Let’s kick this into action!
You probably haven’t realised, but prodPad has been kicking around in various stages of development for quite some time. Until now, we’ve been pretty quiet. We started this off as a side project: a bit out of frustration due to the lack of good product management tools, and a bit out of the desire to get our hands dirty with building our own product from scratch.
Between weekends and late nights, we put together a prototype, something that was just barely workable, and began using it to track the plethora of ideas and our growing roadmap for our own use with building prodPad itself. Classic ‘eating your own dog food’ kind of thing. We found areas that didn’t work for us, and set to fixing them, one by one.
In time, we each saw enough value in launching within our day-time gigs: We both hold the title ‘Head of Product’ at different London-based startups, and saw a need for prodPad in our day-to-day lives. Slowly and in chunks, with whatever time we could find spare, we found ways to improve the product to the point where we started seeing daily usage within our teams. We were getting somewhere!
It was when we hooked up a payment system and a basic pricing page, and started seeing orders and inquiries coming in that we realised we were on to something with huge promise.
That brings us to today. The timing seems to be just right to really kick this into action, to find out what we can make of it if we really dedicated the time to it. Later this month, I’ll be finishing up at BraveNewTalent, where I’ve headed up product for the last year and a half, in order to free up my time so I can properly tend to prodPad. I see massive potential here and plan to make the most of it!
With this blog, Simon Cast (my co-founder) and I want to keep you posted on the latest Product updates we’re rolling out the door, and any relevant News about the company. We also plan to post Tips and tricks on how to make the most out of prodPad. In addition to all this, we see building prodPad as a huge learning opportunity and a bit of an experiment, and will be posting details about our ‘Alpha’ features and the product management process behind prodPad itself in the Product lab.
Thanks to you all for your past and continued support! Get in touch to learn more, or follow us to stay up to date.
Moving into a Product Role
A friend of mine recently got in touch, asking for advice as he was going for an interview for a Product Manager role. His biggest concern? He was a social media manager at the time, not a product manager. The role called for him to work closer with a development team than he’s ever had to, and like many in his position, lacked coding skills. Here’s what I told him:
First of all, don’t worry too much about your past experience.
I don’t know a single product manager who got in because of specific product management experience or training. We all got here by accident!However, what makes a good product manager is the ability to assess multiple moving cogs, and make decisions that affect all different areas of the job. Your exact role will depend massively on what else the team is made up of, but as a product manager, be ready to stretch to fill shoes you weren’t certain you’d signed up for.
You mention that they are specifically looking for someone to help in product and marketing… that bodes well for you: I see two distinct ‘types’ of product managers in the product management continuum, a Technical Product Manager, and a Product Marketing Manager (and every variation in between). I can’t really code, and I know lots of PMs who can’t either.
For the interview, play on your strengths, and don’t worry about not being a coder!
Push the fact that you’ve got lots of experience in marketing, and in getting people sold on your ‘product’. Think about how your prolific social media work in the past can be applied here. Point out that you have an understanding of how to listen to users and turn it into tangible next steps (i.e. A user leaves feedback about how they didn’t understand how to change their password, your next steps are to figure out what’s wrong with the form.).Do you have any experience in marketing analytics?
For example, knowing which links a user clicked on in your email, and whether that resulted in a sign up, is all clearly part of a marketing function. These skills are easily translatable to product: What pages and features do you want users to interact with inside the app? Are you tracking this? Is there any thing you can do to make things more favourable? Consider what you know about analytics already, and be prepared to talk about how you’ll apply that.Design and UX are tightly intertwined with product and marketing.
Do you have a good eye for design? Can you throw together wireframes, even on paper, that make sense? This is, in my opinion, one of the most fun parts of the role! Find out who else is on the team in the design/UX area, and what kind of support they’ll need from Product. Get a feeling for where your strengths lay, and compare these to what the company already has.A big tenet of marketing is perceived value, and you’ll find that this carries through to your product.
People like things that feel swish. Think of the bounce at the end of pages when you swipe on an iPad, or a button that just looks and feels more clickable, or big friendly lettering that makes the user feel at ease with a scary form.You mentioned that you’ll be working closely with the development team.
For this, you’ll need a sympathy and understanding for the development process. Again, you don’t need to know how to code, but you do need to understand your developers’ resource constraints. Part of your product relies on it working consistently. You want it to be bug free, particularly in critical areas of usage – but you’ll have to understand that it’ll never be perfect. Another factor is the speed at which every page loads. This needs to be speedy, as users do notice the difference, even if only subconsciously. Also, if you’re expecting to grow in numbers or in data, your product will need to be scalable.Listen to your developers.
Understand that a good developer will want to do things right, and will want to make it perfectly bug free, speedy, efficient, and scalable. You don’t need to know how to do this yourself, but you need to be an advocate for this, but also communicate back to your development team why they need to work fast and accept shortcuts in order to get your product out the door.NB: I’m coming from a startup world, where getting it bug free is not mission critical, but getting it out early to test it with users is. If you were product managing a system for controlling satellite launches or securely sharing medical records, you can bet the focus would be different! Get a feel for what the company needs, and balance the product effectively.
You’ll need to make some tough calls.
You’ll have to keep in mind the needs of all stakeholders (your clients, your end users, your team, etc.) as well as realistic expectations of what can be delivered and what impact it’ll have. There’s no hard rule to effective prioritisation, and no matter how you cut it, your common sense (and eventually experience) will always play a big role in deciding what goes on the roadmap.Above all, a product role is a communication role.
You’ll need to help translate business needs to your development team, help your sales guys understand exactly what’s coming out of the development pipeline, coming up with ‘user-friendly’ terminology to explain the latest and greatest release. You’ll need to listen to your technical team and help feed back concerns to the rest of the business that may impact anything from that client demo scheduled the following afternoon to long-term growth on your platform. You’ll likely spend much of your day listening to all different areas of the business, and will be relied upon as the person most ‘in the know’ – and will have to make key decisions on what and how you communicate this to everyone else in your team and to your users.To boil it down, a product manager is a problem solver, a go-betweener, and a translator.
My favourite analogy equates a product manager to being the conductor in an orchestra: While they aren’t musician themselves, nor the composer, they understand what the audience is going to react to and how the orchestra can best pull it off. They know how it’s supposed to all sound together, and can communicate that effectively across a wide range of musicians in order to create a beautiful concerto.
I hope this unofficial guide proves to be useful for others. I wish my friend all the best with getting into this new role, but I also hope that this helps encourage a few other maybe-product-managers to jump into the field.
Triumphant Triathlon Trial
Last weekend, I took part in my first ever triathlon, urged on by my lovely (and infinitely tougher) colleague Charlie. To clarify, it was a mini triathlon: At 400m swim, 10km cycle, and a 5km run, it doesn’t even qualify as a Sprint. On top of that, it was an indoor event – we did the track in the comfort of The Third Space gym, using the pool, stationary bikes, and treadmills, in sets of 4 racers. It wasn’t exactly what you’d call hardcore, but as I learned, it was a challenge in itself.
I’d seen the signs up around the gym advertising the event… and lightly considered it. However, having practically no formal swimming practice (grew up on lakes and with a pool in my backyard, and so am well enough versed in swimming, but never took to grinding out lengths of front crawl fro fun), the idea of signing up scared me. How far is 400m when you swim it? Will I be able to keep up, or will I need to stop for my breath after each length? How, exactly, is one supposed to breath, and turn, and everything else, without looking like a complete newbie?
The other reason I had holding me back from signing up on the spot was the date. Falling on the morning of March 17th, this meant I’d be competing just a couple days after my trip to Austin for SXSW. SXSW was a huge inspiration but an absolute overload. Plenty of walking, but nothing that I’d call part of a fitness routine that’d get me prepped for a triathlon the following week. Certainly not after those ribs and the rest of the grub I chowed down on out in Texas!
However, given a light prod, I find it hard not to accept a challenge. I got in touch with the girl in charge, a very sweet but obviously very hardcore athlete under the pseudonym Hurry Harry, and found that there were just a few spots left. Harriet was kind enough to warn me that the slots left for the 10:00 and 10:30 start times would be up against a group of particularly competitive guys. I opted for the 9:30, but later secretly wished I’d taken on the larger challenge.
That said, as much as I told myself I was going to push myself and that I’d be okay… I was nervous come race day, not knowing what to expect. And recovering from a poorly timed cold at the time, I didn’t feel like moving much at all that morning. But I got up, dragged my butt to the gym, and got through the course.
So, how’d I do? Terribly, if you’re counting by time. Of the 30 or so competitors, I lagged behind, quite badly. Here’s what I clocked:
400m swim: 11.21
10km cycle: 20.17
5km run: 39.00
Total time: 1:10.38
I started off shakily, more nervous about my swimming form and the fact that I was being watched and timed than about how fast I was going to be able to go. But once I finished a length and realised I was already losing ground, my concentration was shot for good. Over the last few months, I’ve been thoroughly enjoying heading for a swim, getting lost in the rhythm. Something about having 3 others splashing alongside me though, clearly lapping me, was unnerving. And as you’re swimming and trying to time your breath, being unnerved is unpleasant. So is a mouthful of water, as I learned about 80 metres in. By the time I was finishing my last laps, the others had finished and moved to the change rooms to get ready for their cycle. I caught my breath, and completed the rest, at my own pace. By the time I was done, my arms were shattered and my lungs were tight. I was dying to get on to the cycle where I feel a little more grounded.
The problem with estimating your ability for your first triathlon is getting a feel for not only what each individual leg of the race will take out of you, but what combining the three means to your performance. I took it easy on the bike, not pushing the gears way up to shave a couple minutes off my time – I realised, probably a little too late, that I was going to need my legs as fresh as possible for the run. I hadn’t hit the pavement for months at this stage, and the 5km I once would have laughed at was now feeling daunting.
I closed in on the 10th kilometre, and took the 2 minute change-over period to refill my water bottle, only to realise my legs were weak and wobbly. My competitors had already taken off on their runs, and looked to be comfortably in stride on the treadmills.
Now, I hate treadmills. I’m sure it’s just a personal psychosis, but I can’t help feeling at peril, my legs always a tiny slip away from being tossed off the back of the machine. The feeling-like-a-hamster sensation plays a part too, and I didn’t start to feel like I was in the ‘zone’ until about the 4th kilometre. By this point, my shin splints were acting up badly, and my calves felt as if they were just going to seize up. I took it slowly, and punched the machine into a walk when needed. That’s the worst part about a treadmill, in my opinion. Unlike running on a pavement, where if you slow down or speed up, you just do so, on a treadmill, you’re forced to coax the machine into suiting your pace, desperately mashing on buttons that have woefully bad touch-sensitivity. This isn’t so bad when you’re starting, but by the time you’re exhausted, kicking the machine up or down in speed is more effort than it’s worth, but leaves your running pace feeling quite unnatural.
In the end, I got there. I finished. And I got a half decent grab bag to show for it (I wasn’t exactly going for the prizes!).
And now that I’ve got my first measurements, I know what times I’ve got to beat, and what to expect in order to beat them. Looking forward to the next one!
ProductTank Drinks meets SXSW
As ProductTank rounds its second year, we’ve built up plenty of momentum to start spreading out to other great cities around the world. Last month, we held our first non-London event, in Manchester, under the guise of ProductTank North.
This month, we’re moving even farther afield, with our first ever transatlantic ProductTank. Every year, tens of thousands of digital, film, and music folk descend upon Austin TX for the SXSW festival. The product management community in Austin is already thriving, thanks to ProductCamp Austin, and with a huge influx of tech minds in town that week, we saw this as the perfect opportunity to launch a ProductTank Drinks event.
If you’re in Austin that week for SXSW or otherwise, make sure to get your name on the list and get out to join us!
ProductTank Drinks
Date: Sunday, March 11th, 2012
Time: 2pm – 5pm
Location: Little Woodrow’s (520 W 6th St – Austin, TX 78701 – See Map)
We’re taking over the patio, taking advantage of the Texan afternoon sun and the wide range of beers that will be on tap. Come ready to meet product people from all over the world for some great networking in a relaxed atmosphere.
Hope to see you there!
Note: It’s not an official SXSW event, so you won’t need a SXSW pass/badge to come along.
Spotify finally spot on with their radio
There’s a only handful of SaaS products I happily shell out cash for. One of my most valued subscriptions, since 2009, has been for Spotify.
I use it several times daily, across all my devices, and constantly use it to share my tastes to my friends and the world (even though it’s disappointingly not available in my homeland of Canada where a good proportion of my friends are). I’ve got my gripes, particularly around the fact I can only sync to 3 of my 4 devices at the same time, but otherwise, I’ve constantly found delight in it, and regularly recommend it to others.
The largest of my gripes however, has always been in the discovery element of their product, showing me music I might actually like. In short, it’s been seriously lacking. Spotify knows full well what I prefer to listen to, and has never made much of an effort to help me find new music based on previous habits.
Until recently, that is, when I stumbled upon their updated radio feature.
Unlike the previous version of their radio (which weakly gave a small set of somewhat cliché genres to choose from), the new radio kicks off the moment you select a song from your library, instantly playing songs that actually really make sense in light of what I like.
Over the last week, I’ve barely turned the radio feature off, and have added a number of great songs into my usual playlists based on the tunes I’ve been able to stumble upon.
Finally, recommended music, exactly where I listen to it, with the ability to seamlessly add it to my growing collection already on Spotify. Simple, delightful, and spot on.
Kudos, Spotify.
Do more
This video is stunning.
It makes me want to get on the next plane, see more of the world, and while I’m at it, record and make something beautiful. I’ll think of this as a resolution of sorts.
Time is Nothing // Around The World Time Lapse from Kien Lam on Vimeo.
- Source: PetaPixel – A Year-Long Journey Around the World Captured in Time-Lapse
- Photographer Kien Lam quit his job last year and embarked on a 343 day backpacking journey around the world. He ended up traveling through 17 different countries and capturing 6237 photographs in the process. To share his incredible journey, he created this beautiful time-lapse video with short glimpses into various locations he visited. Each 2 second segment is made up of about 40-60 still photographs.
Gift Ideas for your Favourite Product Manager
With the holiday season just around the corner, we’re all scrambling to find the perfect gift for those who made a difference in our lives this year.
Have you got a product manager you’d like to treat to something special this holiday season? We’ve compiled a list of great gifts your producteer will surely drool over.
Ultimate Ears 600vi Noise-Isolating Headset
In the bustle of an active office, it can be tough to properly get your scope down and focus on either those finer details of a product or the larger vision. Tune out with a pair of noise isolating headphones, without having to lug around those massive over-the-ear equivalents.
£49.99 – Buy from Amazon.co.uk
Unlocked Wireless Modem Huawei E585
Nothing is more frustrating than needing to work on the go and having a lack of WiFi to back you up, especially now we’re all storing everything on the cloud. Having one of these wireless modems on hand will ensure your product is never floating up there without your support. Able to connect with up to 5 devices, this little gadget will make your coffee shop meetings that much more productive.
£79.99 – Buy from Amazon.co.uk
Aerobie AeroPress Coffee Maker
That afternoon cup of coffee can make all the difference in a product manager’s day, and having one of these stashed near your desk ensures you can get that quality caffeine kick without marching back down to the local shop.
£21.00 – Buy from Amazon.co.uk
Logitech Keyboard Case for iPad 2
For quick use, the iPad’s keyboard will do. But any product manager who needs to do some real work on on of these tablets would do well to have a proper keyboard on hand. This one serves as both a protective case and a keyboard for when you’re away from your desk but in need of typing something out.
£88.79 – Buy from Amazon.co.uk
Visual Complexity: Mapping Patterns of Information
The ultimate coffee table book for a data-loving product manager. This book looks at data in a variety of creative ways, all forming gorgeous arrays of lines, shapes, and colours, depicting complicated data sets. Pick up a copy to admire the graphs, or to take inspiration for displaying your own data sets.
£24.50 – Buy from Amazon.co.uk
Save time and get a more accurate picture of the proportions on a web page in the early design phases by using one of these wireframe pads. It depicts a blank web browser, and offers 960-grid guidelines to help keep things in line. It comes in two sizes, A4 and A5, and is the mark of a product manager who’s serious about their kit.
£14.10 – Buy from Digital Results
Whether it’s to relieve the pressure of a demanding day, or to aide the deep thinking process, a product manager needs something at hand to play with. Buckyballs are incredibly addictive, but serve as the perfect passive activity as you’re mulling things through at your desk. Build all sorts of forms as you’re building something bigger in your mind!
£26.29 – Buy from Amazon.co.uk
A product manager’s laptop is always at hand, and deserves the best for protective casing. We couldn’t find anything more luxurious yet understated, and therefore more deserving of our attention, than this HardGraft laptop sleeve. Features a handy sleeve for carrying around all of the little extras.
£69.00 – Buy from HardGraft.com
A notebook made for bringing product ideas to life: the guiding dot grid pattern on both sides of the paper is non-obtrusive, and allows for the interfaces and notes drawn upon them to take precedence. Bound in a pseudo-suede hard cover and featuring a handy portfolio sleeve and perforated pages, this should be a staple on any product manager’s desk in the new year.
£8.24 – Buy from Moo.com
This backpack is a perfect match of functionality, practicality, and beautifully minimalistic design. It’s fully military grade and will undoubtedly last years, and as the Goruck founder explains, much attention to even the smallest details has gone into this design. The velcro patch on the front allows any branding to be affixed, and otherwise, the outside of this pack is unmarked.
A perfect match for a product manager on the move.
$295 – Buy from Goruck
Time, ever forward
I’ve long held a particular theory about the world we live in, on the subject of time travel, that I’ve rehashed in my mind over the years. I’m not going to dig into the topics of parallel universes, alternate realities, or fate. But I will state this:
Time travel* never will be made possible, at any time in the future**.
Caveats:
* Useful time travel, that is. I’m sure we will do (and are already doing) astoundingly bizarre things with minute particles, frozen to near absolution, isolated in a vacuum, or measured in different time scales to those in which we live.
** Important point: In the future of humanity.
Reasoning
If it ever did exist, it will have opened up the flow of information backwards in time, inevitably leading to the technology landing in the hands of those of us in the present. At some point in the future, some misguided soul would have passed it back as far as our own generation and earlier.
Therefore, if time travel technology ever exists in the future, it would exist right now.
Let’s think to a time when all of this tinkering with physics over at the likes of CERN might actually turn into something. So far, we’ve zipped a few neutrinos through an isolated chamber at speeds faster than light.
That’s pretty damn cool.
But it’s not really going to change anything that’s applicable to our daily lives.
However, if the past has anything to teach us, it’s that we get better with these experiments with time, and eventually, once-’useless’ experimentation starts turning into great inventions. Electricity, light, microchips, etc… all started off as interesting but at their present time, mostly useless experiments that did little to shape how we lived at that time.
So I suppose we could say that if we were on to something with breaking the speed of light and defying the known laws of space/time, we’d be on the right track to make something of it. Over time, it’s conceivable to see that perhaps we’ll figure out how to multiply the effect of travelling faster than light, and perform the trick in much more favourable conditions. Eventually, I can see how we’d figure out a trick to sending collections of neutrinos or other particles to pre-determined ‘places’ in space-time, all programmed with bits of information. Over time, we’d surely be sending ever growing packets of information back in time in greater and greater leaps.
Now we’re getting somewhere. If this were to happen, what would happen next?
Inevitably, the latest and greatest military would find some compelling use case here, and fund the project until it provided some tangible benefit in warfare. Of course, at some point, the world’s largest conglomerates would want in on the action, realising the ROI on sending information backwards far surpasses paying overpriced strategic consultants to try to predict the future. Naturally, the City boys would find a way to conjure up some financial structures, creating products out of events that haven’t happened yet. Scratch that, this is already happening…. There’d be a demand for this technology, and where there’d be money, there’d be a steadily growing supply.
At some point, as the future presses on, these technologies will become more affordable, within reach of less regulated companies and the world’s hot-shot billionaires. Some genius, probably at Apple, will figure out how to get BackTime™ Technologies in the hands of consumers, at a tidy profit.
Not long after, of course, the burgeoning startup scene of the 2470′s dips into the cloud services of BackTime™, applying it to age-old problems like porn, dating, and photo sharing, all with interesting results (There’s a whole post that needs to be dedicated to exploring the possibilities here…) – given away for free, undoubtedly, clamouring for a piece of the market: 32 billion strong population of the GEA.
Kids of the future will wake up on XMas morning (having long forgotten that the ‘X’ in XMas did not originally stand for the international currency, Xeneps, although Hallmark Conglomerate Industries doesn’t do much to help that matter) to open BackTime™ Barbie and BackTime™ Laser Nerf toys. These sound dangerous, but really just lend themselves to a winter break of fun and games, playing dolls with yourself from a week in the past, and sneaking up to pop the kid in the neighbouring moon sector in the head with a foam ball before the shooter even pulls the trigger.
So yes, ridiculous as this all is, I’m making the assumption that if we get our current tinkering up to shape, it’ll be a short fall (time is relative, you see) into a world where everyone has their hands on the technology.
So what happens next in this theoretical future? Well, knowing humanity, it’ll get out of hand. Whether with good intentions or bad, someone, somewhere, will have the means to send information on how to develop such technologies back to themselves (or an ancestor), giving way for the chance of creating the technology earlier.
Rinse, and repeat. In no time (again, it’s relative), you will find that the technology itself was created long before it was… originally created. The arrow of time ceases to matter.
What does it all come to?
Our technology is evolving faster than our ability to cope with the implications. At the rate we’re going, we stand to build time travel technology faster than we learn to deal with it as a global society.
It’s based on the fact that we’re not seeing these implications in our present day (and in the past), that I’m hypothesising that it will never exist in the future.
This theory of mine is something I distinctly remember thinking through when I was about 11, probably after watching too much The Outer Limits. Over the years, I’ve reflected on this original stream of thought and come up with a number of explanations and alternatives:
- Technology roadblocks. Perhaps I’m right, and for all our efforts, we just never crack this one. Time goes forward, and we can’t change that with even the ever advancing tools we create to meddle with physics.
- Time runs out for humanity. Along the path to creating such advanced technology, something terrible happens, and we just don’t get the chance to live out our full potential as a species. Perhaps this climate change is our last blow, or a rogue asteroid, or global war, or zombie apocalypse. I’ve grown more cynical with age, and this one is rising my list of likely explanations.
- We screw it up. Similar to the point above, except directly pointing at the time travel technology itself. Somewhere along the line, passing back the BackTime technology, our society collapses from the implications. Economies would crumble, religion and cultures and everything we know would take a blow, societies would panic and rebel, wars would be won without ever being started. What could possibly go wrong? Everything. The technology exists in the future, but the moment it gets out of hand, humanity basically ceases to function to the point of being able to send back tangible information about what went wrong.
- We do learn how to cope. There is, of course, the remote possibility that by the time we figure out useful time travel technologies, we’re a more organised and responsible species. Perhaps, through self-control, tactful governance, and foresight, we’ll know better than to meddle with the past, even given the technology. However, I’ve not got my money on this one: We’re tens of thousands of years on as a species, and we’re still practically curious chimps, plagued by (for better or for worse) incessant inquisitiveness, a competitive nature, and hair loss. Our technology is moving in leaps and bounds, but we’re not showing much movement on the same scale. Increasingly powerful technologies will likely spell trouble.
Perhaps I’m wrong, and I’m missing a vital piece of the equation. I’m not claiming to have put anything vaguely resembling scientific thought into this.
… I don’t think I’d want to be proven wrong, however. Time. Forever destined to move forwards, or at least I would like to think for the time being…
Tame Your Roadmap
Your role as a product manager means you’re putting a lot of thought in to the long term vision of your product. We all know that, counting up all of the minute details you’ve got your finger on that you know will need to be accomplished along the way, getting this all into one page in the form of a roadmap will simply not be easy.
Too often, a roadmap becomes a tangled mess of blocks, arrows, notations, and scribbles. When fully digested and understood, sure, it might accurately depict where you’re taking the product, but it generally looks plain scary or incomprehensible to the rest of your company.
In order to keep your roadmap under control, remember its purpose: Your roadmap is supposed to be a visual representation of your long-term strategy.
It’s equally important to remember what it’s not: It’s not a Gantt chart, or a detailed release plan. It’s not a promise of delivery, or a depiction of user numbers or revenue.
Instead, it’s a high level look at how your product strategy will align itself with the business strategy and help the rest of the business meet objectives.
Choose the right format
The format of a roadmap is loosely defined – and that means you can shape it to suit your own needs. This might be as simple as a table within a Word document with a list of items within each column, representing the expected delivery for each quarter. It might also be complex, detailed out in a heavily formatted Excel sheet.
When I started off in product management, my first roadmap was simple, and over time, I developed it into a much more functional version that allows me to update quickly. I’m happy to share copies of a roadmap template I’ve created and iterated on using Excel.
Get the right level of detail
The roadmap shouldn’t include every feature you plan on releasing along the way. When it boils down to it, you’re putting a feature into the mix because it makes up a larger piece of the puzzle. Assuming you’ve got your priorities in line, those large pieces should make up a series of blocks that represent a business objective or a strategic goal.
Resist the urge to cram every feature into it, even for the short-term representation.
Make it visual
Break your roadmap up into streams or sections so that it’s clear which areas are setting out to achieve various business objectives or cater to various key users.
Use symbols or colours to depict associations or statuses. Make use of various shapes to outline a flow, or introduce dotted lines to insinuate uncertainty. This doesn’t need to be (and shouldn’t be!) complicated, but should aid the presentation of the items on the roadmap as a whole.
Finally, don’t be afraid to toss it out and start fresh when an old format doesn’t suit your current needs.
A mutual break-up with privacy
I used to be pretty intensely private about my life, at least when it came to sharing online. That started to change for me when I met Twitter, and slowly and tentatively started putting a little more of myself in the public eye with each tweet.
I’ve been exploring the new Timeline view in Facebook, and I love it.
I did, however, have a peek at what the ‘public’ sees when they visit my profile. Turns out a lot, despite my tight settings. Typical. I suppose this is the way things are going.
There’s a war on privacy here, and I’m giving up the fight. And I’m going to try to do it amicably.
Instead of fretting every time Facebook purportedly changes their layout and along with it, your sharing settings, I’m making my profile pretty much public to the world, and, as I would always be anyway, being mindful of what I post.
There’s not really much here any more that I wouldn’t have posted on Twitter anyway, and I realise that anything posted with even the most privacy settings is never guaranteed to stay that way.
This goes hand in hand with my more open ‘friending’ policy I’ve adopted over the last couple of years, as well as the increasing blending of my personal and professional lives.
I’ve made this point before: If I get turned down for a job, or turn off a potential partner because of something I’ve posted in the past, I probably am better off without that company or person.
It helps that I work and live in the tech world (as opposed to law or finance, where this kind of attitude is generally looked down upon), where my colleagues, peers and dates tend to live just as publicly as me, if not more.
In exchange for my private data over the years, I’ve had access to the fantastic services rendered by the likes of Facebook, Twitter, and Google, including not only a massive suite of tools to manage myself, my data, and my relationships, but also the creation of a digital experience that’s moulded to me.
I’ve gotten strange looks when I’ve said this in the past, but I like highly targeted ads. I’ve always liked advertising in general, but I love when an ad speaks to me, reminds me to do or buy something I probably had an interest in anyway, and allows me to interact with it.
So no, I don’t worry about my privacy, and I’m happy that we’re parting ways maturely and on such good terms.
But what do I worry about?
I worry about building a filter bubble I’ll never be able to see beyond, or scarily, realise that I’m even in. I like that my digital life is relevant to me, but I don’t want to be left ignorant of important events, news or knowledge just because some algorithms determine it’s not the type of thing I’d click on.
I hope to see a rebellion here, a series of services I can hook my existing digital self into that will help me explore the world outside my bubble without getting drowned in information.
More than anything, I worry about not owning any of this data. I realised the other day that my Facebook profile is among my most prized possessions – my contacts, my history, everything I’ve said and all of these cherished messages from friends for the last few years – and it’s something I don’t even own. In a snap, all of that history and information could be taken away, and I would be rendered heartbroken, as if someone had burned boxes full of my photo albums, diaries, and little black books.
Unlike other aspects of this greater issue of privacy, this data ownership is something that I can at least do a little something about. I’m going to be making an effort to publish more to here and push to my networks rather than the other way around. Now that my networks are essentially open to the world, I’m going to treat them like subscription channels into various aspects of my life, all fed from a central repository of all of the stuff I create online.
I look forward to being a whole lot more open with the world. As many of you already know, it states on my personal business card: Follow me, friend me, call me.
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