The Product Hack

I recently had the opportunity to sit down and talk with the co-founder of Teradata: Phil Neches. During our conversation, I brought-up a session at George Gilder’s WTF back in 2004. I had come across a summary of his discussion there from Fast Company during some other reading. What struck me the most about his comments was that oftentimes, revolutionary technology really exists at the far edge of our worldview. Read the rest of this entry »

See my article on The Pragmatic Marketer Magazine here:

http://www.pragmaticmarketing.com/publications/magazine/8/1/five-ways-to-torpedo-your-product-management-career

I’ve always thought that software should be sold based on how businesses want to consume it. Ok, that’s not exactly true as 1) I’ve only been on this usable mission for the last two years and 2) most people want to step-up to the business software smorgasbord and feast for nothing.

 Ok, so what do I really mean? I mean that pricing software has typically been an inside-out approach based on a cost-plus model or, even worse, a “how-much-can-you-afford?” model. Typically how this all ends-up is that customers feel frustrated over the notion that what they want and need isn’t delivered to them in a way that makes sense for them. How would you feel if you wanted a can of diet coke and were told that you had to purchase it in 64 gallon quantities and consume it on the spot? Well a lot of software is sold the same way.

So, as part of some research on existing pricing for one of my products, I see this post and it completely captures what I’ve always felt and stated but with the weight of a better-organized article.

Web 2.0 technologies adoption, open-source software, and new services-based software are all changing the way software is discovered, trialed, and eventually consumed. My quest for solutions that satisfy the B>E equation is heavily influenced by this common inbalance between software pricing/licensing and how users want to consume it. Now we’ll have to contend with solutions that not only are consumed differently but produced differently and with significantly different cost basis.

Power users. Every product has ‘em. And boy are they great. They are happy to extol to others the hidden virtues in every crevice of the product. And a lot of times they can lead you to new ideas of where the product can be extended to new uses  markets(that is when they’re not bitching about things like not being able to integrate with their new XYZ product or that your product doesn’t support the latest greatest Web 2.0 gadgety feature).

So what’s to fear? These guys know your product, they love it. Why not listen to them and do what they ask? Well…it goes like this. Power users represent only a fraction of your user base. Develop for them, and you’re screwed. SCREWED!

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Have you ever experienced the “thrill” of releasing an exciting new version of your product only to have customers complain about a feature that is now broken?

“But, how could this happen?, you ask. “Doesn’t development have a regression test to ensure these things are caught?”, you scream to the unfortunate and convenient program manager scapegoat.

Then you find out the issue: there was never a feature specifically coded to support how your customers started to use your product. It could be anything for which a work-around (argh! I hate that phrase…) might be created. Uh-oh. What to do now?

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