How Web Design Is Changing: Trends & Technology and Bootstrap

Here is a nice article on changing web trends.  The article talks about responsive web design, grid layout on designing front and story-telling and infographics on content authoring front.

For the former, Bootstrap is a nice framework that can be used. The next version of my website WebinarBucket will have the bootstrapped design. 

Good to great Product Manager

A friend of mine recently asked me about what makes a good product manager. There is vast material available on internet around this (see this, this and this), so I will not delve into those details. Instead, based on my own experience working as Product Manager, here are three important things that would probably make you from good to great!

• Work on 80-20 prioritization - Figure out those 20% things from feature backlog that would get 80% value to customers. Use whatever aids in that 20% selection, from number crunching around customer value, to using customer prioritization models, to 100 dollar tests, to market analysis, to competitor analysis, etc. but don’t underestimate your intuition value. Navigating your way through various quantitative models and deciding on final prioritization is an art that is mastered over time!

 

• Knack for a sharp user experience- Take a cue from Apple products aka Steve Jobs factory! No matter how good the back-end system is, the product user interface has to look sleek to be able to sell. Although most companies will have a team of Usability Designers to design your product, having an acumen for usability is an important aspect of product management skillset. 

 

 
 

• Ability to influence  All- Successful PdMs are great negotiators and influencers. Make friends with all, including key customers, engineers on the product, and internal stakeholders. You should be able to convince and motivate your team about what they need to build and in the time asked for! Internal stakeholders have to be sold of the idea at each level and battling politics even before its sold to customers .

 

Photo Credits
http://hardcourtlessons.blogspot.in/2010/10/influence-is-like-flowers-and-candy.html
http://www.trustedreviews.com/opinions/should-apple-make-a-macbook-ipad-hybrid
http://simplify360.com/blog/listen-and-say-80-20-rule-of-social-media/

Book Review- Halo Effect

Halo Effect

By Phil Rosenzweig

The book talks about how different management gurus point to high financial performance of a successful company and then EXTRAPOLATE it to believe high on other counts – strategy, values, people and leadership. The author points out that our study of the successful companies is deluded based on HALO EFFECT. The author pokes fun at bad science of the management world and believes there is no publicly available secret to a successful company. In the preface the author writes “Most management books try to answer the first order question: What leads to high performance? This book sets out to answer- Why is it so hard to understand high performance?” Towards the end the book sets out to give some principles which are not guaranteed source of high performance but leads to a more thoughtful approach.

The book in multiple chapters take case studies of multiple companies whose policies were lauded when they were successful and then ridiculed for poor performance when they started showing losses - Lego (Danish toy company), Cisco, ABB, Intel to name a few.

So what exactly is Halo Effect – it is a tendency to make inferences about specific traits on the basis of general impression. As author explains in one of this example- George Bush’s rating rose after Sep 11 attack as country stood by their President which is ok. However, on a question related to handling of economy his rating increased from 47% to 60% as well. Now whether his handling of economy suddenly became better in weeks after Sep 11 is a question mark. The American public conferred a Halo on their President and made all favorable attributions to him. In business there are HALOS every where – in people, in leaders, surveys. When a company's sales and profits are up, people often conclude that it has a brilliant strategy, a visionary leader, capable employees, and a superb corporate culture. When performance falters, they conclude that the strategy was wrong, the leader became arrogant, the people were complacent, and the culture was stagnant. In fact, little may have changed -- company performance creates a Halo that shapes the way we perceive strategy, leadership, people, culture, and more.

In the appendix of this book there are tables showing the performance of the companies studied in "In Search of Excellence" and "Built to Last", two great management books of their time. It is interesting to note the difference in performance in the years before and after these studies.

Overall, highly recommended!

Nokia abandoning Symbian for Windows Phone

It is interesting to read that Nokia is abandoning its mobile operating system, Symbian, for competing Microsoft's  Windows Phone (See - Sinking Nokia Prepares to Abandon Symbian for Windows Phone) Both Nokia and Microsoft believe that by combining Microsoft's 'excellent' user experience with Nokia's 'excellent' hardware, they could be in a position where they can compete with iPhone and Google' Android. Well, makes sense :-), especially, when both these companies are not doing good in mobile market.

Personally, I think the most important thing that these companies have to realize is how soon can they build a community of 'free' programmers who would be willing to build mobile apps. The reason for success of iPhone and Android to a large extent has been because they have been able to position themselves as an excellent platform and monetary tool to programmers world-wide.

Indian domestic market- Numbers for Obama to look at

While Obama is putting up policies for preventing any outsourcing to non-US company, a look at Indian IT domestic market would show that most of the work is being done by IBM with govt. being the major customer for IBM.

Reference - Indian Express

'Extreme Offshoring': Guess whats this?

I don't know why some brands have a penchant for creating new words ! One such new word added to dictionary is "Extreme offshoring" used by Infy in its latest press release Infosys plans 'extreme offshore' model to tide over visa crisis.

Well, after going through the news article and subsequent googling, I figured out its nothing more than simple off-shoring, that is, moving jobs to offshore locations.

Well, probably I should put this word in my sales presentations :-)

Digital fasting - required?

'Digital  fasting' is a recent term which refers to withdrawal from all online identities, like the ones on facebook, orkut, blogs and twitter. Contemplating digital fasting: How much Internet is too much? talks about this recent trend in detail.

Knowingly or unknowingly, all of us are addicted to internet and our online presence. Personally, I don't see a problem in this. All web 2.0 tools are a good way to keep connected not only more frequently but also cheap (compare the price of a SMS to an international friend vs the cost of dropping him an elaborate e-mail). Blogs like this one are an important part of a virtual identity and a way to connect with unknown.

I guess the whole problem is one of 'excess'. People start their day with Facebook and twitter with updates as unimportant as "I hv got up" to "hate going to loo" with a friend list that responds to such tweets or updates ! Obviously, the time saved from such 'excesses' can be better utilized in making a face to face connection and face to face discussions.