product management 2010 02 16

Product Management

Gareth Knighthttp://technovated.com/

http://web-workshops.co.uk/

Hello, welcome and thank you ;-)

Chatham House Rules please / strap yourself in

Where are you currently experiencing pain? Do you want to

move fast?

Let's do some sense checking:

Commercial reality / roadmap / wireframes / design led prototyping / SCRUM / backlog / buglist / source

control / workflows / user testing / functional testing / unit testing / multi-disciplined team / one click

deployments / server infrastructure / tech stacks / libraries / participating in communities?

Simplicity is your goal

Overengineering and premature optimisation are the mother of all evil

Constant iteration is your weapon

Get out as quickly as possible / test / fix bugs / adapt to users and intelligence / rinse and repeat

[screenshots]

Follow a clearly defined process

Everyone will know where they are, you can optimise and you can plan

Technical debt is just like real credit

When are you going to pay it off?

Too many cooks = recipe for distaster

Eliminate ambiguity of direction; focus on roles

The user funnel = good responsibility matrix

Getting traffic / keeping traffic

Where can I save?

Outsource commodity work, leverage open source software

Product warning signs

Disobey the 40 / 40 / 20 rule at your own peril

I'm tired of email!

Email is not good for collaboration

The best technology is the one you can use now

Become agnostic about technology as much as you can afford to

Open Source Software can be your friend

.... and your enemy. Use libraries, use frameworks, hammers and nails, many eyeballs

lead to fewer bugs, a sense of community.

Get REAL hosting

Only scale when you need toWindows hosting = expensive

LAMP hosting = cheaper

Internal infrastructure is expensive

Everything you need to be efficient can be done in the cloud. Don't waste time setting up email!

Focus on the user

Ignore that, and your product will flounder. Tech is not the end in itself.

Use REAL designers

For the betterment of dur unterwebs, use a really good designer, so people enjoy looking at your

product ;-)

There will always be bugs

Get over it. Prioritise. Deal with it. Make testing part of your process.

Build something that people will want to use

Inherent value and usefulness = traffic. Your vertical will depend on how much.

Don't be naive about leveraging social networks for traffic

What is your value to the user?

Key metrics to measure ROI

Visitors / uniquesvs

returning users / time on site / goals & funnels / traffic sources / geography / content / ajax & JS

actions

Learn everything you can about search engines

Traffic makes or breaks a product

Google Adwords is great if you have a budget

… but make sure you measure performance

Treasure your users...

… think of them as part of the family

… but be pragmatic about what your users say

Exercise restraint, but keep the conversation going

Thank you!

Gareth Knighthttp://technovated.com/

http://web-workshops.co.uk/