The other day I was meeting with a company and was a bit shocked when they openly admitted to not writing specs. And before you ask, yes the company is rather successful and been in business for years – all without formalized a spec process. As a product manager I find it difficult to image, I’ve seen companies with an overtly detailed process before but none? Then I began to question, is it better to have no spec process or an overly detailed one?

I once worked for a very successful Internet company that also worked under the Waterfall model. This was my only experience working outside of an Agile shop and I can safely say that if you aren’t doing mission critical stuff, like building a plane, you should never use the Waterfall model. Any-who this company also had a very detailed spec process to go along with it. The Product Manager outlined the product, the Project Manager would translate that into a spec, it would then go to Engineering, etc. What you got at the end of it all was an engineering team that basically did paint by numbers. They only did what was asked and nothing more. They were more worried about covering their ass than pointing out faults with a spec. Of course saying that implies that they knew what we were building, I think most saw the numbers and simply painted. This is certainly not the Engineering team you want when building innovative products.

Compare that with an Agile company that works off of lite specs. Lite because they’re always changing and also because most people don’t read them fully (any part that is unread is wasted effort as Eric Ries points out and startups are about eliminating waste). So the spec is incomplete by its nature so everyone has to add to it in their own way. But how do you know what to add or not to add? That comes down to communication within the company, having a clear vision. Where as with the example above the responsibility was pushed to an all encompassing spec, with a lite Agile process the responsibility is shared with the spec and the communication within the company. With a company that doesn’t use a spec the responsibility must be all on the communication.

Of course adding a lite spec process to where there was none before can be helpful,  likely facilitating more communication. However changing the spec process at a company with a detailed process doesn’t yield much gain. If it’s been years you might have departments in serious atrophy as the one I had to work with. So I’d say no spec process is better than an overly detailed one.

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2. Screenwriting vs. tech conferences

I’ve always been impressed with WordPress. It’s fast, clean, and open source. A lot of my enjoyment comes from it having just what I need and nothing I don’t. But a lot of that enjoyment also comes from the fact that it’s a beautiful tool.

Everyone knows that Auttomatic and WordPress are focused on open source, but at WordCamp yesterday I also learned how committed Matt Mullenweg is to design and aesthetics. His presentation was full of snapshots and more than once he pointed out the incorrect use of the logo. He also took time just to highlight the T-Shirt designs from earlier WordCamps. Design is very important to Matt.

I find Matt’s commitment to open source inspiring and am thankful he is so committed to design.

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1. “Don’t Make Me Think” for social games?
2. Will social games push users to open data standards?

As product managers we’re always asking why people visit our company’s site. We can ascertain this in many ways – user feedback, analytics, surveys, etc. Avinash Kaushik explains that you can go a long way with just three questions. Of course all of this is goals based and not only can it return some insightful data but it can be rather confusing.

Another way to really get into a user’s head is through a listening lab. The whole point of a listening lab is to make the participant comfortable enough to get more legitimate data. The more comfortable they are the more frank they will be and less likely to be lead by the moderator.  One thing that comes through crystal clear is what mode they’re in while on the site. Usability expert Eric Stephens uses two modes – travel mode or arrival mode. Users are either trying to find what they want (travel mode) or have found it (arrival mode). Modes are an easy way to quickly see how your site is performing and understand how visitors use it. For example, when on your homepage users are in travel mode and will likely ignore any important alert on the page.

Eric Stephens goes into more detail in his interview with Mixergy about listening labs.

Related posts:

1. Facebook squashing the virality of social games?

Being an avid reader of non-fiction I find that I tend to go through phases. Right now I’m racing through books that have anything to do with Disney Imagineering. Prior to that it was lean product development. Having just finished Four Steps to the Epiphany I thought I’d compile a list of what I found to be the best lean product management books I’ve read over the last year.

Four Steps to the Epiphany

This book is all about Steven Blank‘s concept of Customer Development. If you’re not familiar with Customer Development you should be. It’s very different than the traditional product development model. Where as most start-up founders start with the conviction that they know success looks like and just need VC money to build it, customer development starts with a hypothesis. It’s only once a hypothesis has been validated that you really start building.

The book covers much more than just product management but gives you a good idea of the role in a Customer Development start-up.

The Four Steps to the Epiphany

Inspired – How to Crate Products Customers Love

The book by Marty Cagan is much more focused on product management and interestingly enough, describes a process that’s very similar to Steve Blank’s Customer Development. It’s all about quick prototyping and listening to users – seems simple enough but goes much beyond that and gives you detailed action items. Like Four Steps of Epiphany, much of the suggestions in are counter to what you might have come to expect from start-ups today.

Inspired: How To Create Products Customers Love

The Back of the Napkin

Lean development means getting your idea across in simple ways. I can’t tell you how much trouble misunderstandings have caused me in my years of product development. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words but this book by Dan Roam goes beyond just making pretty pictures. It explains how to go about creating the most informative picture even if you don’t know how to draw.

The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures

Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind

This by no means is a new book, but having re-read it recently I can’t get away from how timely it still is. Everyone talks about viralitiy, social media, etc. but the fundamentals of marketing are still about positioning your product in the minds of users. As a product manager you need to understand this if not just for the fact that your products success is not entirely up to which features you build or do not build.

Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, 20th Anniversary Edition

Made to Stick

If it’s all about positioning then Made to Stick is a timely guide to do just that. It’s also more than just marketing, it’s message of simplicity goes much farther.

Consider it a great how to guide to finding simplicity. Products and processes can get very complicated, this book will help you take a step back and see what’s important.

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

Here Comes Everybody

Threw this in because I found it to be a book that makes you think about how the landscape is changing. It’s all about mass amateurization, something Clay Shirky introduced us to when he described how the world of publishing is changing.

Product managers should be familiar with the concepts in this book as they did social media a few years ago. Mass amateurization changes everything.

Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations

Honorable mention

If Eric Ries would ever write a book about his Lean Startup I’d have that up here too. I’ve seen him speak twice and am always interested in hearing more. His Lean Startup is almost a nuts and bolts approach to Customer Development and more. Luckily he’s running a workshop next month that I’m attending.

No related posts.