What is the role of a Product Manager ?

Product management is still a relatively new and evolving role. Hence we come across this question often in various formats & forums. 

This my take that I shared in an interview with Product Nation. Hope this will bring some more clarity for aspiring product managers.  

A product manager has to perform three key roles in an organization: Envision, Evangelize and Execute.

Envision 
This means having a clear picture of the problem you are trying to solve, the solution and the strategy that will lead you there. It requires deep understanding of target users, the existing solutions and competitors in the market and a compelling case for why your solution will win over the existing alternatives.
 
Evangelize 
An equally important aspect of my role is evangelizing  your vision to your team. The more you focus on this the easier it’ll be to execute. And once the team is convinced with your vision, you’ll be amazed to see the change it’ll bring to the output. 
 
Execute
Remember the quote from The Social Network, “If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you’d have invented Facebook.”
It is one of the most critical aspects of product management and means doing whatever it takes to ensure your product ships. 

10 Lessons Startups can learn from Driving

This thought struck me while I was driving back from Wayanad a few months ago. 

Driving a car seemed very similar to running a startup and here are few things we can learn from it.    

 

1. Journey of 1,000 miles starts with turning on the ignition

You might be the best driver, you might have the fastest car, and you might know all the interesting places in the world. But all that is of no use until you start. 

"Start Now!" 

2. If you just want to go places but don't enjoy driving, take a bus

If your goal is just reaching the destination, then there are many options available for it. Driving is for people who love to drive, they enjoy the journey more than the destination as they reach there eventually. So unless you are sure that you are ready for a ride, don’t hit the road. 

"Start for the right reason." 

3. Driving with a partner makes the journey more beautiful

Driving with a partner not only makes the journey more pleasant but if your partner can drive too it'll significantly reduce the risks and improves your confidence too. 

"Look for a passionate co-founder."  

4. If taking a new route, it's better to have someone who knows it

If you are heading for a long drive and the route is new to you, it is always good to have someone who is familiar with it. Technology helps, but not as much as people. 

"Passion isn’t a replacement for experience." 

5. People with folded side view mirrors are bad drivers

It is a common saying that people with side view mirror folded are generally bad drivers; the worse are the ones who don't have them. Not keeping an eye on what's coming from behind can be a sign of carelessness or overconfidence, and both can be fatal. 

"Be aware of your surroundings."  

6. Highways are not for learner

If you are new to driving don't hit the highways directly. Learn the basics first, and there are training schools, open grounds and empty roads for that. Avoid hitting the highway unless you are ready for it, they are for serious and trained driver. 

"Start small." 

7. Don't confuse local experience with highway driving

You might be the local hero, but that doesn’t ensure you’ll win at highways also. Highways are full of big boys with big trucks. They can crush you with their size and power anytime.  

"Be prepared to fight the big game." 

8. Thank people who give you a pass

We are living in a competitive world in which it is extremely difficult to let people go ahead of us. So when someone helps you in moving ahead make sure you acknowledge it. It not only is a good gesture, but in case breakdown, he’ll be the guy who’ll come from behind and help you. 

"Be grateful." 

9. Speed Breakers are good

If it’s a straight road, the one with highest BHP will win almost always. But every time you hit a traffic jam or a breaker, it makes sure everyone slow downs. Being small you can maneuver the traffic better and by perfecting speed breakers you can make sure that you overcome them by slowing down as less as possible. If it gives you a little jerk, so be it (but a little, don’t overdo and topple).  Personally, I have overtaken most of the big cars at speed breakers and the more breakers I get, the more lead I gain from them. 

"Adversities are disguised opportunities." 

10. Don’t drink and drive

Driving in any kind of intoxication not only puts you life at risk, but also of the ones in your car. And sometimes accidents block the entire traffic taking that road for hours. So don't think you are alone in the game and taking a fun ride will only impact you.   

"Taking risk is different from being stupid." 

Will successful Wearable Technology be 'Invisible' ?

Wearable technology is one of the latest fad in the consumer electronics world these days and everyone is contemplating how it'll change the way we consume and interact with data. 

From rumors of Apple iWatch  to speculations on Google Glass, anyone even remotely associated with technology is watching this space very closely.

If so called 'wearable technology' is sounding too geeky, I guess Bluetooth headset would ring a bell. No doubt what we are talking here is far more advanced but these headsets would be one of the primitive versions of WT that every one of us has used and could relate to.

And if Google Glass doesn't sound too familiar, am sure you'd remember this.

Even though there is a long way to go before these devices will go mainstream people have already started renouncing them due to various privacy and security reasons. Some plainly find them funny. 

Which isn't new, like Gandhi said, 

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. "

I still remember the how camera phones were considered to be a huge dent in privacy. They were banned in gyms, which included names like Gold’s, and scandalous MMSes took the concerns to a new high. But later on, the benefits outshined nuisances and now smartphones are a dent in balance-sheet of companies that relied solely on cameras.

For that matter even when Bluetooth headsets were launched, people wearing them were ridiculed, but they brought a significant improvement in productivity by freeing up one hand. And that means a lot, when you have just two.

Although am extremely bullish on the future of wearable technology but for it to really go mainstream, it has to be 'invisible'. As we all so fond of buzzwords, I prefer calling it 'Invisible Technology'. 

Take Google Glass for an example. There is not doubt about the paradigm shift it’ll bring in the way we live, but it looks like 'Pager' of 2020, that might die even before it's born.  Apart from being impracticable to wear it all the time even at a cost of looking stupid or wannabe, I might not want to give up my RayBan for it.

Again taking a clue from MI, how about building something like this.

I understand that there might be greater privacy concerns but I think in order to take the next leap, wearable technology has to be invisible. Something that we don’t have to wear additionally, something that won’t be visible to others. It’ll be a part of things that we wear normally. Something wont make us look like a Glasshole.

What say?

Correlation between Email-id and Tenure

I noticed that there is a patten in a lot of emails that we get everyday. 

In most of the cases, you can tell when did the sender joined the company just by looking at his email id.  

And the pattern looks something like this:
 

Stage of company          Email id of sender

  Drawing room office      nickname@company.com                

  One room office            firstname@company.com
  One floor office             firstname.lastname@company.com
  Too late                        lastname.firstname@company.com

Have you noticed something similar?

Batman Begins !

Here is what would have happened if Batman was a Product Manager and Rachel an HR...

Cigarettes, Bars and eCommerce !

How does it feel when the bar tender at your favorite pub just asks "Your regular drink, JD on the rocks, Sir?" instead of handing over the drinks menu to you.  Or the manager at the cafe near your house suggests you to try the new cheesecake they've added in the menu because they know you like it.

This must have happened with many of us, several times. Infact, some of us even take it for granted now. 

But you'll think these are educated people and professionals from hospitality sector.  So I'll try to give another example.

Have you ever noticed, if you go to the same pan-wala everyday, he'll soon stop asking your brand and will hand over your cigarette as soon as you reach there without even asking you.  

Okay, now come back the world wide web. 

How many websites treat you like this?

Their audience also consist of same people like you & me, who get a special treatment at our regular hideouts, maybe that's why we go there more often.  

But even if you visit the same website everyday, all you get is a poker face. 

Google has made a amazing video depicting how users are treated online.

I seriously hate to see a captcha, specially the case sensitive ones that have letters Z and O in them :P

But am not here to complain, and nor am saying that none of the websites are working towards personalization. Infact it was one of the buzzwords of web 2.0 that few people still remember.  

I can see some sites remembering my session (read as 'Hello Satya'), last searched keywords, some even remember the last viewed items and some have gone beyond to suggest items based on my browsing history.

Although few site are genuinely working hard to make the interaction much more personal and 'special'. But for most, it's just another lazy attempt to increase sale by pushing more products.

There is still a lot that the online world can learn from their offline counterparts. The more we observe & understand the user behavior offline, the better WWW we'll build.  

And soon we'll see a day when websites will interact with us as swiftly as our hair stylists.


Statuary warning: Smoking & Drinking are injurious to health.

Great Startups vs Others...

I think some great start-ups are born to,

   " solve problems that founders face in their real life,
     a problem which they believe is impacting many, 

     and they want make their life easy,

     so they try to identify a solution and,

     make money,

     in the process of it. "
 

Others also to do the same, but in order of 5,3,4,2,6,1 

:)

My conversation with Dad !

Like any other Mama’s boy am closer to my mom and have hardly had any long chat with my dad. This is one the very few that we’ve had, so might get a bit long.

It was summer of 1998, after my high-school exams, I was upset as I was told that I’Lk get a new bike if I score well. Surprisingly, I did score more than what was agreed upon but the bike was no where to be seen, maybe even my parents were equally surprised with my result :) 

We all were having dinner when one of my friend called and told that he bought a new car and since he bought it from Army quota, he got it at a discounted price. Although I was happy for him, but it made me a bit more irritated and I went to dad to have a chat.

But before that I’ll give you a little background. My dad was serving in Indian Air Force but had to come back due to a family emergency. Then he started his own work here from scratch. From a small car mechanic shop to a medium size car repair & service workshop in about 45 long years. And ironically we never had a car.

So here I was standing with him, and in a slightly agitated voice I asked him.

“Why didn’t you take your air-force card when you left, we could have also enjoyed the discounts on our shopping and maybe we could have bought a car as well at a cheaper price.” 

To which he replied very politely, “Those privileges are given in return of risking your life for serving the nation and I had it till I was serving. I didn’t think it was right to have it after I left.” 

I didn't have much to say after listening to his reply so I asked a different question this time, “Everyone says that there is huge money in car repair work, even those who have worked under you earlier, have made huge workshops of their own and doing immensely well. Most of them have bungalows in posh localities; drive fancy cars and their sons ride imported bikes. Why aren’t we so rich?”

And this is what he said in reply, something I won’t forget, ever.

“Listen son, everyone has different priorities in life, for some its money, and for some its power. For me, respect comes before everything else.

You see a lot a powerful people these days and the count of rich & affluent would be even more, but you’ll find very few who are respected. It is because earning respect is one of the most difficult things to do and it is human nature to take an easy path.

Money is important, but it should be as much to sustain your life. It’s good, if you can earn more without compromising your integrity. But money can never be ‘enough’. Once you start running after money, you will never be able to get off that treadmill.

Happiness is overrated; and you can never buy it. Money that is earned by fooling people or taking advantage of them, can buy you enough delusions to keep you entranced. And you never realize what true happiness is.

Happiness is being in peace, it is being able to sleep without any guilt. And that comes with doing the right things. Money can only help you in being perceived as a happy person, but wont make you feel that happiness unless you have a clear heart.”

I was left speechless, and had nothing left to argue any further. His respect in my heart had grown many folds. And it was that day, that I decided to do the rights things rather than things that are right for me.

But why am I sharing this today.

Today is a special day. It was this very day, 2 years back, that I shifted to Bangalore leaving behind amazing memories of Delhi. It was the day I joined Cleartrip.

The reason for joining Cleartrip was as clear as its name. I was totally bowled over by their products. It was a dream tech-startup for anyone who loves products. 

The focus on product was impeccable. Unlike many companies, where business is the primary driver, product was the center of the universe here. Consumer came first, before everything else.

But there was one thing that made me respect Cleartrip even more.

It was my initial days and I was working on a web app for Blackberry. To check the app review system, I rated the app myself and left a comment also saying that app is useful. Within few hours I got a ping from my co-founder asking if that comment was mine.  That was probably the first time I got a message from him and with little apprehension I said, “Yes”.

He replied, “Please remove it immediately. We don’t want our employees to leave feedback for our own products, even if they really like it. The reviews should be unbiased and from the users only. We don’t want to influence them by impersonating as a user. Please make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

There are companies that are okay with employees fudging data, giving false promises to clients, and there are some that even encourage it, but this one was a first. 

And it was not a one off case, even when we launched our iPhone app last week, an email came from our co-founder to all the employees requesting them not to rate the app in the app store.

We all know Cleartrip for building great products, tweeting interesting stuff, not spamming users with emails, not selling each available pixel on the website to Google, but there is more to it than we see.

Although I didn’t join my dad’s business and couldn’t take forward his values there. But today, am proud to say, that I work with a company that has taken a harder path, the path of earning respect.

#Cleartrip #Respect.

Why everyone should build a mobile site

We humans are extremely interesting creatures, and I never miss a chance to study how our behavior changes with the change in our surroundings.
 
Here I am going to tell you one of such examples.

In Delhi, summer and power cuts go hand in hand. They not only help government to manage the shortage of electricity in the city but are also the sole reason behind flourishing industry of inverter batteries in that region.

Powercuts are part of the daily routine for a Delhiite but did you ever notice the change in our behavior during power cuts?

The very first thing we do as soon as the main power goes is it to switch off all the unnecessary lights and fans. Infact we do the reverse, we only keep those lights on that are absolutely necessary.

It's a little funny, because we do not mind wasting electricity for which we are paying through our nose but try to conserve the battery.

It kind of reminds me of our lab days, where we used to study the difference in results by changing one variable of the experiment while keeping all the others as constant.

In this case, it's the same family who keeps the light of the storeroom and exhaust fan in the bathroom on, just like that. Same house same, appliances, nothing else changed, but they are now sitting in one room under a single light and fan.

So what causes this sudden change in behavior?

Yes it’s a no brainer, when we know the resources are limited we use them wisely.

It's not that we don't know that we should save electricity, but we don’t care until we are in the situation when the supply is actually limited.

The same goes for web designs.

We all know that we need to give the best experience to the user, but while designing for desktops we don't face too many constraints hence most of the time we are not challenged enough to make the best use of it of the ones that are available.

It's only when you start designing for mobile, you get switched to the inverter mode. It gives you a chance to take a fresh look at the hundred of features that you've added to your website while chasing your pipeline fanatically over the time. And then you ponder that is that light in the storeroom actually required being switched-on all the time?

And trust me, then you'll have soooo many #ThatEnlighteningMoment, when you'll say WTF, why the hell didn't I think of it before.

Designing for mobile teaches you so many things that desktop could never do. Because only then you realise the importance for every pixel and actually think out-of-the-box for solving user problems.

A simple thing like having no space to waste for long help texts makes you rethink the obvious to make that idiot proof designs. It takes intuitive designs to the next level where you spend hours and days to just find that perfect picture that is literally worth a thousand words.

So even if you are still not convinced that mobile web is the next big thing in the Internet, designing for mobile will definitely make desktop site users a lot happier than ever before

What say, are you ready to try the inverter mode?

Has Siri Changed Her Mind?

Recently there was an article in The Next Web on how Siri suggested Nokia's Lumia 900 as the 'Best Smartphone Ever'. The suggestion that was actually based on the results from Wolfram Alpha is becoming a hot topic of discussion amongst Nokia & Apple fans.

But when I checked with my Siri, this is what she had to say:

And all of a sudden I was reminded of the golden words by Billy Joel !

"Oh, she never gives out
And she never gives in
She just changes her mind."

Afterall Siri is also a Woman :)

What is an Intuitive Design?

We have heard a lot about designs being 'intuitive', but is here is a good way to explain what exactly it is, and how can we build it.

Magic Escalator of Acquired Knowledge - Luke Wroblewski

"When you are at the bottom, you have no knowledge of how something works and when you are at the top, you know everything about how it works .
 

There are two points on this continuum to care about. 

- Current knowledge (what the users already know)

- Target knowledge (what they need to know) 

The knowledge gap is the space in between (what we  need to design for).
 

A design is intuitive when current knowledge is equal to target knowledge. A design is unintuitive when there is a gap between current & target knowledge.
 

We can reduce target knowledge until it meets current knowledge by simplifying the design. We can move current knowledge to target knowledge through training. These are our two options for design.
 

The “gap” between current knowledge and target knowledge is where design happens.
 

A design is intuitive when the knowledge gap is really small. In other words, it’s easy for people to bridge from current knowledge to target knowledge. In these cases, people don’t realize they are being trained."

Don't miss the SILK, amongst all the FIRE

Amazon's new 'iPad Killer' Kindle Fire is all over the Blogosphere. The $199 tablet, powered by Gingerbread (no, not Honeycomb) is expected to be available on Nov 15.

While it is grabbing all the limelight from the launch since Wednesday, there was another interesting product that was introduced.

SILK, is 'the potentially radical' browser that will be exclusively available on Fire.  It supports HTML5, JavaScript, CSS, Flash and associated next-generation Web standards.

Amazon built the software from scratch, using the WebKit open-source browser engine, but what makes it different from the other browsers is that it can be configured to let Amazon's cloud service do much of the work assembling complex Web pages. Which results in faster load times for Web pages, compared to other mobile devices.

It is based on the "spit browsing" approach hence it processes requests partially on Kindle and partially on EC2.  All the user's requests are directed to the EC2 service, which fetches the pages from the source and optimizes the content for the platform. Complex parts of JavaScript may be pre-processed and images may be downsized to a more manageable size.

As per Bezos, this provides "unlimited computational power and unlimited bandwidth, for all practical purposes".
 
But here is the part that I liked the most..

"Silk leverages the collaborative filtering techniques and machine learning algorithms Amazon has built over the last 15 years to power features such as “customers who bought this also bought…” As Silk serves up millions of page views every day, it learns more about the individual sites it renders and where users go next. By observing the aggregate traffic patterns on various web sites, it refines its heuristics, allowing for accurate predictions of the next page request. For example, Silk might observe that 85 percent of visitors to a leading news site next click on that site’s top headline. With that knowledge, EC2 and Silk together make intelligent decisions about pre-pushing content to the Kindle Fire. As a result, the next page a Kindle Fire customer is likely to visit will already be available locally in the device cache, enabling instant rendering to the screen."

However, it is interesting to note that, it is possible for users to turn off the EC2 service altogether and use the browser in a standard way.

Opera has been playing with Split Browsing approach for a couple of years now hence, though this might not be a 'new' but it'll surely add some twist to the market flooded with mee-too tablets.

Seventh deadly sin of Firefox..

2011 seems to be like an year for sevens and eights.

WP7, Windows8 and F8, have kept the bloggers busy so far, now its time for Firefox to add some buzz.

The latest version of Firefox is here. V7.0 is said to reduce the memory utilisation upto 50%  thus making web browsing experience faster.

One of the major complain, the "startup speed" has also been addressed and Mozilla claims that tabs, menus and buttons on websites will also respond much faster.  

It also claims that "Heavy Internet users will enjoy enhanced performance when lots of tabs are open and during long Web browsing sessions that last hours or even days."

If you notice, the browser's address bar in Firefox7.0 will not show "http://" in the webpage URLs, however in case of secured pages "https://" is displaced.

To help improve future versions of Firefox, users can opt in to Telemetry. Telemetry is a tool built on Mozilla Privacy Principles that allows users to provide anonymous browser performance data in a private and secure way that they control.

Here are some links that you might find handy

- Know more about feature of Firefox 7 and Download

- What's new (techie stuff)

- List of bugs fixed

Chrome the No.1 browser in India

Apart from Android, there is another Googly that is gaining market share rapidly.

As per StatCounter, Google Chrome is all set to become the number one browser in India. It has already pushed IE down to number 3 last month and now just a percent behind Firefox. 

Its just a matter of a week or two that we'll see a new King of Browsers here. 

PS: I'll still be using Firefox :)

Source: StatCounter Global Stats - Browser Market Share

What if Humans were versioned?

This thought stuck me when I was wishing a friend of mine on his birthday.  But before we get into what I am trying to say let’s do a quick recap of software release and its versioning.

Almost all the software undergo certain stages of development, mainly Pre-Alpha, Alpha, Beta, and Release Candidate (RC) or the final release. Once the final version is out, every subsequent release is versioned to track and communicate the updates.
 
Most of the software maintain a numeric versioning upto 3 places, e.g.  x.y.z where change in the rightmost digit usually indicates bug fixes or minor updates, middle one is for new features and major updates, and change in the leftmost denotes substantial improvement in the software, like completely new UI, significant change in functionality etc. 
 
Also, one of the integral part of every release is a release note, which contains the details of the changes or the enhancements made in the software.  It has to justify the need of a new release and sometimes be compelling enough to make the user download the new version (especially if it involves money).
 
Okay enough about the software, now lets get back to the humans.
 
Similar to software, once our final version is released, i.e. we are born, we keep track of ourselves via our age, which we write in Years, Months and Days.

Now, instead of writing age like 29 years and 10 months, what if we start using the regular software versioning convention, so my age/version today will be something like 2.9.9.16 in a decade.year.month.day format.

And if we stick to the popular nomenclature, and drop the fourth digit, calling myself version 2.9.9 will make sense, as every decade there is a huge change in what we are and the way we look, every year makes us slightly different from the last one and every month, there are minor changes or fixes.

But there are two things in which we differ from software.

First, unlike them, we neither have a choice of deciding whether to release a new version or not, nor the timing of it, it comes out automatically with every passing second.  Infact we are the best example of continuous integration.

Second, and the important one, we don’t write our release notes.

Now this is a tricky part, what if now we are also required to publish a release note for each release of ours, a note that describes all the things that we have learned or done in that duration.

I feel, its not that we have stopped learning, although the source might have changed from teachers to tweets. But amid this demanding life that we are living today, we don’t make a conscious effort to figure out what we have learned and how does it makes us a better person than what we were before.
 
Thus writing a release note might be of some help.
 
Now I am less than three months away from a major release, i.e. Satya 3.0 and so much has changed in last 10 years. From young & restless, to not so young and much more restless. From a BCOM FY student, to a professional with over 6.5 yrs of work ex. So many new people, so many new places and I have learned from everyone, everything and every little mistake I made.
 
And all this made me who I am today, a person starkly different from Satya 2.0 (including the size and amount of hair on my head ;)

I know it’ll not be easy when I’ll sit down and try to write my release note for this major release, since I didn’t write any for the previous ones.

Nevertheless, I’ll write one, though I might choose to keep it unpublished.

 Good luck for yours :)

Challenges of delivering content and applications on the Internet

Tom Leighton's (Founder Akamai) interesting talk on content delivery.

Funny Footers...

Dear Websites,

If you can still be "best viewed with Internet Explorer 6.0 / Firefox 2.0 or higher" let me tell you that stone age is over. Oh and there is something called Chrome that you must know even if you choose to ignore Apple of the eyes.

And here is something you might find earth shattering:

Source: StatCounter Global Stats - Browser Market Share

Good luck,

Cheers,

Androids Made in India

We know that Android versions are developed under a 'sweet' codename and released in alphabetical order.

But, what if Androids were made India, what would they be called?

Here are a few options

1.5 -  Cham Cham

1.6 -  Dhoda

2.0 -  Elaichi  Peda

2.2 -  Falooda

2.3 -  Gulaab Jamun

3.0 -  Halwa

4.0 -  Imarti
4.1 -  Jalebi
5.0 -  Kaju katli (yet to be announced)

 Sounds Yummier ? ;)

----

Updated the on Android's 5th Birthday !

Some thoughts on Product Differentiation !

God made everyone alike, then why 'Differentiate'

View more presentations from Satyajeet Singh

Who's got the longest ??

And the winner is : Jet Airways !!!

Guys guys, I was taking about the roll-down menu ;)

See it to believe it (Firefox, 1024x768, no toolbar)

It's a nice clean site but the menu options for Product and Services (I wonder how will they differentiate between them) crosses the screen length and you have to adjust the screen to look at the entire menu.

and if you scroll down, it goes beyond the footer :)

If you have it, you should flaunt it....Cool no ?