At the tender age of 15, I decided I wanted to become a chef. Being a strict vegetarian at the time (borderline pain-in-the-ass-vegan – no disrespect to my vegan friends), I decided the traditional chefing paths weren’t for me (too many animal bits), so I found myself working at Laurie’s Vegetarian Restaurant as a salad hand and cook’s assistant. I have many stories about my time there, but I’ll try to stick to the point of this post and tell you a little about how and why Genevieve Maynard impressed me.

It was a cold winter morning, around 5.43am and I just arrived at work to start my day – first up, bake the vegan muffins, then prep the vegetables for lunch. I did a lot of prep… mostly cutting bags full of partially rotting onions, mincing chili and (the worst job of all) shredding cheese with an antique electric grater that spewed flecks of cheese all over the kitchen and sat ominously waiting to munch on my chili stained fingers.

Now, you have to remember, I was 15 years old. Genevieve was (and no doubt still is) older, wiser and far cooler than I’ll ever be. She rode a bike, played base, had dreds, acted tough and commandeered the kitchen with style. In contrast, and much like most 15 year olds, I lacked respect for my elders, had an annoying high pitched voice (which hasn’t changed much over time), and I thought I knew everything about everything. So, I’m guessing I annoyed the shit out of Gen, and I’m surprised with all the knives in the kitchen that she managed to resist the urge to stab me (or at least scare me a little).

Anyway, I digress.

On this one particular morning, I was doing my usual prep. We were making lentil casserole, so I needed to chop up celery (amongst a range of other ingredients). I walked into the coolroom to grab the aformentioned celery.

Now, remember, it was a cold wintery morning, and coolrooms are, as you would expect, cold. I diligently scanned the coolroom alas the celery was nowhere to be seen (ie. I walked in, thought ‘fuck it’s cold’, then walked back out again). Upon exiting the coolroom, I said (in my squeaky 15 year old voice):

“Gen, where’s the celery?”

At this point, there was utter silence in the kitchen. Then Gen turned around, knife in hand, scowl faced and said:

“OPEN YOUR FUCKING EYES!”

So I did. And I found the celery.

I don’t know if it was my impressionable age, or the murderous look on Gen’s face, but this gem really stuck with me. So much so, that to this day whenever I’m looking for something, an object, a solution to a problem, my house keys etc, I still hear Gen’s words of wisdom, which is why, Genevieve Maynard is #1 on my list of people who impressed me.

Sadly (for me, not for her), I don’t see Gen anymore, though I’m always pleased to see that her music career took off.

So, who’s impressed you lately?

Tip: See Gen’s advice above – and trust me, it really does help in so many ways.

Here’s a few things I’ve learnt over the past few years in product management:

• Responding to the community is not the same as reacting to the community
• Good communication does not mean ‘I sent you an email’
• ‘Agile’ does not have to be fragile
• ‘Now’ means ‘now’, not later
• Managing remote teams is difficult, but it is a great way to learn about another culture
• If you’re not failing somewhere, you aren’t trying hard enough
• Extreme programming does not require a crash helmet
• Team bonding often occurs late at night (usually coinciding with server meltdowns or releases)
• ‘Ruby on Rails’ is not a new Mattel product (nor a porno)
• Just because you can use Photoshop, it doesn’t mean you know good design
• Metrics and site statistics are only part of the story
• People can hear when you are smiling
• When communicating with your legal team, the term ‘privileged’ comes in handy
• Sometimes it’s helpful to be a ‘jack of all trades’
• A ‘no-one leaves the building’ policy is handy around release time

So, before I sign off and head to #shtbox for drinks, a huge thanks to the following people:

Rob & Nick – Thanks for all your support. I appreciate the confidence you have in me and look forward to working with you again in the future.

To the team at Pollenizer… You know I love you guys (esp. Jon, Mick & Phil – but the rest of you rock too)! Thanks for all your wise words and advice. And Mick – thanks for ensuring focus and helping me define my path.

To the X-Minds team… It’s been a fun journey and I appreciate all your hard work over the last 2 years.

To the Exist/Sydneo team… You guys are truly awesome! Jason Torres – it was such a pleasure working with you and getting to know you! I hope to meet you and the team F2F one day

To @armyofdolls … Thanks for supporting me through the craziness. I hope to return the favour one day.

And to all the people I met with, leached ideas off, explored new ventures with, and especially to all the Product Mavens… you really inspired me to do so many, many, many things (not least of which included setting up Product Mavens and taking a last minute holiday to Thailand over Xmas!).

So who’s joining me for drinks?

Over and out.

Mishy

Ps. If you’re thinking that this post was inspired by @dekrazee1 then you are 100% right! Rai, you are the community queen & I wish you the best of luck for the future!

Throughout 2009, I struggled to find the right tool set for the product development and roadmap planning. I was mostly working with external resources, with limited budgets and I also made the switch from PC to Mac, so there were a lot of adjustments.

I moved from Visio to OmniGraffle and from MS Project to Omni-Plan, but what I found for the most part, was that there are a lot of tools out there that achieve similar results, so it’s not the ‘technology’ that’s important, it’s how you use it.

My advice? Have a plan in place, not only for ‘project management’, but for yourself personally, as a Product Manager. Know that for internal concept work, you are only going to use quick and dirty tools like Skitch, and you’ll only consider wireframing tools once you know the concept is solid. Have a plan, and be brave.

Here’s some of my favourites from 2009 which I plan to continue using in 2010…

Planning tools
OmniPlan for roadmaps and Green-hopper/Jira for issues management and sprint planning

Wireframing tools
OmniGraffle for basic wireframes (recommend the Pro version only), Skitch for super quick mark-ups, Jing for video screen captures, and Photoshop for more detailed designs. I also find Formspring (and similar form creation tools) useful – it’s particularly helpful for demos, so you can actually show your colleagues/clients a working prototype of your forms (with conditions etc).

Document management
Confluence for ‘wiki’ style communication, GoogleDocs for document collaboration (not the most advanced tools, but they are reliable and easy for everyone to access) and drop-box for file sharing.

(I can see a pattern emerging in my personal usage with OmniGroup and Atlassian products, but I’m no loyalist, so if you have any other recommendations, I’m open to ideas!)

I’m also keen to try Google Wave as a collaboration tool for product planning. After all, it’s been designed as a collaboration tool, so it will be interesting to see the uptake in industry.

The other tool I’d like to use more in 2010 is my voice. In 2010, I’d like to have more phone calls, more skype talks, more face to face meetings, more voiceovers on my videos, more informal chats and overall, more vocal communication. Tone conveys so much, and without it, so much is lost. Emoticons just don’t cut it anymore.

In keeping with my voice-activation aspirations for 2010, I’ve arranged a F2F meetup for Product Mavens – our first meetup for 2010!

When: Thursday, 21 Jan, from 8.30am onwards (til about 10am)

Where: Cook & Archie’s 1a/4 Buckingham St, Surry Hills

Topic: What tools or frameworks will you be using to plan your product roadmap and related activities for 2010?

Hope to chat with you soon!

The situation is desperate and Red Cross are calling for your support.

Here’s how you can help:

• Australians can donate via Red Cross Australia.
• Americans can donate via American Red Cross
  
• Or donate directly to Red Cross Philippines
  

If you’re not in a position to contribute financially, you can also volunteer (or starve a vampire and find a blood drive in your area).

To find out more, check out your local Red Cross.

Thanking you in advance for your support.

Mishy

ps. Thx to @helloluis for use of your images and for keeping me up to date.

Sometimes, I find it easier to understand a process when I don’t apply it to my ‘area of expertise’. Whether my product is the next Twitter of Facebook, or if I’m simply planning to make a birthday cake, the process is essentially the same.

You’re probably wondering at this point how pesto fits into product planning? Well, wonder no more!

Pesto is a super simple product, so it serves as a great test case… but don’t be fooled! There are tonnes of user cases. There’s lots of flavour options (I often make coriander & almond pesto, carrot pesto etc). There are many competitors. And within pesto ‘the category’, there are a myriad of product lines. Each product line suited to a different market segment … a different vision.

Let’s start with a quick poll…

If you have a great product planning process, then you probably shouldn’t read this. But feel free to add your comments and tips below!

I think the key to a great product is great planning. And it’s hard to have a great plan without a great process. Today, instead of using dry ingredients like sign up screens and server loads, let’s look at the high level product process through pesto goggles.

Have you ever made pesto? No? Well, then let’s start with a basic recipe: Combine basil, garlic, pine nuts Parmesan or Pecorino cheese and olive oil.

It’s dead easy. Right?

WRONG! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve eaten horrid pesto (think: that jar of pesto that’s been sitting in the back of your friend’s fridge since 1986).

Revisiting focus!

In an earlier blog post, I spoke about (brutal) focus, broken into the following sections (thx @liubinskas)

• Vision
• Market Segment
• Core Feature
• Key Metric

As we learned earlier, pesto has 5 simple ingredients: basil, garlic, pine nuts, cheese and olive oil. But it’s dead easy to fuck up.

Let’s journey through this process to start up Mishy’s Multinational Pesto Corporation Pty Ltd, which will no doubt be cash flow positive by year end.

Vision:

For the pesto product plan, my vision couldn’t be clearer! I want to make the world’s #1 Best Pesto! It’s so simple… Let’s move on.

Market segment

Who am I making this pesto for? Who is my #1 ideal customer? Is it sold at a Saturday market? In the local corner shop? In a supermaket chain? Who is it best for? Am I really going global right away?

We encounter our first stumbling block. We need to refine the vision…

Vision 2.0:

I want my Pesto to be the #1 Pesto on sale at the Fox Studio Saturday Farmers Market (let’s start small, we don’t want to get carried away).

That’s better. The vision now helps me understand my market segment. I even know when and where I’m distributing, and the likely customer reach (mid-upper class foodies and families).

The more refined my vision is, the more likely I’ll get an early win. But is my vision too narrow? Maybe I should aim higher? #1 Pesto on sale in Australia? Too high! #1 Pesto on sale in Sydney’s Gourmet Markets & Stores?

Ask yourself ‘is my vision realistic?’ If your vision is too big, you’ll most likely feel deflated before you reach your end goal. Start small and build up from there.

I’m settling with “#1 Pesto on sale at Sydney’s Farmers Markets & Gourmet Grocery Stores”

This still covers a lot of ground. Sydney (whilst not as big as New York or Shanghai) does still have a lot of gourmet food outlets & farmers markets.

So, now we go back to market segment…

Market segment 2.0

I’m going to target middle aged affluent, educated women who live in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney.

Why? Because (based on personal experience & broad stereotypes) often these women either don’t want to cook, don’t have time to cook or don’t know how to cook. They also like to buy presents for dinner parties, for friends, for their children, for Christmas/Chanuka/Housewarmings, thus they can extend my reach.

Core feature

It’s always tough to pick one core feature. I think for this product, it’s a given that it needs to taste like great pesto, but does it need to be the best tasting pesto in the world? Probably not. Is freshness important? Yes. But is it the core feature? Not likely. I need my pesto to stand out. I need one single feature that will make it remarkable. That will make it stand apart from all the other pesto on sale at the market.

So, in this instance, I’m being brave and opting for stunning packaging as my core feature. I know that if it doesn’t stand out, it won’t sell. It needs make noise. It needs to look like a gift. Something you could take to your friends place for dinner in place of a good bottle of wine or box of Lindt chocolate.

I know, I know, of course, it has to taste great (ie. it has to work), but for my market segment it really needs to look impressive. Whether they gift the pesto or keep it for themselves, it needs to feel like a real treat. An indulgence. It should even have a gift tag so people know that it’s perfectly acceptable to give to a dinner party host. (In future I may even include an option for the pesto pamper hampers which can be delivered, like flowers, to your loved ones, but let’s keep it simple for now!)

So, in sum, my core feature is actually the bottle which showcases the pesto!

Key metric

This could simply be ‘number of sales/day’ to begin with.

In future, I’ll track number of hampers sent, number of repeat sales, or number of subscribers (in my ideal world, people subscribe to pesto) but like I said, I’m keeping it simple while I’m in start up mode.

What else have a learned about my product through this process?

I know it needs to be good quality. It needs to taste fantastic. It needs to look expensive. It needs to be fresh. I can’t cut corners because these people expect the best (no substituting pine nuts for walnuts to reduce the cost ok?). It needs to last for a while out of the fridge if I’m going to sell it at Farmers Markets.

I know my price point (a little less than a decent bottle of wine eg. $15-20). Maybe I need to bundle the pesto with free home made lavosh crackers so they feel like they are getting good value? That would also mean that it’s ‘ready to go’ straight from the Farmers Market to the lunch table.

I know my vision, my market segment, my key feature & my metric… Now what?

The next step is research! Confirm your assumptions. Go to the markets. Check out what else is on sale. Taste the competition. Speak with the stall holders. Find out how much foot traffic is likely each Saturday. Check out the Gourmet food outlets in the area. Get out there and ask some questions!!!

I’ve done some research… where to from here?

Now I know what I’m making, who I’m making it for, what my goal is and how I’m going to track my success, I just need to make a checklist of the next steps:

1. Budget – how much is it going to cost to produce and how much do I need to sell to make a return?
2. Time line – do I to have something ready this Saturday or is there a 6 month waiting period for a stall at the market?
3. Resourcing – am I making it at home, by myself? In my tiny mortar and pestle? Or should I outsource it? Will I run the stall or hire a more polished sales person?
4. Distribution – Where are you going to target first? Start with the Fox Studios Farmers Market, then tackle Ultimo, Glebe, Rozelle?
5. Marketing – How are you going to market your product? Are you going to advertise or is word of mouth sufficient? Are you offering a starter special (2 for 1) or will this cheapen the brand? Are you hosting a dinner party for gourmet foodies to up-sell your product? (I know most product plans don’t include marketing, but I think it’s important to have an idea of how the product is going to be marketed, so you can ensure you are creating something desirable for the customer you’re trying to reach. If you don’t know how you’re going to reach your market, how are you going to get your plan off the ground?). It’s a bit of chicken-and-egg, but if you don’t plan you plan to fail!

Of course, this is only a high level product plan. But it’s a step in the right direction toward global domination (or whatever it is that you’re trying to achieve). Remember, the more refined your plan is to begin with, the less headaches you’ll have down the track!

What’s your #1 product planning tip?

Tip: If you want your pesto to stay green add a handful of chopped flat leaf parsley to the mix.

Firstly, congrats to the winner @colinnixon and thanks to @dekrazee1 @froosh @shanewilliamson @omniwolf & Kenny for bumping up the price!

Here’s my learnings:

• Auctioning stuff for charity is hard
• It takes a lot of time, correspondence, Q&A, photos etc to get people interested
• Guilting people to bid does not work
• Ebay doesn’t allow you to state that an auction is for charity unless you’re an official representative. So, I used Wordpress instead. People pledged in the comments field, and the highest bidder won!
• One downside of a Wordpress auction? Is wasn’t real time, and it was a little difficult to know what everyone was posting (kind of like shooting in the dark). *Curse that refresh button!*
• Probably obvious to most, but people only commit to bidding close to the end of the auction. So, when asked on twitter ‘what time does the auction close’ I stupidly said ‘Let’s say… midnight’ so we all had to wait around til bidding closed. I’m guessing I would have received more bids if it was earlier in the day.
• Whilst my midnight Wordpress auction wasn’t very practical, it was a lot more fun than Ebay! It definitely had a more personal feel & I would definitely do it all again!

Thanks again to #cccsyd for a great event… and watch out – I’m already planning for next year (You think I’m joking?).

Remember, it’s never too late to donate to RSPCA! (Just add “CUPCAKES” in the ‘position’ field).

But, what’s the point of winning a prize at a charity event if you don’t do something good with it?

So, I’m auctioning off my prize so I can raise more money for RSPCA!

If you’re interested in donating $’s to RSPCA in exchange for an awesome gaming headset, add your bid to the comment section of this post!

Specs for the Plantronic Game Con:

• Closed-ear headset delivers an immersive audio experience.
• Concealed mic boom stays hidden until you’re ready to use it.
• Specially designed earpods redistribute pressure for maximum comfort.
• In-line volume and mic-mute controls allow for easy audio adjustment.
• Noise-canceling microphone lets you communicate clearly.
• Rugged, military-like design and extra-strength cables make your hardware hardcore.

PLUS there’s more! You’ll also receive:

• Plantronics Torch
• Plantronics USB
• Plantronics Official Beanie
• Plantronics carry case
• Plus, I’ll even bake another batch of cupcakes for you!

All this could be yours! (So long as you’re ok with Surry Hills pick up or local inner-Sydney delivery only)

Highest bidder by midnight 7th September wins!

So, what’s the starting bid? $50?