Steve Johnson on technology

Personal observations on technology products, music, Star Wars, and more.
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Telling great stories about technology management and marketing.

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2012 (90)
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2009 (14)
 

Learn about Reqqs | The Smart Roadmap Tool for Product People

Wouldn't it be great if no one could argue with your decisions? Reqqs will help with its objective requirements scorecard. Cut through the circular arguments by assigning definitive scores that balance value and effort, helping stakeholders see what's important and come to consensus. If it were any more scientific, you'd need a lab coat.

via reqqs.com

Hey, this looks pretty cool! Check out REQQS and see what you think. And leave your email so Bruce will know that you're interested. Maybe our mutual enthusiasm will help him get it finished sooner.

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4 Touchpoints for Buyer Intelligence | Ryma Technologies webinar

As a product manager, odds are you have to deal with strong opinions from sales people, senior execs, and others on what product capabilities should be added, removed, or expanded. So what’s the most effective way to determine what the top priorities are?

Sign up at cc.readytalk.com

I'll be joining Hakin Kilic of Ryma Technologies for a webinar on the 4 touch points of buyer intelligence. Learn when to incorporate the buyer's voice into your planning.

Sign up for the (free) webinar at https://cc.readytalk.com/cc/s/showReg?udc=eidmnki172pw

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Complexity is not to be admired » Primary Intelligence

Complexity is not to be admired. Our pricing, our configurations, our portfolios often become complex as we try to accommodate every conceivable customer. Look for the patterns in your wins and losses to see where complexity can be avoided.

via primary-intel.com

Simplicity. It’s not a complex idea but it’s often complex to implement.

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Tips for learning to write

Right now, I’m working on the overview part of the book where I summarize what I’ve found out about the methods people use to learn outside of school, the infrastructure they create for themselves, and the advantages they experience. This is the hard part! It’s where I really distill the knowledge I’ve gotten from the interviews and make some bold statements about how this all works.

via kickstarter.com

Every wondered how someone writes? Here's one person's method. Seems like a good way to organize your thoughts into a blog post or article or book.

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Why I hate sharing slides

As a self-professed psuedopsycho presentation snob, I hate that people find value in slide decks. So maybe that’s really it: I don’t hate SlideShare itself, I hate the fact that there’s demand for something like SlideShare.

via snarketing2dot0.com

I've had the same experience as Ron. People insist on getting my slides but those who've seen me present know that the slides are often unrelated to the talk. And certainly not representative of my talk. And so often, it's the conference organizers who are anxious to post my slides... FOR THE PEOPLE WHO DIDN'T ATTEND!

Why in the world??

Want the slides? Attend the presentation first!

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What the Heck is Agile? Joel Bancroft-Connors explains

What the Heck is Agile?

A blindingly simple question that is a lot harder to answer than one might think. Trust me readers, I will get to the answer, just bear with me a moment as I expound.

via thegorillaisnamedhogarth.blogspot.com

If you've been hearing 'agile' but you're not quite sure what it is, check out his post from Joel Bancroft-Connors.

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Nice tips by Cindy Alvarez on the Anatomy of a Great Talk

You’re not just giving your talk, you’re selling your talk.  And to do that, you need to tell me why it’s relevant.

via cindyalvarez.com

Nice tips by Cindy Alvarez on the Anatomy of a Great Talk.

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Happy Mothers Day from VMware

Ah, sentimental geeks...
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Gotta hurry! Sale ends on Friday so you can give it to mother on Sunday. 

Thanks to Mark Riffey (@MarkRiffey) for sharing

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Video Thursday: 1 Billion downloads

Yesterday, Rovio released this 21-second video to celebrate 1 billion downloads of Angry Birds.

Source: www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdTZOFeWiTI

Golly, could your marketing department do this? Deliver a piece with only one message. Only 21 seconds. No overt selling.

Nice.

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Alas, the poor agile product manager

It's sad that this is such a familiar story.

Manyproductowners

Source: http://www.romanpichler.com/blog/.

Development adopts agile and redefines all the roles including a new one: product owner. We don't have that title but since it has "product" in it, it must be the same as product manager. But since we're already understaffed, we can't allocate one product owner per team as required by Scrum. Instead, we get the already-over-committed group of product managers to add 'product owner' responsibilities to their job description. Now product managers are so busy reading aloud to development and making sure the developers follow their own process, product managers don't have time to do product management. And it's 1988 all over again; developers building cool shit and relying on sales heroics to make a sale.

And who gets the hickey? Product managers get RIF'd because clearly they aren't doing their strategic jobs. So very sad.

Sound familiar?

(PS. http://allthingsproductowner.com/ has many great articles to show how to avoid this scenario).

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