Do Product Managers try to become Project Mangers

Recently one of my colleagues posed a question to me " Why do Product Managers always try to be Project Managers", if you want to be a project managers then come to the development team.
I was taken aback by this question and had no good answer except that, " I do not wish to be a Project Manager". Later I started thinking about what he said and look for answers and here is my self reflection on that.


Wikipedia has the following distinction between a Product manager and Project Manager,
"Any type of product or service — pharmaceuticals, building construction, vehicles, electronics, computer software, financial services, etc. — may have its implementation overseen by a project manager and its operations by a product manager"[.].

Do you agree with this. Also is my colleague correct in characterizing Product Managers, as Project Managers trying to micro manage everything, tell me your thoughts.

One snippet for thought. In Wikipedia you also find the following,
"Diverse interpretations regarding the role of the product manager are the norm. The product manager title is often used in many ways to describe drastically different duties and responsibilities. Even within the high-tech industry where product management is better defined, the product manager's job description varies widely among companies. This is due to tradition and intuitive interpretations by different individuals."

Installing LAMP for Web Development

Recently I started on building a social networking platform to experiment on Open Social and Off the shelf products that allow users to create their own social networking websites.

Looking around the landscape, I found every body is using Linux,Apache,MySQL,PHP as their choice platform, language and tools. So I downloaded Ubuntu 9.04 and planned to install my social networking website using LAMP infrastructure on Ubuntu. Later I plan to move the website to production on a dedicated server with a hosting company.

Install OS

I wanted this to be easy and without much effort. I also did not want to partition my drive and do install etc, so I went ahead and downloaded a already configured Vmware Ubuntu 9.04 appliance from Vmware marketplace. I also downloaded a Vmware Player to run the appliance. I installed both software on my windows XP Platform and I had a running Ubuntu OS in my box in half an hour. The cool thing about the appliance I downloaded was that it already had the vmware tools in-built into it. This made sharing files between my Windows box and the Guest Ubuntu OS so easy.When you start Ubuntu OS in the player, you go to the menu tab and under VM tools select and assign a directory from your local hard drive for sharing, after that you can see that directory like any other mounted drive in Ubuntu OS.

Install IDE

I decided to use Netbeans as my PHP development platform as I had used netbeans for some of my JAVA projects. I downloaded the latest netbeans IDE from Java site and installed it. Please do not install netbeans from Ubuntu Package Manager as it does not install the latest version of Netbeans IDE. Also you have a choice to install only PHP or JAVA in netbeans IDE. I downloaded the complete package. Before installing netbeans do not forget to install the Java components. Open a terminal window in Ubuntu and do the following

# sudo apt-get install sun-java6-bin sun-java6-jdk

# sudo apt-get install sun-java6-plugin

Then type in the terminal

# which java

# which javac

If you get correct answers for these queries you are ready to install the netbeans IDE.

Install Database and Web Server

Installing LAMP stack in Ubuntu was very easy. Just follow the steps outlined in this Netbeans PHP Link. Now that the stack is installed you need a tool to administer the databse. I installed PHPMYADMIN to do the task.Ubuntu package manager has PHPMYADMIN already in it. So just open a termial window and type,

# apt-get install phpmyadmin

and that should take care of it. Once the Stack has been installed and configured properly you are ready to start working on your social networking website.

I had some hiccups on the way to my install.

I forgot my MySQL admin password and so wanted to reset the root access. I followed the following steps to reset the root pass word

Step # 1: Stop the MySQL server process.

# sudo /etc/init.d/mysql stop

Step # 2: Start the MySQL (mysqld) server/daemon process with the --skip-grant-tables option so that it will not prompt for password

# sudo mysqld_safe --skip-grant-tables &

Step # 3: Connect to mysql server as the root user

# sudo mysql -u root

Step # 4: Inside mysql cmd client, Setup new root password

mysql> use mysql;

mysql> update user set password=PASSWORD("NEW-ROOT-PASSWORD") where User='root';

mysql> flush privileges;

mysql> quit

Step # 5: Exit and restart MySQL server

# /etc/init.d/mysql stop

# /etc/init.d/mysql start

# mysql -u root -p

I found I had problems with my Vmtools drive share. I was not seeing my shared Windows Drive anymore on the Guest Ubuntu OS. 

The normal automatic updates that are done in the Ubuntu OS package manager had overwritten kernel files and due to this the vmtools host-guest file system driver which enables drive sharing is no more loaded. If you find this condition do the following,go to a terminal window and type

# sudo vmware-config-tools.pl -d

and if for any reason you find your Vmtools broken in your OS do the following,

# wget http://chrysaor.info/scripts/ubuntu904vmtools.sh
# sudo bash ./ubuntu904vmtools.sh

Error - 'Connection for controluser as defined in your configuration failed'
at the bottom of phpmyadmin login page.
After much search, I did the following to correct the problem.Go to a terminal window and type

# cd /usr/share/doc/phpmyadmin/examples/

# sudo guzip create_tables.sql.gz

# sudo gunzip create_tables.sql.gz

# mysql -u root -p < create_tables.sql

Now open the file config-db.php by typing

# gksudo gedit /etc/phpmyadmin/config-db.php

Check the values of contents of the following variables

$dbuser='phpmyadmin';

$dbpass='xxxxxxx';

Finally, Log in as root at http://localhost/phpmyadmin and create a user name phpmyadmin that can connect from localhost then add add at least SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE privileges to the newly created phpmyadmindb for the user phpmyadmin using the password identified from /etc/phpmyadmin/config-db.php. After this logout and login and you will see the error mesaage no more.

This concludes my efforts to setup a Platform for installing and developing my Social Networking website. In my next post I will write about my research and its conclusion on choosing a open source social networking platform for my web business.

Self Introduction and Elevator Pitch for Starters.

In this tough economy everybody should consider themselves as a free agent  and brand effectively to sell themselves. As a job seeker recently out of job, I had some hard lessons on that.  One of the most important things I learned recently as a free agent is the value of self introduction and the importance of branding.

In business school my Marketing Professor talked at length on the art of positioning and why it important for products and people alike and I have to agree with him 100% on that based on my recent experiences. The idea of positioning is to provide a powerful proposition and give us a chance to stand out.

One of the great read on personal branding is an article by Tom Peters in fastcompany.com titled "The Brand Called You" which provides a powerful argument on why we should be thinking about branding ourselves.

All of us would have encountered the need to introduce ourselves effectively at one or other times. Entrepreneurs are mandated to do this for their product and it is called an elevator pitch and we need the same pitch abiut us as individuals to promote ourselves. Some call it "tell me about you".

I found the need for a proper self introduction becomes all the more important when you are a free agent either looking for a job or starting your own company. This is especially true in these times where you are doing both at the same time.

In my quest for looking for help on my elevator pitch for my business and self introduction for myself , One of my favorite is the method given by Frank Furness which is short and to the point.

I found a great self pitch needs to couple with a great delivery to make an impact. Similarly I also found the need to adjust the pitch according to the medium of delivery.

Pitch for direct contact:
You are really in the Mythical Elevator with your next big opportunity in front of you. In that situation the following are to be done.

• Make good Eye contact.
• Exhibit Correct Body language -No stiffness, No fidgeting, No folding of hands, No adjusting Lapel Pins etc.
• Be relaxed, Be Excited, Convey Confidence and Articulate with your Hands and Eyes.

If you scour the web you will see most of the videos, even the ones that is rated very highly in techcrunch.com in my opinion really lack the excitement factor. If you are not excited about what you are saying how can we expect our listener to get excited about what we say. One way I found to increase the pep in delivery is by creating a story board with fictional characters on your product or self and practice reading the story in front of your family and friends.

Recital - How you deliver:

• No pausing for long time: If you pause too much you sound hesitant.
• No staccato bursts: if you go non stop you may sound nervous.
• One of the thing I observed in numerous videos out on the web on elevator pitch is they have an initial bold recital of their name and company …. Followed by a subdued recital of the main points ….then ending with a rapid fire delivery of remaining stuff to maintain the 60 second time limit and some sounded just flat.
• I suggest the delivery should be level with correct emphasis on points that you want the listener to take away after the pitch.One way to achieve this is by limiting passive statements in your pitch and use action verbs. Practice by highlighting those zones of emphasis you have in your positioning statement and reciting them with different intonations until you get what you want.
• Limit to 60 seconds - This is the most important rule of the pitch. The average attention span we have is around 6 seconds so we have the impossible task of stretching 6 seconds to 60 seconds anything beyond that should be approached very cautiously.

Pitching via Phone:

• Recital - The same rule as direct contact applies here and the pause management becomes much more important. If you pause too much the listener at the other end is left wondering about your message. Sometimes they respond to the pause with their own questions that cuts short the much practiced pitch..
• Clarity of tone:Human ears are tuned to hear signals in the frequency range 20 HZ to 20,000Hz. A telephone converts sound waves into electromagnetic waves of the same frequency. A filter in the telephone system, accepts frequency in the range 200Hz to 3500 Hz. The other frequencies are filtered out. What this means is, In telephone conversations your voice sounds flat to your listener. We need to keep this in mind when we pitch over the telephone.
• Limit to 45 seconds.The other thing I found is the pitch needs to be shorter than the direct contact pitch. Since there is no eye contact in a telephone conversation you lose the ability to grab the attention of the listener for a longer time. So the pitch needs to be short and to the point.

Pitch thru email:

• This is basically a self introduction through writing. I could not find much information on this on the web, but recently I attended a professional networking event and in that they gave a form to fill out for self introduction. I found it very helpful to use as a template for self introduction through email. The basic format is ,
• My Name is _______________ and I have _______ years of experience in _________ (industry). Most Recently I was ___________ (position) with ___________ entity, where I was _____________________ (significant accomplishments)
  
• After doing the above you need to tweak the following based on whom your corresponding and for what reason.
  
• At present I am _____________________ (what you do now) with ______________ entity (doing, managing, leading, making) ______________________ (hook statement to get the reader's attention).
  
• A small self description of interests and skill sets that is specific to the email respondent no more than two lines. Adding Hyperlinks to this to showcase any achievements is a great advantage of pitching through email.
  

The Final thing I learnt is Practice, Practice, and Practice. I am still practicing and not yet satisfied with my performance.

• Links
  1. How to Craft a Killer Elevator Pitch That Will Land You Big Business
     
  2. http://ideashare.my/razlan/posts/31-Elevator-Speech-Pitch-as-explained-by-Frank-Furness
  3. http://networkingeventfinders.com/elevator-speech-challenge/category/training-examples/elevator-pitch-how-tos/
     
     
     
     
     
     

SOA Lookalike

The most central issue to the topic of SOA Projects is determining what kind of SOA implementation the business needs. Does the business need agility, more integration, more visibility, lower costs or the best ability to adapt to change at all costs?

Amazingly when I did talk around about this to active SOA practitioners, I found many organizations that were big on SOA and said they need this agility for business competitiveness actually wanted rapid development shops that would band aid existing legacy applications with web services. Basically they were trying to roll out pilot projects that use latest web 2.0 technologies to solve some niche business problem that was hanging in the organization without being solved for a long time.

So before you are asked to lead or participate in a supposedly enterprise SOA project you need to ask yourself several questions to help determine what kind of SOA implementation you are working on:

<!--[if !supportLists]-->· <!--[endif]-->How strong is the organization need for rapid change?

<!--[if !supportLists]-->· <!--[endif]-->Does the project's emphasis on agility arise because it is really one of the common SOA lookalikes?

<!--[if !supportLists]-->· <!--[endif]-->Is your project limited by any weaknesses that would prevent a SOA success?

Not doing due diligence on finding SOA look-alikes will actually lead to the SOA leader being viewed as a stumbling block for organizational direction.

Here are some of my suggestions to identify the real SOA projects are,

Organization with Strong need for Agility

Organizations that truly need agility are in a market place where they are under constant competitive threat. If you observe these organizations they will have a fairly large portfolio of product and services with broad client base that demands services fairly quickly. The company must have attempted to reinvent itself once in its life time. The management will constantly be in a sense of urgency and looking for the next market leader by researching new technologies.

Organizations with Strong Standards Orientation

These organizations will have a strong culture oriented towards standards and systems. Many of them would have or will be in the process of getting certified by standards such as CMM or ISO or MSF etc. Keep away from organizations that say they have their own needs and hence need a standards and procedures that is unique to them, nine out of ten times these kind of organizations would have attempted the industry standard certifications and failed in adhering to them. Many times the reasons for not following industry standards and deriding them are basically sour grapes story.

Organizations with Strong IT Leaders

These organizations will have a strong IT professionals leading the production and delivery systems. With professional line managers in place the conceptual foundation for implementing a SOA architecture can be sold without difficulty. By having a high caliber production team will help the architectural team to work on design issues rather than fighting fires everyday.

Organizations with resilience

SOA is a long story and needs patience. If the organization cannot stomach failures and delays, then the SOA effort will change direction midway and will definitely turn into a SOA look alike.

Organizations with Strategic Sense

Finally you need to find whether your organization is attempting SOA as a strategic tool or using it as a tactical weapon. SOA for strategy is real SOA... SOA for tactical purpose SOA look alike. How do you find it... look at the past project history. If majority of the projects were done to pluck the low hanging fruits then the organization lack the will to mount the effort to grab the difficult but juicy fruits on the top of the tree.

Wizard of Oas

Once upon a time in the IT Land there was a village called Olis. Everybody in Olis was looking for a place called IT nirvana... ok first let me define IT nirvana. IT Nirvana is a place where there is IT but No IT, where there is perfect interoperability and agility, where providing a technology upgrade path also preserves the investment in legacy systems and simplifies deployment of new systems..... it is a place where there are no borders, everybody is free of vendors, where developers, analysts, managers are biological clones so anybody can be replaced by anybody, where time, cost and schedule are independent and so on and so forth.

The people in Olis had looked far and wide and not found this dream place. They felt very lonely in IT land. Many times they tried to break from this isolation and get to IT Nirvana but without any success.

Their Village was so built so complex that people could not even find their own homes some time. It was like a maze and they could not build any trails to outside their land and do business.

Lots of wizards have come and gone in the village and everyone of them promised the people of Olis the elusive IT Nirvana where Olis is the center of IT Land and all trails are marked and interconnected. 
Every wizard had his own magic method and they promised if the villagers followed their ways and did what the wizards wanted them to do they can have IT Nirvana. The people in Olis tried all of the methods of the wizards and still could not break loose.They were desperate, if Olis did not find the dream place, it may perish.

One day a new wizard came to the village, his name was AOS, and he said he has this new magic that can get Olis to IT Niravana.

All of them very initally doubtful of AOS but still they wanted to believe in him as they desperately needed IT Nirvana.

Reluctantly they agreed to let AOS do his magic. Since they were desperate, they wanted to start learning the wizards magic fast... but the wizard warned them that the path ahead is long and arduous. He told them that his methods take a while to learn and he also needed the old and forgotten elders of the village has his apprentices.

The young villagers did not like this, they thought the old ones are slow and lazy but AOS said that his magic is from the ancient masters with new power and as such he needed apprentices from the village who knew the methods of the ancient masters. AOS also told them that his magic is not free and will cost the village 100 bushels of corn.

Now that was a problem, the villagers got together and discussed about the ways to get the 100 bushels, they knew for sure that the village headman would not easily give them the 100 bushels, so they devised a plan...

Everybody in Olis went to the head man and told him that the wizard and his methods are so powerful that when Olis attains IT Nirvana he, the village head will have everything he wanted in the village, every villager will work his land, his neighbors land and any other land he needs them. They also told that when Olis reaches IT Nirvana he can sell Corn bushels to all of the IT land as he will have trails leading everywhere and make a lot of wealth, plus they told the village head that if he pays the wizard then the wizard will get him new Headgear that is flashy and he will also get a new magic oracle that will tell him about all things happening in the village right inside his own house.

The villagers made AOS do his smoke screen pyro techniques showing IT Nirvana, which convinced the headman to give AOS his 100 bushels.

AOS started his magic, Slowly and steadily new trails started appearing out of nowhere connecting Olis to other places in IT Land, but those trails were not smooth enough to walk. It took lot of effort to walk on those paths and many in Olis were frustrated by it. The village headman was getting impatient, he wanted his riches, fancy head gear and his own private oracle NOW

Many of the people in Olis decided that AOS's magic is no good, his ancient ways were boring and more work and they need a new wizard.  As time went by people were getting tired of AOS's's methods, some started commenting that he may be a fake wizard, some others said he is just teaching them what they already knew and there was nothing new in his magic, but some believed in AOS and continued to do what he wanted from them.

The village headman was getting impatient and villagers were panicking , they wanted to stop AOS and get some new wizard.

Now the question before them is do they have ONE.???

Colloborative BPM - A new way for SOA, and Enterprise IT projects.

Last week I had the opportunity to look at the process flow diagram of one of our BPM projects. Looking at the exiting process flow it was no surprise to see a wall to wall snapshot of the long work flow diligently documented by our BPM team. We had the normal conversation of how complex our processes have become and how inefficient the existing operations are. One point that was brought up was how simple tasks have grown into complex entities due to N number of intermediate steps in them.

This made me think about the work flow presented to me. Basically I was wondering whether the complex setup I see before my eyes was developed by a dedicated team for solving a particular problem or grew by itself to solve a business requirement.

I took a piece of the work flow and started inquiring around the organization about why it is being done like that. Amazingly I had answers that were logical and reasonable that supported every twists and turns that made the flow complex. For me it looked like nothing was really amiss in the microscopic level, at the macroscopic scale I found the asynchronous nature of organizational tasks lead to all this complex work flow.

For example task A which when completed leads to task B after some time gets a new business requirement task A.1, since the implementor of task A.1 changed the original task A to be safe he added a check point C to Task A before it goes to task B.So a Simple task of going from A to B now has morphed into A to A.1 to C to B and this happens to a task cycle were there is no interplay with other enterprise components. If we take the enterprise effect into account the A.1 and C may effect processes X and Y and they may add new steps X.1 and Y.1 to solve the issues of A.1 and C

As the organization grows there are events that happen asynchronously all the time and we have a situation with an ugly looking BPM work flow chart and we have all the six sigma's and SOA architects attacking it to create simplicity and efficiency.

Now the question is after this iteration will we have a stable system that will be predictable and provide an efficient work flow for now and the future? The answer in the SOA/BPM space for that is governance. Tighter control, standardizations and process management when implemented and governed properly will provide that stability. However the after effect of tighter governance is decline of innovation, creativity and spontaneity. How does organizations will deal with this side effect of the BPM/SOA initiative. This becomes critical in a global marketplace were innovation is the competitive advantage for organizations.

Looking into my spyglass I see answer in the application of Chaos Theory in organizational development. The challenge of change management is pervasive in the BPM/SOA space for creating an agile organization receptive to change. Chaos management can provide organizations an environment that would thrive on change. Embracing chaos and constantly being on the edge is a nervous state for organizations but the payback is a creative, innovative and agile organization. So my recipe would be embrace chaos and use BPM/SOA to act as the moderator in controlling the chaos.Have loose governance, create a plan to do a BPM work flow analysis in iteration after the first run as often possible to find the instability and use SOA to manage.

Innovation with SOA and R&D, Business Perceptions and Engineering Challenges

There I was sitting in a meeting with business stake holders discussing on the next set of deliverables for a new product we have been developing for the past five months. This is a project I am involved with new business development in my company. To give a brief background, we are developing a retail reward system that is both hardware and software based. We have two dedicated teams, one for business and one for technology. The teams are small and focused on getting this done with the shortest possible time.

My this post is not on developing new product but about the relationship between the business teams and technical teams on driving the product development. As with any new product development we have fewer resources, more complex problems and tighter deadlines.

As with any new innovation project, the challenge I face everyday in the project is the uncertainty involved in solving complex engineering and technology issues. Historically in our company business for the most of the time has been dealing only with software projects, even those projects were most of the time limited to the scope of enhancing our existing applications or trans migrating our existing applications.

This product I am working on now is unique in the sense that it has hardware development and software development. As we are going through the development phases I see a expectations gap between the business and the engineering team. The complexity involved in the engineering solutions is seldom reflected in the perception of the business for a particular business requirement.

The core concern of the business is its ROI on the project and the delivery schedule. While the concerns are legitimate the problem is the expectations arising out of them are not rooted in reality. The biggest gap I see in this issue is the concept of risk management. While businesses are within their rights to demand the ROI which includes the business requirements and delivery time, as with any business investments they should also realize that they are taking up risk in their investment expecting a higher return.

When this uncertainty in engineering and technical challenges or in other words the risk in the project is brought up to the table in the form of prototype testing, tighter scoping of the business requirements, avoiding complexity by eliminating scope creep etc., business gets rattled.

We see in many blogs in EAI space the importance of ROI, especially in the BPM and SOA space we see arguments forcefully made to sell the SOA project to the business with relevant ROI. Many SOA proponents advocate that the SOA practitioner do that job of selling the project to Business with ROI. Doing this I see an agency conflict.Since it is in the benefit of the SOA practitioner to sell his goods he is going to underplay the risk involved in the project, which many times translates to direct costs in the form of change management, process correction and the need for outside resources in the form of outsourcing.

So how do we attack this gap in the Business perception of engineering challenges and bring to the table the Real Risk in ROI presented for the project. Looking through my spyglass I see some answers in financial management theory. In the CAPM model the expected rate of return for any investment takes into account the risk free return, the risk premium for the investment and the market sensitivity factor.

In our case applying the CAPM model to SOA or R&D projects we should factor in the historic success rate of IT projects in the enterprise, the risk premium associated with attempting new technology and the industry success rate for projects of similar nature (if available) for the ROI calculation . When a dialog on ROI is based on this framework, the risk factor is automatically included in the dialog and should address the gap in engineering challenges and business perceptions about it. I would welcome feedback on any other the ways to bring to the table the risk factor.

In conclusion it is not about IT department showcasing ROI of SOA, IT or R&D projects that leads to business alignment, rather it is about what kind of ROI we present and what type of dialog it initiates in the business about the project. A ROI rooted in the reality of what is the risk associated with the project and what is the expected rate of return for the business it provides will decide the true business alignment.