There are a bunch of new* ways of selling software these days. SaaS (Software as a Service) has been in the consumer space for a while, and is making significant inroads into the enterprise software space today. If you’re considering purchasing or using software, you should understand what SaaS means […]
Defining Problems at ProductCamp Austin 1
Jun 14th was the first productcamp in Austin (and the second one anywhere). It was a great event, and here’s the presentation that I did on how to define the strategic problems that drive our products.
Use Case To Actor Mapping
We know the importance of identifying the use cases that enable our business goals. We also know the value of understanding the actors that will use our products. This article shows how to demonstrate a simple but powerful view that maps the use cases to the actors.
Defining Problems With Cause And Effect Diagrams
The Cause and Effect diagram is also known as a fish bone diagram, because it resembles the skeleton of a fish. Using a cause and effect diagram can be the most effective way to define the problems that you intend to solve with your product. Get your stakeholders engaged in […]
Problems Are Everywhere
Today’s article is a harvest of pointers to articles about the focus on problems. An idea farm, so to speak, with really good articles about the importance of solving problems, not just eliciting requirements.
Business Architecture, Rules, and Requirements
We know to treat business rules and business requirements differently. One example – treat external government regulations as rules (because they are less subject to change than requirements). When you have multiple systems in an architecture, while “rules” makes sense for one system, “requirements” make sense for another. What do […]
Improved Prioritization And Market Segmentation
Prioritization is about maximizing the value you provide to your customers. When you have multiple sets of customers with different priorities, what do you do? You could try and find the lowest-common-denominator, and please everyone a little bit. But that would be the wrong thing to do – by trying […]
Recycling An Active Listening Article
We’re dedicating our “blogging time” this week to doing some infrastructure upgrades – we have to address some security issues on the site. Until we get through these changes, we’ll be recycling some of our existing content. For our recent readers, it will be “new to you” and for our […]
Is Your Product Improving?
Do you recognize this early logo from Amazon.com? Future Now has a great article detailing how Amazon evolved their “add to shopping cart” implementation. From reviewing this summary of the evolution of one feature, we can see that Amazon decided there was value in reinvention. The improved the way their […]