Steve Blank(1)

Quote #2

“So why so many organizations hire expensive and highly qualified engineers for developing software and then invest in a few-hours, general marketing courses for their marketing/business people?”

Donato Mangialardo (2)

(1) Blank has spent over thirty years within the high technology industry. He has founded or worked within eight startup companies, four of which have gone public. Blank is recognized for developing the Customer Development methodology, which launched the Lean Startup movement. Blank teaches and writes about Customer Development and is a consulting associate professor of entrepreneurship at Stanford.He currently lectures at the Haas School of Business, University of California Berkeley, Columbia University and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). @sgblank

(2) Donato Mangialardo is an unknown follower of Steve Blank. He helps  organizations to define, validate, build and market products for sustainable commercial success.  He has spent 10 years of his career in Silicon Valley where he learned how to learn. With focus on Product Marketing/Management. He is still learning a lot. He believes that there is nothing like “seeing the light in your customer’s eyes”. And he does see that from time to time. @donatomm

Rags Srinivasan has written a very interesting article.

Let me quote the first few paragraph:

• “We are now seeing the end of the freemium model — signing up users for free and trying to upsell,” said Christian Vanek, CEO of the Boulder-based SurveyGizmo, in a recent phone conversation.
• “6.5 million unique users is not all that it’s cracked up to be. I don’t want hits. I want revenue. I want a real business,” said Matt Wensing, founder and CEO of Stormpulse, in an interview with Mixergy.
• “Make a product people want to pay for,” said Marco Arment, founder of Instapaper, in a Planet Money interview.

Three easily available examples do not make indisputable evidence against freemium. Just like Dropbox, Evernote and RememberTheMilk do not make a case for freemium. But these three quotes reflect a return to the roots of marketing — starting with customer needs, choosing the needs you want to serve and getting your fair share of the value created.
Full article at http://bit.ly/QpLKiE

Does anyone know a way for authors (bloggers, content marketers, even magazine editors) to build rich-media digital publications without programming expertise?

Is there any tool that does cool digital publications like what WordPress does for me as a blogging marketing consultant?  I have no knowkedge of CSS, nor HTML5 and Javascript. Online reputation and awareneness are everything in my job. I find ebooks hard to read, especially the media rich ones. And I need infografics, interactive items (such as maps). Everybody does the free ebook stuff today. Ebooks are offline and disconnected from the social web. No social interaction with readers. No facebook likes.

I know I can go with a 3rd party building an app for me but I don’t have that budget.  And I can’t just committ to new app to be developed everytime I want to create my (wannabe super-cool) digital publications.

Besides, I hate to be “prisoner” of formats or app builders, and  I hate the fees I would owe the app stores like Apple & Android.

Am I asking too  much?
Does anobody share the same need?

• What market problem do you solve?
• For whom? What are the customer segments? (Buyer Personas)
• Unique Value Proposition. What is the primary reason why buyers will buy your solution? Is it unique?
• Solution (Usually, but mistakenly, referred to as “Product”): what ie the minimal feature set that can support (together with the other points) your value proposition?
• How the solution will be purchased by buyers?
• How to measure progress? What key activity do you plan to measure? Es. how subscribers respond to the solution over time, by using time based cohorts.
• Cost structure
• Pricing and Revenue model.  How do you make money?
• Business Sustainability: how hard to emulate is your Unique Value Proposition? It can be a technology platform, a powerful established channel, a level of awarensss in a segment etc.
• Customer retention and support strategy: once buyers become customers, how do you make them happy and loyal? How can you turn them into net promoters?

Anything  missing? Anyway, this is closer to “the Product”. Depending on business, there are main factors that describe how an organization creates, delivers & captures value.

Many, many thanks to the authors of the Next Startup Weekend http://bit.ly/QS7Ff1 for helping new businesses to suceed.  The other good news is that well established businesses can really take advantage of these principles and techniques. They match the problems I see everyday at my customers’. Even if the many things are still perceived as “crazy” in Italy today, things are changing rapidly. I do love my job.

Senza entrare nel merito di aree chiave come il management (vedi Management 3.0 di Jurgen Appelo @management30), ecco un manifesto che propongo per l’adesione ai principi di Market-Driven Business – approccio largamente trattato in altri articoli di questo blog.

Perchè scomodare la parola “manifesto”? Perche’ ricorda la nascita di “Agile”, con le dovute proporzioni e differenze. L’intento di questo manifesto e’ creare un esempio di dichiarazione comune di principi, approcci ed intenti ai quali un team intende aderire perche’ ne conosce l’importanza e l’efficacia. Ovviamente deriva dall’ esperienza reale maturata lavorando con teams di prodotto. Qui viene proposto come elemento di discussione, più che di “pubblicazione di un vero manifesto”

A Market-Driven Manifesto for Product Development

Abbiamo valutato e condiviso un approccio e delle metodologie a cui intendiamo aderire in ogni nostra attivita’.
Ascoltare il mercato ed il cliente è una condizione necessaria per il successo di qualsiasi progetto.
Ogni nostra azione è volta alla creazione di valore per il cliente.
Per cui:

• Non produciamo software senza Requisiti.
• Non produciamo Requisiti senza Contesto di Business.
• I Requisiti sono sempre descritti dal punto di vista della “User Persona” e includono sempre il Valore, il Beneficio per il Business:

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As a (Persona) …I need to ….so that…..(why important, Value)
Acceptance criteria
Priority

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• Abbiamo deciso di adottare il metodo dei Requisiti “Diamante” perchè ci permettono di legare il Business con le Specifiche Funzionali:
• Includono criteri di accettazione, da cui inferire se il requisito è stato soddisfatto.
• I criteri di accettazione sono sempre nella forma dei Requisiti sopracitata
• La “User Persona” e le Priorita’ sono derivate dall’interazione costante col cliente, diretta e indiretta.
• Sappiamo che alcuni requisiti possono cambiare ed è nostro dovere adattarsi.
• La condivisione di mockups e prototipi  col cliente è il nostro metodo preferito di progettazione e validazione.
• I dettagli emergono da frequenti interazioni col cliente e dalla profilazione dello User Persona
• Risolvono un problema end-to-end

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• Ascoltiamo sempre il cliente, ma riconosciamo che spesso non sa cosa vuole o che problema ha.
• È nostro dovere capire il problema che vuole risolvere per poter creare la migliore soluzione ad esso (per cui chiediamo 5 volte “perchè”).
• Conosciamo la differenza tra “requisiti” e “richieste del cliente” e conosciamo il valore, per un prodotto,  di trovare la soluzione ad un problema pervasivo, invece quello di fare esattamente quello che ci chiede il cliente.

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• Ogni meeting inizia con una lista di obiettivi e si conclude con risposte e/o tasks specifici.
• Anteponiamo sempre meetings in presenza o via voce a discussioni via email.
• Conduciamo uno standup meeting giornaliero per allinearci e vedere se ci sono elementi bloccanti

Proponenti: (lista)

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Ora, molti si chiederanno il significato o la definizione di vari termini come “User Persona”, “Diamanti”, tipo di “Requisiti”, etc, e varie domande come “ma chi ce li da ‘sti requisiti? Noi dobbiamo andare avanto col prodotto, non possiamo perdere tempo” oppure “ma chi ci da il contesto di business” etc., etc.

Ma prima di porvi queste domande, provate a vedere se la vostra organizzazione segue questi principi generali. E se avete domande, sono qui per rispondere!

Articoli correlati:

• Market-Driven? Cosa Significa?
• Il CEO e i suoi Diamanti
• “Request” and “Requirement” – the difference
• Good Requirements Relate to Business

1. I want the confidence that my product goes where we want it to go. I don’have it today.
2. The product does not sell! What’s wrong? How to fix that?
3. The product sells but not enough in this segment
4. Going up (or down)market: what the product should be like? How much it will cost me?
5. Going global: what the product should be like? How much it will cost me?
6. Need guidance for the next generation of products. We have a new vision to achieve. We need help
7. How do I make sure that what we are building is right? We have invested a lot!
8. Is there a way to tell whether my requirements will deliver against the expected product?
9. Is there a solid, simple way that is able to tell my company “you are following the right direction” (or  at least the one you have decided to set)
10. How to build roadmaps that serve business goals? (vs. good-looking, time-consuming slideware with unrealistic, wishful milestones ?)
11. Marketing people produce tons of sales tools, brochures and presentations. But my sales people say “they are useless” and don’t use them. What’s wrong?
12. I want that my sales people sell what we must sell, not what it is easiest for them to sell, and I need marketing to support that.
13. There are a lot of ideas, inputs from sales and pressures from individuals about “top, critical priorities”. Or… “we won’t sell without this or that”. I want to make sure we do the right product for the business. I want clarity.
14. We spend a lot of time debating features with development. Often it sounds like a war between opinions and I am not able to help much. I want to make sure we have someone driving our offering for measurable benefits for my business. I do not want fights!
15. We spend way too much energy toward several directions without getting the expected results, our competition is killing us. Time for change. but.. change what? Where do I start from?
16. Every decision we make is an ordeal. Not to mention fights, politics and internal wars.  I want my line managers to be more aligned, efficient, with clear, shared goals in mind (the same ones).  A sort of “autofocus” mechanism that points to my business’ priorities
17. I need a methodology that allows me to make informed, intelligent decisions that do not take into account personal agendas and internal politics

What are the ones that are more familiar to YOU?

All of a sudden a large, almost full-screen menu opens interrupting my chat. It’s skype telling me that it’s going to shat down the chat to perform a software upgrade.

I hit “NOT NOW” or so.

I restart the conversation (which at that point involved discussions over my desired presents, like fishing tackle, gizmos etc).

After a few seconds the monster menu opens again with a scary countdown bar

I hit the “NO” button again

I chat for a few secs

The menu appears again with a countdown

I hit “NO”

The menu appears again with a countdown

I hit “NO”

Skype closes and starts upgrading.

And it says ” we are improving your customer experience, it will take only a few minutes”

RIGHT!

Our business is creating software products. We know that “Value” means “providing Benefits to the customers”.

By Product we simply intend “any source of value for customers”.

Now, we are at a time where everybody here at tecnotec13897 is extremely excited for the following reasons

• We got a new, great idea, a vision for a new product that we believe it will be a groundbreaking innovation
• We are proud of what we plan to release to the world. It will improve many things
• We have got a solid strategy in place
• Our team is composed of very smart people who work very well together in a self-directed manner
• We are thankful for being able to count on an inspiring, principle-centered, strong management team
• We know that success depends on the ability to learn how to make repeatable what we have done so far
• We have put great infrastructure in place to open the road for scaling up when it’s time
• We have a robust yet very feasible and crystal-clear business plan that has been happily signed off by all stakeholders
• We have a very well working and well-managed Agile methodology in place, since 2003 and we are now using Lean Agile

We have built our product.

We have tweaked it, fixed some issues, added a few features and shipped again

The conclusion we have to draw is always the same

Our intended customers don’t like our product

They simply won’t buy it

- o -

Using Eric Ries’ words,

we have

successfully

faithfully

rigorously

executed a plan to achieve failure

WHY?

Because we did not know what our customers wanted

Or, worse, what they actually needed

We did not know who our customers were supposed to be

How are they rewarded in their job, what’s their environment like. What are their top-of-mind issues.

What problem they have. How critical that is. How urgent is for them to solve it. How pervasive is that problem in the market of customers we intended to sell our product into

How are they rewarded in their job, what’s their environment like. What are their top of mind issues. What problem they have. How critical that is. How urgent is for them to solve it. How pervasive is that problem in the market of customers we intended to sell our product into

We did not know about them. What they love, what they hate, what is a perfect day for them, what they are afraid of.

We did not know how they buy, when they research what, how do they get the information they seek about the problems they want to solve

Instead of focusing to the landing field, we were piloting a plane focusing to ourselves or to other non-landing related targets.

Have you ever been there? Please share your story

This will be the topic of my talk at Better Software 2012

http://www.bettersoftware.it/2012/programma

Your organization builds products.

A product is, simply stated, any source of value for your customers. It can be a service, a phone, a candy, a Cloud Platform for B2B apps.

Value means providing benefits to your customers

Your organization has the following :

Then you ship the product.

Your customers don’t like it. They don’t buy it.

Outcome:

Your dream organization  has been successfully, faithfully rigorously executing a plan to achieve failure (Eric Reis, The Lean Startup)

This is why I spend every day of my week helping organizations to make sure they know their customers, their buyers, the problems they have and that we can help with our current and future products.