Program Managers and Product Managers. What's the difference?

I recently had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine who works at Expedia as a Product Manager. He appears to like it. For comparison's sake, I think we're different in that I have been a technical resource for a number of years and get the engineering side of things perhaps better than he does; I've been a developer, I've built many web sites and software applications from scratch, so I get this engineering-type stuff! The thing is that I think I also get the customer side of things very well, too. I've been making solutions for people for over 10 years and have applied many leadership skills, Voice of Customer, and Use Case / Process Modeling techniques when working with my customers to ensure clarity and quality. My point is that I think I can do either the job of Program Manager or Product Manager but want to pick one. So which one?

Program Manager: I have a technical background. I have been a software, database, and process developer for years. I like the technology for the most part but don't want to get bogged down in too many technical details. There's cheaper labor for that type of stuff! I'd rather manage. I have been both a project and program manager for software and process implementation projects within Siemens. I enjoyed the control of those roles and got to do much the Business Analysis and Product Management efforts on those project, too. I had a really great gig and didn't even realize it. For me in those jobs, the hardest thing to be successful and feel happy was communicating. I've learned some hard lessons and it's really tricky! Respect and "yes, sir/ma'am" go a long ways and force is rarely a good tactic. As a Program Manager you should have a lot of pull and influence in the development organization but functional organizations beneath you in Engineering often get in the way of that. In this case, it's not always about working with the workers, it's about working with their managers...and that can be tough.

Product Manager: So it is definitely my goal to be very customer-driven in what I do. If it weren't for others, why would I be here at all? I want to make products that are for people and valuable customers. I love working with the customer(s), understanding their needs, and working with them, the development community and engineering to define an elegant and cost-effective solution. This is the job (or should be) of the Product Manager but the rub comes in that I've recently experienced Product Managers or Business Analysts not being valued (sure this isn't new) by the development organization. "Oh those business people don't know." But in my case, it simply isn't the case because I do know. In this last case, I appeared to know more about the technology than many of the technical resources. In many cases, they're hired guns trained up "just in time" to solve problems. I'm not going to be the one implementing but they sometimes didn't even get the concepts I was using.

To conclude, I want to be a Product Manager so I can care about and work with the customer to understand their needs AND heavily influence what is built (Program Manager). Do I need to choose one? Is there a hybrid? Is the only way out of this quandary as the CEO? Should I work for a smaller organization in hopes that I will find this hybrid?

Preindustrial Model for the Future

Just read a really interesting article that was shared with me from a friend who works at Sightline Institute in Seattle. The article is about some of Japan's past and present methods of operating sustainably. Even though times have changed and are complex now, I think there's a lot to learn from the Japanese and on building sustainable societies. I especially enjoyed the "co-creative" or "generative" communities statement that was made. Here's a part that I found really interesting in the article.

• "...You could say that a truly sustainable society existed in Japan during the Edo Period. Because all resources were regarded as precious, plenty of businesses evolved to deal with re-use and recycling. There were businesses that specialized in repairing metal goods; old cooking pots and kettles and other items of metal could be repaired and used again. There were special tradesmen who would repair wooden barrels and pails used to hold liquids. During this era, everything was repaired properly and used as long as possible. Paper lanterns and locks were repaired, mirrors were polished, and so on."

Hyperlocal

I was reading something from the guy that's doing Outside.in. He's talking about doing "hyperlocal" web services (things relevant to people at a very small level and made the following--I think uninformed--point in his post:

• The pothole paradox plays out with any number of different topics. The delicious Indian place that at long last opens up in your neighborhood; the creepy science teacher who finally retires at the local public school; the come-from-behind victory staged by the middle-school lacrosse team -- all of these are potentially exciting events if they are happening in the communities you inhabit, but they are mind-numbingly dull if they're one county over -- much less on another coast.

What bothers me about his comment is that I think you can't know if something's going to be relevant (confidence level 95% say) to someone unless it's a stated need for them. They have to opt in! So what's really needed is connecting a web service to people's preferences and interests like so: I have a local (or online) store of my history, etc. I keep track of restuarant types I like, my favorite restaurants, teachers I had, schools, I went to, etc. Keeping all of this information has to be fun, easy, and maintainable. You could build it. If people then exposed all or parts of this personal information to web services we'd be golden.

Scrabble, Boggle, Dictionaries, and Learning Tools

In this post I propose that advanced human intelligence and performance are enabled by real-time lookup tools (knowledge bases) such as dictionaries. Better information about processes (games) help expose information helpful to enhancing performance. Implementing systems and processes and games helps with success, adoption, and acceptance.

I spent a lot of time this weekend playing Boggle and Scrabble both on- and off-line. I recently came across an online dictionary that allows users to easily search for words that contain certain letters, start with XX, end with YY, etc. It's really useful for "cheating" in Scrabble. Check out http://www.morewords.com/. Not sure if morewords does it, but it would be great if they exposed their API so that other applications or users could plug in different dictionaries based on need. For example, right now their search results return words that aren't in the Official Scrabble Dictionary. Having the result set return the results of the dictionary with which you're playing --especially in the case of Scrabble-- is critical to this application's utility.

The best version of online Boggle that I've seen is at http://www.wordsplay.net/. The game "knows" all of the words that exist for the given board, the words that at least one player got, the words that you got, the words that only you got, etc. It's really interesting and fun to play, plus it's a great learning tool so you can "whoop" your friends when you play off-line. Learning the uncommon 4-letter words is key to mastery.

Scrabulous is in the news now for being sued by Hasbro due to infringement. Scrabulous is another great online game because of its flexibility in game modes. For example, you can play in real-time or asynchronously over email. Although the "game" (fundamental structure) remains the same, some of its dimensions can be configured.

These games are interesting and their connection to word search services like morewords.com could enable new gaming experiences in the future.

Games that capture and expose detailed comparative metrics that allow players to compare and compete on a variety of levels. Allowing people to look for their personal strengths and weaknesses as well as those of their competition gives new information and redefines competition. Instead of just winning and losing, users can now look at other facets that allow them to develop improvement strategies relevant to them. Exposing the model data and output of the good players to the lesser players promotes the lesser players' progression. In Scrabble, examples of "other metrics" (than total score) include 1) longest word(s) 2) highest word point value 3) most words created on single play 4) most points with fewest letters. There are a number of metrics embedded and inherited by the game that are not yet exposed to the users. This lack of information constrains growth.

To me, all of this is relevant to business in that tools can improve performance and by capturing good data about human performance and process, the lower performers are able to "come up" because good performance has been defined and modeled. Game theory is like process management in that numerous variants and metrics can be defined once the fundamental structure (game) is defined.