While effective meetings may not be the key to success, ineffective meetings are inarguably one of the largest time wasters in corporations. Applying these tips before, during, and after meetings will make us much more effective.
Consulting / Lists / Slightly off-topic
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Customer Independence Day
If This Be Treason, Make the Most Of IT! (Patrick Henry)
The customer is always right, except when he is wrong. When we have bad customers, we should fire them. Declare today as Customer Independence Day, where we declare our independence from bad customers.
Administrivia
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Now Easier Than Ever to Subscribe!
It just got easier to subscribe to Tyner Blain – by email!
We’ve added a page explaining subscription options, and updated our sidebar with the option to subscribe by email, thanks to our service provider, Feedblitz.
Presentation / Product Management
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Extra Features Cause $245,000 Loss
Robin Lowry has posted a story of a demo gone horribly wrong at The Product Management View. In the story, users end up confused by the myriad of features of the software – resulting in a $5,000 sale instead of a $250,000 sale.
Product Management / Requirements / Requirements Models / Use Cases
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The Use Case For Creating Goal-Driven Use Cases
There are 8 reasons we write use cases. Most of the benefits of documenting use cases come from communication, but all of the benefits depend upon the initial creation of the use case. The first step to determining the best way to create the use case is to understand the use case of creating use cases.
Lists / Product Management / Requirements
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Know Thy Customers’ Markets
Michael on Product Management and Marketing has posted the first in his series of product management commandments – Know Thy Customer. He provides five tips on how to know your customer better. We extend his idea to include understanding our customers’ markets, and provide more tips. By analogy, this is the difference between a detective who studies a criminal and a profiler who seeks to understand a class of criminals.
Communication / Foundation series / Requirements / Requirements Models / Use Cases
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Foundation Series: How To Read a Formal Use Case
Use cases represent the activities that people do when interacting with a system to achieve their goals. Use cases are a very effective tool for communicating and documenting what a system is intended to accomplish. Formal use cases are use cases that use a specific structure to represent the information. Knowing how to read a formal use case is important.
Lists / Product Management / Requirements / Requirements Models / Use Cases
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The 8 Goals of Use Cases
Why do we write use cases? For the same reasons that our users use our software – to achieve a goal. In our case, we want to assure that we are creating the right software. By looking at this goal in more detail, we can make decisions that drive the best possible use case creation. Lets apply our product management skills to writing better use cases by writing an MRD for use cases
Process Improvement / Product Management / Requirements / Requirements management software / ROI / Software development
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Companies Will Waste $1B This Year on Software Tools
Gartner reported that companies spent $3.7 Billion USD on application development tools in 2004, with a 5% annual growth rate. The Standish Group has shown that 40% to 60% of project failures are due to requirements failures. At least 1/3 of the money spent on getting more efficient at coding is being wasted – it should be spent on writing the right software.