ShippingPrinciples Worth Pondering

Howie Chang

99% of the hundreds of products you use every day – from the desk you’re sitting at to the coffee you’re

drinking – you aren’t consciously aware of, you don’t notice. 1% you will notice, but 99% for a bad reason – the

coffee’s cold, the desk is wobbly – which leaves just 0.01% of the total the products you notice because you

love them. !

!

• The Digital Movement

• Creative Technology Ltd

• Venturing out into the unknown

• SP, RP

• buUuk

• Viki

• RedMart

• You are not the mini CEO - product managers/team leads are servants and exist to serve the tech/business/ux team.

• Start with the user and work outward. I try to start with a blog post, internal and external FAQs.

• Validate your assumptions. Do not waste engineering cycles. Examples?

• Major on the major. Solve a hard problem that lots of people share.

• Seek first to understand, then to be understood (Stephen Covey). Don’t jump in with a concluded mindset.

• Build the simplest thing that can possibly work. For us at RedMart, part of it means going Mobile First.

• You ship what you have, not what you want. Product management is saying no.

• If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it. (Lord Kelvin) Define actionable metrics, not vanity metrics.

• Always be shipping. That’s how I measure my performance against. What’s yours?

• Be humble. Always. Less ego goes a loooong way. :)

– Geoffrey Anderson

“The truth is, product management morphs into whatever is needed by the organization. If the powers that be want you to manage the ERP configurations, or … used worldwide to

close orders, or to buy the developers coffee, you will do it. All the “we need to be

strategic!” mottos go out the door when you are tossed into the tactical morass.”

Suck it up. Be patient.

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.”

Ecclesiastes 3:1