Category: Uncategorized
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What Should Go Into a CMDB
It’s not every day that information technology work leads you into philosophy, but designing a configuration management database will do it. Spend a little while thinking about what is known or even knowable about the services you’re trying to provide and the entities that compose them, maybe you’ll end up…
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Planning your Year
The plan is maybe accurate, but probably not. The act of planning is a useful time to step back, evaluate strategic position and rethink investment. Using financial targets is a mechanism. If target is thirty percent growth, does the product org have a realistic answer for how that will happen?…
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Using a Technical Edge in Products
“Don’t worry about people stealing an idea. If it’s original, you will have to ram it down their throats.” — Howard Aiken Innovative technologies are different than what came before. Product buying patterns are based on what has come before. If you have an innovative technology you will need to…
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Two Types of Questioning
Answers to questions can easily fit into two flavors: operationalized and free-form. Classify the use cases: there’s the questions you know how to ask, and the questions you don’t know to ask yet. A question that you know how to ask is operationalized. You’re looking for yes, no, or broken,…
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The Mystical Art of Getting New Things Done
The process isn’t actually mystical: it’s selling an idea to everyone who must work together to execute it. People who would use it. People who will fund it. People who will build it. People who will sell it. Eventually, people who will buy it. Tell people what you want to…
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A Simplistic View of Venture Capital
I have a lot of conversations with people. 1:1’s, interviews, &c. When the opportunity arises, sometimes those who’ve done startups will talk about their experiences. There’s sometimes a flag in those conversations about startups that raises my hackles. It’s a description of the money raised as if that were a…
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Data Value and Volume are Inversely Proportional
In 2006, Clive Humby coined the phrase “Data is the new oil”. This is often misinterpreted as “Data powers the economy”, particularly by folks who sell data processing and storage, but it’s useful to see what someone who actually uses data says. In 2013 Michael Palmer, of the Association of…
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Product Tempo versus Deal Tempo
Going from sales engineering to product management was a jarring transition at first, because it represented a change in tempo. As a sales engineer, I lived by the fiscal quarter. While a given customer might be a multi-quarter job to convert, my sales partners and I had money to make…
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What does a Director of Product Management do?
I’ve written up some thoughts for the regular work of product managers and product management interns, but have not yet written about the next level up. What’s day to day like when you’re not just helping one team? What makes a director level product manager? Just like the definition of…
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The Innovation Team
A successful company grows. In growing from dozens to hundreds of employees, the company forms a culture of innovation that attracts an extremely capable individual: generalists who also have great depth, potential entrepreneurs, geniuses who can Get Shit Done. They build content, they build sales motions, they turbocharge they company’s…
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