in either of the above two categories (and this applies to the vast majority of old publications imho), there’s only one solution: innovate. Unfortunately most publications today are not trying that, but instead they whine about how technology is killing them and how they desperately need to be in either of those two categories and should get help or protection from the government to make sure that’s possible. It’s time to put your thinking cap on (and keep in mind that this is a tremendous opportunity for new entrants, since there is disruption going on) and look for new ways to connect interesting stuff (call it news, blogs, tweets, whatever) with interested people (call it subscribers, customers, friends, readers, whatever). With all the new technology and new ways of communicating, there’s probably room for several new models that can be successful in delivering people what they’re looking for, and still generate good revenue.

News publications, embrace things like social sharing, crowd sourcing, machine learning to improve personal relevancy and the fact that information overflow is just getting worse, and news organizations should be about that. If a company could deliver me the front page every morning of stuff that matters to me, I’d be ecstatic and use if every morning. Until then, I’ll stick to my ritual of scanning hundreds of headlines in Reader and try to do this manually.

Oh, and also continue to avoid publications like globalpost who don’t seem to get their customers.

- Gummi

PS. unfortunately I’ve probably increased the impression rate of that Siemens ad, but it’s hopefully short term gains at the cost of long term gains for globalpost and their advertisers.

[image source]

If you ask anyone here in the Silicon Valley whether age matters when it comes to starting a company, a lot of people will tell you that young people have a better chance at getting something off the ground. In fact, at the start of this year I went to an MIT event where Doug Leone said that people over 30 simply can’t innovate and therefore he doesn’t want to invest in their ideas. Really? Guess I’m doomed in my job, which depends on innovation and nothing else.

Let’s think about this for a second. It makes a lot of sense to bet on young people for innovation. They’re not biased by old ideas or attempts, they have lots of energy and can do “all nighters” (or “ollara” like we used to call them when I was at the University) if needed, they usually don’t have huge financial commitments dragging them down, less likely to be distracted by kids and spouses and more likely to stick through things even if they look tough. Wow, this is looking really bleak for the old guy in the room.

But younger people have their own biases. Why do you think there are 5 gezillion social networks around? Because young people like to socialize with other young people, and find the tools to help them sucking at it (or at least did, the landscape seems to be settling). Why are there another 5 gezillion tools to help you get organized in an über controlled manner? Because young entrepreneurs are obsessed about their productivity and want to squeeze as much as possible out of their 24 hours as possible (damn you, sleep, for taking a third of that!)

And here’s the bias: there are very few good tools for parents to help them manage their lives; there are no tools afaik, aside from email or just the regular social networks, to help families communicate during the daily grind. And the tools that try to help this group suck so badly. Why? Because they’re created by 20-somethings who pretend they understand their demographic! And the people who belong to this demographic have moved on to become executives or something worse and are not involved in any real work anymore.

This is where my UX friends would shout at me, but for innovators, there is value in being part of (or very close to) the demographic you’re designing for. And that’s what I think older entrepreneurs should use to their advantage. Don’t try to create the hottest dating site for young singles, focus on stuff that you understand and deeply care about. And if you have the energy and time, you’re at an advantage compared to the young entrepreneur because you’re the wrong person in the wrong place when compared to the herd.

- Gummi

Yesterday I was the super man of productivity. No, I didn’t leave the house to isolate myself from the rest of the world. No, I didn’t feel particularly energetic. I simply had planned the day with some concrete things to work on, and spent about half the day trying to get these things done. Many of the items on my list were things that I’ve been dragging my feet about for a couple of weeks, which probably explains part of why I feel good about doing them, but still.

I’ve talked about 3 tasks before and reiterated the value of daily task items, but I’m just so profoundly amazed by the power of this simple method that I feel compelled to talk about it one more time, this time with a few tips on how you could possibly make this part of your daily habit (hopefully the stuff about how I do it makes it more concrete, don’t mean to imply that I’m doing it the best way :) ):

• Have a daily list. Probably obvious, but just the simple act of deciding what to do tomorrow will make you much more likely to actually do these things. And don’t cram everything into your daily list, it needs to be comfortably doable in a single day.Here’s how I do it: I use OmniFocus for all my task management, and I create the daily list the night before by setting tasks as due that day. I don’t keep a lot of tasks due (only stuff that’s truly, really, something-bad-will-happen-if-I-don’t-do-it-by-this-day due) so the list isn’t crowded by other stuff. The “Due” perspective will then show me my daily list so I can chop away.
• Have an “all” list. Keep a pile, and understand that the pile will never go away. Whenever something comes to your mind, add it to the pile. Whenever something isn’t relevant anymore, remove it from the pile. But by all means, don’t try to remember everything, and don’t keep 27 piles. Try to have one pile. Here’s how I do it: With OmniFocus, this is natural – all my tasks are in there.
• Make the list mobile. If you put the list into a Word document, it’s probably going to be useful for you about half the time. The other half (or even more for some people) you’re going to be away from your computer, and you’ll forget what you had planned to do. Figure out a way to make the daily list go with you no matter where you go, even writing it down on paper is better than a computer-only based solution. Here’s how I do it: OmniFocus has a mobile version for iPhone, which I check all the time when I’m on the go. I just wish they had an Android version…
• Make the list actionable. “Learn how to read faster” is not a daily action item, but “Set up a schedule for learning how to read faster” or “measure baseline reading performance” are. Make sure you distinguish between projects (or dreams!) and actual tasks. It takes lots of tasks to finish a project (or make a dream come true).Here’s how I do it: I ask myself every time I put down an action, “can I do this at a given time and location tomorrow?” – if not, I need to either figure out prerequisites (e.g. before I file taxes, I need to gather all documents for the filing) or break it up (e.g. learning Spanish takes a series of steps which I need to be more concrete about).
• Keep your routine stuff, well, routine and time boxed. There’s always stuff you do every day, or several times a day, and although usually important, they are potentially your biggest barriers to getting anything else done (email is the prime example, with Facebook probably a strong second). The key is to be deliberate about this, know what routine stuff you care about, when you do it and for how long. Here’s how I do it: My routine is email (personal and work), Google Reader (for news and interesting bits from people I like reading from), Facebook, Twitter, Mint.com (reconciling transactions is much easier if you it every day, believe me!) and Wikipedia’s front page (I know that’s a weird one, but there’s usually something interesting there that’s not news or based on current events). First thing I do after breakfast and dropping the girls off at school, is to open a browser window with one tab per before-mentioned site, and then give myself 30 minutes to jam through all of them. After that, the routine is out of my system for the day (doesn’t mean I won’t come back briefly during the day, but I never let any of these services distract me from more important work).
• Tasks vs projects. I briefly touched on this above, but it’s so important to know the distinction: a task is something you can do, and a project is a collection of tasks that get you to a meaningful destination or milestone. It’s also important to track both. If you only track tasks, your life will just be a random collection of stuff that you do without any context. If you only track projects, you’ll never actually do anything. Here’s how I do it: since OmniFocus has this exact same distinction, this is very easy for me. I create, delete, and check off projects and tasks in one place, which is pretty convenient.
• Keep your long term stuff aligned. It’s important that you periodically look up from the trenches and figure out if you’re on the path you want to be on. Are the tasks you’ve noted down aligned with your bigger ambitions? Remember, neither can live without the other: you need to know where you’re heading, and you need to figure out the steps to get there. Here’s how I do it: I use projects (and sub-projects if needed) to set my longer term direction. If I have ambitions to remodel my home, I will create a project for that, even if there are no immediate tasks in there for the foreseeable future (although for anything you care about, you will start seeing ways to chip away at the project, even if it’s small bits at a time). Just like the pile of tasks that you shouldn’t be afraid of or expect to go away, keep a pile of projects, even if some of them are completely dormant and you know will take a long time to finish. It’s having these things in front of you that will help you take slow, but deliberate, steps towards finishing them at some point in the future.
• Just do it. Nike was right. in order to get things done, it’s often just a matter of having an attitude of doing stuff. Don’t get distracted by things that you haven’t decided to do, go ahead and finish that daily list, and then go get distracted by all the fun stuff. You’ll thank yourself later.

Procrastination, in my opinion, is often just because we haven’t figure out exactly what steps we need to take to achieve a given outcome. Setting up a daily task list is a very powerful tool to fight that behavior.

Do you have other tips on how to get more stuff done? Please do share in the comments, as usual :)

- Gummi

It’s true, I still use an iPhone (although the Nexus One is my primary phone, and I love it!). When it come to discussing apps on mobile, my natural inclination is to focus on how many crap apps there are out there (and most of them are crap, even if the idea might be good, the execution is usually horribly poor) but this time I’m going to talk about apps that I like and use very frequently (~daily is my criteria).

1. Amazon Kindle. This is my all-time favorite mobile app! I have an actual Kindle, and love it too, but the convenience of being able to read a few pages while in line at the grocery store, or waiting for my daughter to finish her ballet lesson has allowed to actually start reading books again. This is my new “email” app for mobile (think about it, when you see someone standing and checking their phone, you probably assume they’re checking email – for me, it would be reading 5 more pages of Swimming Across – which I just finished by the way, and highly recommend)
   I can’t think of anything I’d like to change in this app, it’s got shared reading progress synchronized with my real Kindle, synchronized bookmarks, the Amazon e-book convenience (buy through your computer, read instantly on your device), just pure magic, although still waiting for the Android version Mr. Bezos! :)
2. OmniFocus. I paid through the nose for this one (something like $15?) and for a long time I hated how long it took to start up, but it’s gotten better over time, and since my life is in OmniFocus, it’s pretty important that I can bring it along when I leave the house.
   There’s lots I’d like to improve though. The perspectives I create on my desktop version don’t get synchronized, the whole synchronizing process is slow and cumbersome (I have to manually synchronize while on the same wi-fi network as my computer, while it’s on? That’s so 1999), but it’s still better than nothing and I use it a LOT.
3. Facebook. I don’t think I use FB quite daily on my mobile phone, but it’s still a pretty darn well designed app, and if I was a FB addict (I’m not, really, it’s not true, or it is… now I’m confused) I’d probably keep it open all the time. Has most of the features one would need on the go, and the photo sharing is nice (although too slow imho).
4. Google Maps. Ok, I’m biased since I used to be the product manager for Google Maps for mobile, but still, I use it all the time to get phone numbers, see exact locations of businesses, get directions (even trivial ones) etc etc.
5. Google Search. Be that voice search in Google Mobile App, or just plain typed search through google.com, I use Google all the time on my mobile phone. Life just throws so many surprises at you every day, and search is always there to help figure out answers to these little puzzles.

So that’s the list as it stands today, but I’m constantly trying new apps and I’m pretty confident the list will have changed 6 months from now (although I’m having a hard time seeing anything topple Kindle from the list at the moment). There are some interesting ones like Foursquare, Gowalla, Siri, and even Amazon (the shopping app), but none of them has yet made it into my daily usage patterns, which I think is the greatest challenge of any mobile application.

Also, you’ll notice that there are no games on the list – somehow I haven’t gotten addicted to any game (yet :) ), although I’ve tried quite a few.

Do you have any mobile app favorites? Please share in the comments.

- Gummi

With the birth of my daughter Emma Kara about a month ago (now you know why I haven’t been blogging :) ), my wife and I decided to sign up again for NetFlix. Since we used to subscribe, we knew the convenience of getting our favorite new releases every Wednesday morning by mail, and now we had more time to watch these movies together since I’m on paternity leave. Great!

The way we manage the queue is pretty simple: on the weekend, we check out what new releases are coming out that week, and add the 2 movies we would like to watch to the queue. So for the first week, we did just that and waited eagerly for the postman to deliver on Wednesday morning. But alas, he didn’t bring any movies! We raced back to our computers to check the queue, and the movies were still there, for sure. We were puzzled for a few minutes and then noticed that the movies were going to be released on this very day… in March! (since this was in February, remember that all the weekdays in March have the same “numbers” as in February) Confused, we double checked the new release lists, and they still showed the movies coming out on that day in February. Seemed like NetFlix had a bug in their system.

We called NetFlix customer service, hoping to correct this little mistake and have our movies delivered to us promptly, but as I overheard my wife on the phone with their customer rep, it became clear to me that nothing seemed wrong, and the customer rep had rapid explanations for everything. Turns out that NetFlix is “experimenting” with a new program with some of the studios to deliver new releases 4 weeks after the release dates. Seems weird? I agree, but it’s ok, we got some explanations.

So the studios are apparently all miserable because DVD sales aren’t doing as well as their Excel spreadsheets indicated, and they’ve pointed their fingers at rentals, especially the new-age boutiques like NetFlix and Redbox. I’m sure they brainstormed all sorts of approaches to this problem, like blocking rentals for some companies or even suing them to make sure customers can’t get their hands on new movie releases. But the solution they’ve stumbled upon is just pure genius: new-age movie rental outlets should delay offering new releases by 4 weeks, in order to boost DVD sales!

Just think about it. I try to add the new movie to my NetFlix queue, and then no movie shows up in my mailbox so what do I do? I run to the nearest Target and buy the movie, of course! Wrong!!! Are they kidding? This is not good for customers (I don’t get my new release), not good for the studios (probably doesn’t increase sales, and could potentially  increase pirating, leading to even lower DVD sales and rentals) and most important of all, damages the long term brand value and customer loyalty of the movie studios (the studios involved so far, afaik, are Universal Pictures, 20th Century Fox, and Warner Bros.)

As if the actions of the studios didn’t piss me off enough, I’m also very annoyed with NetFlix for pretending that they’re doing an experiment with the studios, and that it somehow is good for everyone. Why didn’t the customer rep just tell me that the studios are arm-wrestling them into doing this, and that they would love to send me the movie right away if they only could. That’s one point off for not being up front and honest with me (and already lots of points off for not delivering the movie to me!)

The broader point here is that this is the typical ice harvesters vs refrigerator makers story: the movie studios can’t adapt to a new world, where people get media delivered on a rental basis to their homes, be that via snail mail or the Internet, so they fight change. During time of turbulence, the newcomers usually have to fight some skirmishes like this, and the customers will suffer through the uncertainty, but the long term losers are always those who can’t adapt since change is always inevitable (and good!)

Btw, it seems that this is not just about rentals reducing sales, since Blockbuster and Hollywood Video can still rent out new releases – this just does not make sense at all, and things have to change so that we can move into the 21st century and get proper on-demand, personalized media delivery. The technology to support that has already been around for awhile, so why wait?

- Gummi

Have you tried MyLikes? It’s a generic social based recommendation service, where you can “like” virtually anything (e.g. a hotel you’d like to check out or a personal finance service) and share those likes with your friends.

I have to admit when I signed up when it first launched that I was intrigued but very skeptical. After playing around with it for a few times, I forgot about it and didn’t become a very active user aside from the occasional email notifications when someone I knew had “liked” something. But overall I wasn’t that impressed.

Now Bindu and Arvind have made some interesting additions to MyLikes, and I think they’ve stumbled upon an interesting model: you can get paid for recommending things to your friends. Clearly most people won’t make a ton of money by doing this, but there are some influential individuals out there who could do well with MyLikes, if they play things well. And I think a lot of companies could benefit as well, by seeding the eco-system with suggested “likes” and then have people tell their friends about it if they are interested. Assuming a perfect world, this is probably one of the strongest form of advertising one can find: a referral from a friend.

But that’s assuming a perfect world, and unfortunately it never is. I don’t know all the details of MyLikes’ approach, but I am sure there will be challenges related to spam and general honesty of the sponsored recommendations. How MyLikes deals with spam and ensures that there are incentives to keep the recommendations honest and legit will probably be a major factor in the company’s success. I wish Bindu and Arvind all the best in their exciting new venture!

[btw, given that MyLikes sponsors people to recommend stuff, including MyLikes, you might wonder whether this is just a sponsored blog entry so I can make a few cents, and I think that'd be a fair, paranoid observation :) and that's why I've decided to not include any referral links to MyLikes in this blog entry, just direct links - this is just me talking honestly about a product I think has some interesting potential - or is that perhaps defeating the whole purpose of MyLikes? I probably should have included a referral link... ;) ]

- Gummi

“But Joe the executive asked us to do it the other way…”

Continuing along the path of my previous post about What makes a good product manager for software development I wanted to talk a little about the last attribute, obsessive enthusiasm about the product experience. The challenge is that it’s often hard to notice whether a product manager has this quality or not. So here are my thoughts on how to spot this through negative qualities, i.e. if you see a product manager do some of the following things, they’re probably lacking critical product thinking, which is key to becoming truly passionate about the product.

First, a few words about critical product thinking. A lot of people like to chat about products on a very high level, with no attention to details or whether a particular aspect of a product matter to users. Critical product thinking is the opposite of that, when someone thinks really hard about the product offering in a critical manner and with the users’ best interest in mind. It’s when you accept no compromise in delivering the absolutely best product to users. And you cut through red tape to achieve that, if needed.

So here are some of the negative qualities to look out for:

• “You can’t change that, it’s scheduled for delivery in 2 months so we have to keep working on it.” – ah, the Gantt chart wielding product manager who misunderstood his title for a project manager. Sometimes these types are good for keeping a schedule, but letting them be in control of the product as well is a horrible combination. Sticking to a schedule is never an excuse for delivering a sub-par product.
• “I just had a meeting with our VP, and he told us to do the opposite of what we had decided, and contrary to what I said yesterday, I now agree with him.” – you remember this one from school, right? The Brown nose product manager is usually easy to spot and even easier to disarm. They mean no harm but simply don’t know better and don’t seem to have a free will when it comes to building a product; it’s all about what the executive says! The best way to fight them is to arm yourself with data and take the argument directly with the executive in question. A word of warning though: don’t ignore this syndrome, since that will only make matters worse for you (do you know what being held in contempt means?), your team (we’re not going to ignore our executives!) and your product (with no prior knowledge, the chances are 50% that your executive is right; assuming your team has prior knowledge about the product space, the chances are even worse and the users will suffer as a result).
• “Here’s the PRD I created, how long will it take for you to build this thing for me?” – very few products nowadays are designed or built by a single person, it’s all about the team work. But somehow, the Dictator product manager doesn’t seem to get it. There are perhaps a few exceptions – Steve Jobs comes to mind as potentially the closest thing, although even he doesn’t seem to be a true dictator when it comes to product design – but even then I still believe true teamwork can make the result even better. This type is easy to spot, except when you have the Charming dictator product manager – all I can say then is “Good Luck” :)

There are more stereotypes to be aware of – do you have any to share? Any tips on how to neutralize these wannabe product managers?

- Gummi

I’ve blogged before about how to handle email overload, but people often ask me how specifically I would suggest do it. So here are 11 simple concrete steps showing you how to get to zero inbox and maintain it with not-too-much-effort.

1. Sign up for Gmail. Yes, I’m biased, I work for Google, etc, etc. But quite frankly, I haven’t seen another email application that handles email as well from an overload perspective. Feel free to use any other email client, but your mileage may wary.
2. Turn on Keyboard Shortcuts (in Settings -> General)
3. Turn on Gmail Superstars in Labs (find it in Settings -> Labs)
4. Pick Superstars for message follow up priority (in General under Settings); I use the following:
   Yellow star - need to follow up with this message at some point
   Blue star – in the “next to follow up” queue (usually means today or sometime over the next few days)
   Red exclamation mark (a.k.a. Red Bang) – URGENT, deal with immediately
   Orange » (a.k.a. Orange Guillemet) – waiting for someone else to deal with
   
5. If you subscribe to a lot of mailing lists, consider filtering the ones with low SNR into a single label directly (I label this “non-urgent” and it catches about 70% of all messages I receive so they never even hit the inbox) – a handy way to do this is to open a message sent to the mailing list and select “Filter messages like this”
   
   Filter tip: make sure you specify “-your-email-address” in the To: section for all filters if you want messages sent directly to you to always go to the inbox, regardless of other recipients. Otherwise messages sent to you directly and a filtered mailing list will be lost.
6. As seldom as possible*, open the top message in your inbox.
7. If it’s something you can deal with quickly or don’t care about, hit the ‘[‘ key (archive-prev)
8. If it’s something that will take a lot of time to deal with, or you need to work on, star it with the appropriate star and hit the ‘[‘ key.
9. Repeat steps 7 – 8 until your inbox is empty.
10. Switch to the Star view, and work on the messages there, or other important stuff you have to work on from your task list – these are concrete things you have to deal with, and now you’re free to focus on them without the distraction of new messages arriving.
11. Every now and then (I do this every day or two), go through the “non-urgent” label (if you created filters) and skim through messages there and then remove the label from them. Most likely this won’t take long since the messages there are probably not that interesting or important.

* the frequency of checking your inbox depends on a) the amount of email you get, and b) whether your job depends on your timely responses to email messages (but this is usually not the case btw, even if you think so). I get a few hundred messages per day, and check my inbox 2 – 4 times per day (I vary the frequency depending on what is going on). The key is to minimize the amount of time you spend checking email, and part of that is not checking too often. I would guess that 1 – 2 times per day is perfect for most people.

I hope this helps dealing with the email overload. Btw, I think this is my first how-to blog post, exciting! :)

- Gummi

Every product development team (and product company, in fact) spends considerable amount of time and energy on prioritization of its work. The obvious time goes into meetings, data gathering, discussions, brainstorming and so on and so forth, but the more hidden energy goes into second guessing the prioritization, getting buy-in, politics and other counter productive activities.

Getting this right is extremely hard, and there is no tool or set of tools that will make this easy and straight forward. Here are some suggestions that can hopefully help though.

• Forget about the medium term. In my experience, the most successful (and efficient) teams are the ones that have a simple, clear long term vision, and then a specific short term tactical plan. Don’t waste time planning what to do 6 months (your horizon might be shorter or longer, depends on the industry you’re in) from now, since things will have changed so much at that point that it won’t matter. This alone cuts your planning time by half.
• Make teams responsible for their own planning. The team building a product knows it the best, has the best insights into the users, the technology, and the market being addressed, and has the best incentive to create a plan that they can stick to. This does not mean that teams need to be fully autonomous and independent, but rather that external parties (other teams, executives, etc) should provide feedback and guidance, not hand down fully baked plans. This reduces that chances of second guessing sabotaging your plans.
• Get data, but use it fwiw. Data is always good to inform prioritization, especially if its data from your own product (usage, bugs, performance stats, etc). Make sure everyone involved in the planning process has access to, and looks at the data. However, don’t let data dictate your prioritization, and be especially wary of inaccurate (e.g. from a shady third party analyst) or mis-interpreted data (e.g. a very vocal user on your user groups over-represents certain issues).
• Let the team do the prioritization. Once you have this structure set up, and everyone has access to all the data, it’s time to prioritize. I like quarterly planning meetings, and I’ve used a range of methods for getting the releases scoped and lined up. One that I particularly like is to spend half the meeting (usually 30-45 minutes) getting everyone’s ideas on the table, and then the second half (another 30-45 minutes) voting (each team member gets 3-4 votes) which gives you a pretty rough but good idea of the order of how things and then you use that to scope releases of your product. This gets buy-in from the people who will be doing all the work, which is crucial.
• Communicate the plan widely. Let others know what the team has come up with, and ask for feedback, but don’t let randomization happen. This step might require you to take some thoughts back to the team to align better with other teams or just to share some excellent insight that someone outside the team might have had, but it should hopefully not force you to do the whole process again (if that’s the case, perhaps the team is not that competent?) This should defuse most of the politics (although that’s always hard).

Is this scientifically accurate? No. Does it account for all user feedback, and ensure that the most requested features get built first? Not really, but sort of. The problem with strictly analytical approaches to prioritization is that you end up with faster horses, when you really want to build cars (building on Henry Ford’s famous quote), so be careful. This is such a fuzzy process anyway, that often just getting a rough order in plan is crucial, and allows the team to focus on execution and building the product.

Remember, a body in motion tends to stay in motion, so don’t get paralyzed by planning and prioritization.

Do you have any other insights into prioritization? Share your thoughts in the comments.

- Gummi

My blog had a complete outage over the past few days.

I guess you can expect this if you want to run your own servers on your own network in your own house… who does that anymore these days?!? Well, I do. And I do it because I’m having fun at it and that’s it.

The outage was caused by a failed router, and it took me awhile to replace everything so that my complete network could go up again, but now things should be rolling again. Here’s to an interesting and eventful 2010! :)

- Gummi