OASIS Product Management Mantras, Chapter 3

Ensure that a minimum value product has been defined … and stick to that vision, especially at first.

Following on the heels of the last topic, another concept introduced to me by Softletter is closely related. When creating a new product or feature set, always focus on defining what the minimum value product (MVP, according to Softletter) is. This set of decisions related to “what is mission critical” ensures that you work to define the stories which must be developed first to make an initial release successful—and it also drives a clear rank and prioritization for those tasks. This step cannot be overemphasized because when reflecting on a true minimum for your product offering, you are simultaneously focusing on items with critical value, avoiding feature bloat, allowing real-life usability to shape future iterations, and adhering to the “less is more” philosophy without even trying. Keeping software simple at first also allows usability to be more malleable. In the case of developing for a wide array of users and platforms, testing and improving upon an initially focused feature set is far easier than a bloated application. Additionally, it is entirely possible to redefine a minimum value product at each stage of development, thereby reaping the same benefits across iterations.

OASIS Product Management Mantras, Chapter 2

Don’t show more options than necessary ... but ensure that if more options are needed, they are available.

Coe-Truman is an organization that has successfully catered to many of the most prominent associations in the science, technology, and medical space. We have unquestionably created some great, industry-leading features in our software. Nevertheless, there are, at times, conflicting opinions about how a certain feature should be implemented. This can lead to a tug-of-war of sorts if we are not careful … a proverbial case of catering to one set of demand, only to backtrack and try to appease another set of related (but different) demands, later. A successful way to manage this effect in a SaaS (Software as a Solution) system is to ensure that there is careful consideration for doing only what is essential and universally valuable in any given region of our software. This is not to say that extended, specialized features cannot also exist. This is to say that no single user should ever be confused by a particular feature-set they have arrived at in our software. Quite simply, if more options become necessary, they should be available if they are carefully planned. The location of their availability should be situated in a separate, focused region of the application that may be arrived at intuitively. Again, even when features exist in a specialized location in the application, there should be careful consideration for doing only what is essential and universally valuable in that region … even when the request seems complicated.

OASIS Product Management Mantras, Introduction & Chapter 1

Introduction

In the perpetual quest to make highly-efficient, usable, relevant, and downright enjoyable software, Coe-Truman Technologies has recently taken a major stride forward in how it approaches its software vision. Led by our Chief Product Officer, Todd Wyder, we have pursued many parallel paths of self-education, in order to become more capable and impactful with every single feature we plan and release. While pursuing this aggressive objective, we have performed field studies and taken on homework assignments which are (considering this is still “work”) pretty awesome. From collaborating on a thorough review of CNet’s Webware Top 100 supplemented with a careful study of UseIt.com 10-Best-UIs, to pondering SlideShare’s course on Designing Rich Web Applications and freaking-out at how relevant 37 Signals’ Getting Real felt even in the first two chapters ... we are clearly on a mission. We subscribe to Pragmatic Marketing and Softletter, whose concepts fit right into this vision as well.

What follows here is a personal self-reflection from me, your OASIS product manager, on concepts that you can expect to see evolve exponentially in our software in the days to come. This article is a compendium of some of our recent education, but distilled (therefore, I have clearly borrowed from my influences in presenting this). I am excited, and I hope that our users begin to feel this excitement and know that great things are brewing in our laboratories. We love serving our associations and their individual quests for community-born, specialized knowledge. Effectiveness and efficiency in our software can drive these goals forward, and this inspires us.

If you don’t know how to use it, don’t need to use it, or don’t want to use it … don’t work on it.

First and foremost in any product manager’s mind is the concept of feature uptake and acceptance in the market. Just as we ensure that there is solid market demand for our software and related features, it is absolutely imperative that we ensure that every member of our team know how to use, need to use, or want to use our very own software. Considering that we serve a specialized industry comprised of the various doctors, scientists, engineers, and specialists who form our partner associations, I believe it is mandatory that every single one of us want to use and know how to use the software we create. In no uncertain terms, this means that our software must be intuitive, efficient, and fun. This strikes me as the most important concept we can follow in this regard. We are developing a product that no one individual on the Product Team may ever truly need to use as a meeting owner (we are not meeting managers by trade, after all. But without question, every single one of us should want to use, and know how to use, our own product. Wanting this knowledge because our software is efficient and elegant will result in us knowing how to use it ... exceptionally well, in ways that can drive best-practice decisions for our customers in the future.