I attended Product Camp Atlanta last weekend hosted at the Georgia Tech Research Institute Conference Center. It was my first product camp, so the only knowledge of format and content I had going in was from the description on the web site. The topics of the conference focused on product management and marketing which are the two primary areas of my career experience and interests.
Overall I was pleased with my decision to go to the all-day camp. Time was given to the sponsors to introduce themselves since they provided the financial backing to make the event possible. However, it was very non-intrusive to the day and didn’t come off as a sales pitch. Participants voted on a list of possible break-out session subjects that were submitted by other participants. This allowed the group to discuss a variety of topics over the course of the day. Each hour there were four choices so that participants could pick a session that matched their interests. In my opinion, the best sessions were those where the speakers facilitated a discussion rather than giving a presentation. I say this because my understanding and expectation in attending the conference was that the sessions would be more collaborative and discussion oriented. For the most part, I felt speakers honored this conference format.
Here are four random takeaways that I recorded during the sessions:
1. Value of business cases
Removes pet features
Keeps discussions on merits of the features
Removes emotion
I liked this thought because typically businesses case development gets a lot of groans and whining when people mention the topic. It’s not easy to complete a business case, but it does provide and important function for the business to adequately allocate resources to work. This bullet list provides a quick and easy-to-understand value for the effort expended on the business case.
2. The voice of the customer is more relevant than your individual job tenure, experience, or credentials
The context of this quote came in a discussion about how a cultural shift is needed to take learnings from the classroom to the operations of a business. When we attend conferences, take classes, or receive training we often come back to our organizations with great ideas and learnings. But implementing these ideas is another story, especially if we are the only member of our business to receive the new knowledge. It requires a cultural shift to implement learnings. Tools that give us an insight into the voice of the customer are readily available, but often overlooked.
3. Google Wave was not in use by most of the attendees
Well, at least for those attending a break out session on this topic. The tool holds promise as a format for real time collaboration but needs to overcome concerns related to security of information to gain wide acceptance in a corporate environment. It should be noted that the product is still in Beta at Google and it hasn’t been publicized widely. Google is using a viral marketing technique to create awareness about wave. You have to be invited by an existing participant to join.
4. Solve for competing priorities by using a percentage based resource allocation strategy
In one session we discussed various methods and techniques for resource allocation and project prioritization. One way to complete development team resource allocation is by dividing the time against development areas on a percentage basis:
x% new development
y% architecture
z% support/defects
I liked this thought because its easy to overlook the need for architectural updates and support items in favor of new development. This is especially true for mature software products where the architecture may no longer be new or the list of defects may have grown with the passing of time.
I’m looking forward to the next Product Camp in Atlanta. It’s a great time for sharing, learning, and networking.
Two events on my schedule this week revealed to me a maturation of business learning in our culture. It’s pretty exciting for me to see these transformations, and I know they’ll continue to evolve in the future.
The first event was high school orientation for my daughter. She’s a rising freshman and we were invited into the local high school for a brief overview of the curriculum. What surprised me the most was the abundance of business related electives that are now available to students. At our local school there is a full department named Business Education. Some of the course areas include engineering, marketing, video production, and computer science. I don’t know which of these might appeal to my daughter yet, but it’s really great to see the options available. Kids can really benefit from this because they can try things in college to see if they have a passion for it. For my age group, we didn’t really try things until college. It can be an expensive decision to experiment with classes in college not only due to the class fees, but also because of any rework associated with changing majors.
The second event is one that I’ll be attending tomorrow called ProductCamp Atlanta. The website provides a good description of this that I’ll quote here:
ProductCampAtlanta is a collaborative, user organized professional conference, focused on Product Management and Marketing topics. At ProductCampAtlanta everyone participates in some manner: presenting, leading a discussion, showcasing a best practice, or sharing their experiences. Others help with logistics, securing sponsorships, organizing sessions, or setting up/cleaning up. This is a self organizing collaborative event that is designed be a fun, rewarding and a unique experience.
The product camp follows on recent business book themes about Tribes and Crowdsourcing. It’s different than traditional conferences because it’s not about vendor booths or sales pitches. It is about collaborative learning and knowledge share. I’m looking forward to spending the day with others in my tribe and sharing some thoughts and insights in my writings on this blog.
I read Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable by Seth Godin over the weekend because it is a work that is referenced from time-to-time in my other reading and Seth Godin has a good reputation within the marketing industry. The book is becoming a little aged at this point in time, as it was published in 2003. Despite the hype and reputation of the book, I didn’t feel like it lived up to what I was expecting. I jotted down four key thoughts that I remembered after finishing the book:
Look for ways to make your product or service remarkable or memorable (like a purple cow) so that your most loyal audience will become evangelists for you. The idea here is that your most loyal customers will tell others within their circle of influence about your product and they’ll be more likely to listen to them rather than traditional advertising that most people have learned to tune-out.
Don’t think outside the box, rather think around the edges. Innovate by offering the same product and service in ways that no one else is doing or that has not been tried by others in the past.
Identify and serve a niche of customer. The point here is that you shouldn’t try to be all things to all people. If your product is too generic, it will be unremarkable and boring. Don’t be afraid to receive criticism from one segment because it will likely mean that you are appealing to a specific audience in another segment.
Safe is risky because it’s boring and forgettable. The largest part of this discourse talked about large corporations or companies with mature products that make safe decisions in order to protect the business and profits for the product. To be clear on this topic, Mr. Godin wasn’t saying that safe decision making didn’t have its part in business. In fact he recommended that if you have a mature product that is healthy and bringing good profits that you do maintain the status for that reason. The profits should be used to explore new areas of business or new ways to position your existing product. Without innovating and looking for new products and services your product will become unremarkable and die.
Now there were other points and takeaways from the book. But as I said, these are the ones that stuck with me as I finished the read. As I look back over this list, these are not new ideas or break-through thoughts. They are important concepts though and ones that many play-it-safe organizations don’t think about or realize. So the message of the book is important for all business leaders to understand. If the ideas are new to you or one’s you’d like to understand more about then pick-up the book. It’s a quick read. If they are concepts that you have already read and understand then you should move along. This isn’t the purple cow you thought you saw.
This is my fifth post on the defining elements of an eCommerce Operation. Previously, I’ve written about management in the areas of solution ownership, content management, product management, and demand management. In this post I’ll explore elements related to the metrics management of the group.
The term metric in this case refers to a measurable unit of an item that is relevant to the success of the eCommerce operation. Typically, management will also specify a few key performance metrics or key performance indicators to provide focus on those with direct correlation to business success. The measurements are intended to be a measure of success against some threshold. That threshold might be a value set by previous baseline or it could be a stretch goal to show improvement in a certain area. Within the eCommerce group I’ll call out the areas where its important to have metrics.
Web Analytics
Web site analytics provide information about how many people are visiting your site, what actions they take, information about their purchase, and other metrics about their identity. This area is important because it assists with determining if your merchandising tactics are working to close sales or provide customers with answers to service needs. Common metrics in this area include:
number of visitors
number of cart abandonments
number of session abandonments
number of purchases
geographic location
referral source (organic, link, keyword, etc.)
keywords or adwords used for entry
Customer Involvement
Metrics for customer involvement include traditional survey results but have expanded in recent years with the advancement of social media. Marketers now have the ability to measure customer involvement through other techniques such as Twitter, Facebook, blog comments, and customer reviews. Results in customer involvement can be both qualitative and quantitative. Common metrics in this area include:
number of customer reviews
average ratings on customer reviews
customer feedback on survey questions
number of customers participating in discussion groups or fan pages
reach of customers as followers
Financial
Metrics related to sales of your products and services are also part of metric management. Depending on your business, you may look to measure revenue, average cart purchase amount, product up-sell statistics, or retail value. When measuring the financial results of the operation be sure to specify if the metric is taken from the web site analytics or the back office reporting. It’s important to note that the numbers may vary slightly based on the ability of customers to cancel, modify, or return their order after its placed on your web site.
Channel
Metrics related to channel are used to measure the effectiveness of the Internet channel compared to other channels such as phone, paper, or retail store front. In some businesses, it’s important to get as many Internet orders as possible if it provides the lowest cost to service. In other cases, it may be more desirable to have channels work in tandem to capture a sale in anyway possible. Create goals on channel usage and then measure the percentage of orders that come in by each channel. You should also keep the financial metrics split by channel.
Product
Metrics related to products will involve the type, attributes, and quantity of products sold on an eCommerce site. Cross-sell and up-sell metrics belong in this group. Common metrics in this area include:
items per order (IPO)
number of SKUs sold
optional attributes purchased
I added these elements of the eCommerce organization to the concept diagram that I’ve grown with each post. This updated image shows the eCommerce operation that I have discussed so far. I have a few other areas to add so stay tuned. ( Select the diagram to expand it.)
eCommerce Operation with metrics management included, more areas pending (merchantstand.com)
I’ve experienced different management styles, cultures, and organizational lay-outs during my professional career in large organizations. Over the years I’ve noticed several attributes of large groups that are present regardless of the organizational design. One of these attributes is something I’ll call Organizational Entropy. I define this as a measure of disorder or randomness by which work is created within an organization. In multi-matrixed organizations (found in large companies) this ultimately causes workers to be out of alignment. This misalignment isn’t necessarily with organizational goals, rather it’s more so a timing alignment with other workers. The main thought is that there is a randomness to how work gets done when resources are assigned (matrixed) to multiple projects. Person A is working on project X and needs person B to help. The problem is person B is working on project Y so person A must wait.
Does your matrixed org chart lead to organizational entropy?
I’ll break this down a little for discussion. Employees in large organizations become matrixed in one or more ways. This might be functional areas, project assignments, or operational responsibilities. Typically, resources are added to projects but are expected to maintain their current operational responsibilities. The Project Management Office manages project work but not support work or anything classified as “run the business”. So ultimately there is a big challenge between project managers and functional managers in the areas of project and support workload for each employee.
In addition, resources tend to be matrixed across multiple projects. This is where the organizational entropy is present. When a worker needs to reach out to someone on the same project team, that person is not necessarily working on the same project at that point in time. This is creates a randomness and disorganization to the output for the project because the employee has to wait for the availability of the other employee before completing the task. You can see that in this simple model, both employees are organizationally aligned because they are working on approved projects. But their timing is not synchronized, so the project output is random. Now multiply this by 100, 200, or even more employees. Now think about the complex web of interdependencies that exist within a heavily matrixed organization. That leads to organizational entropy.
Mike Cottmeyer writes about this very issue with a different angle in his post The Problem with Big. Mike shows how project teams become stressed when members have other competing priorities. This often results in team members becoming more focused on schedules than on the value of their output. It’s a good read and worth your time.
To close out my thoughts on framing this concept of organizational entropy, I’ll say that it doesn’t prevent organizations from completing work. Life and work within large groups continues to move forward despite inefficiencies in process. In my mind, the challenge is how to make the system more efficient for achieving the desired end goals. I’m interested in your thoughts on this topic. Have you been involved with a company that efficiently split work between projects and run the business activities? Do you have ideas about how to reduce the amount of randomness in organizational output?
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It was my first product camp, so the only knowledge of format and content I had going in was from the description on the web site. The topics of the conference focused on product management and marketing which are the two primary areas of my career experience and interests.
by Seth Godin over the weekend because it is a work that is referenced from time-to-time in my other reading and Seth Godin has a good reputation within the marketing industry. The book is becoming a little aged at this point in time, as it was published in 2003. Despite the hype and reputation of the book, I didn’t feel like it lived up to what I was expecting. I jotted down four key thoughts that I remembered after finishing the book:
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