Issue #2: 2Q 2010

TPMA FOCUS

Toronto ProductManagement Association

THIS EDITION: Snapshot 2Product Roadmaps 2Social Media Tools 3Primer on Agile 5Seminar QuickTakes 7PM Resume Tips 8Review: GroundSwell 9CoolTools: Xobni 10

What is the TPMA?

"Creating Insight through Shared Knowledge"

Founded in March 2001, the Toronto Product Man-agement Association is a non-profit organization formed to create an en-vironment that facilitates learning, mentoring, & net-working opportunities.

Visit: www.TPMA.ca

KEY DATES:

Launching New Products - Apr 27th 6:15pm - Metro Hall, 55 John St.

Roadmapping Challenges- May 18th 6:15pm - Metro Hall, 55 John St.

ProductCamp Toronto- May 30th 9:00am- Ryerson University

TPMA Annual Social - Jun 16th 6:15pm - Location: TBD Social

Media Issue

Welcome back to second edition of our TPMA newsletter. Thanks for all the great feedback on our first edition! It seems that everyone enjoyed it and shared it around their offices so it’s nice to see that even print can be viral! If you missed the last edition, you can see it online by logging into the TPMA site.

Our last few monthly meetings have seen increased attendance and enthu-siasm for new areas related to Product Management such as Social Media, Risk Management and Agile. I find this en-couraging because it means that Product Managers in the GTA are exploring ways to be more effective and leveraging the great product management community and resources we have in Toronto.

Speaking of community, mark your cal-endar for ProductCamp Toronto which is coming back on May 30. Spread the word to your colleagues and visit the website at www.productcamp.org/toronto .

If you want to submit an article directly relating to Product Management, contact us and we’ll consider it for publication in an upcoming issue.

Looking forward to seeing you at the meetings.

TPMA

Creating Compelling Product Roadmaps (Part 2)

In the last article we discussed the dif-ferent types of roadmaps. Next we’ll talk about an eight step process for creating product roadmaps and how to prioritize requirements.

When we create product roadmaps for clients we use an eight step process:

Decide the detail level & amount 1. of time you want to spend creat-ing the roadmap(s)Assess competitive moves, mar-2. ket and technology trendsGather & prioritize requirements3. Decide on the timeframe that is 4. most appropriate to useChoose an organizing strategy 5. for featuresBuild your Internal Roadmap6. Get buy-in on the internal road-7. map from your team(s) and fi-nalizeCreate an External Roadmap 8. based on the internal roadmap

Explaining the entire eight step process is beyond the scope of this article (we go into it in-depth in the Product Road-map Toolkit). However, we will discuss feature prioritization and strategies for organizing features into logical release categories.

One other thing to note: as you go through the roadmap process it is criti-cal that you explain it to your team and engage them along the way. By doing this you’ll ensure that they understand how the roadmaps were developed and also ensure that they feel some owner-ship and that their opinions have been factored in. The result will be that no one will be surprised with the end results and you are much more likely to get full buy-in on the roadmap(s) you create.

Prioritizing Feature RequestsAfter you have gathered up a master list of all feature requests you’ll need a way to logically sort through and priori-tize them. The easiest method for this is to use a prioritization matrix. The matrix allows you to create categories such as revenue impact, strategic importance, customer pain level, etc. and then to as-sign a weighting to each one. Once you have ranked each feature using the cri-teria and weighting, sort based on total score to get a ranked list of which fea-tures are most important.

The next article in this series will discuss strategies for organizing features into logical release categories once you have prioritized them.

Lee GarrisonPresident

About the AuthorBrian Lawley is the CEO and founder of the 280 Group, which provides consulting, contrac-tors, training and templates. During

the last twenty years of his career he has focused on Product Management and Product Marketing and has shipped more than fifty successful products. He is the former President of the Silicon Valley Product Management Association, won the 2008 AIPMM award for Excellence in Thought Leadership for Product Manage-ment and is the author of the best-selling book, Expert Product Management. Ad-ditional product roadmap resources can be found at www.280group.com.

Copyright 2009, 280 Group LLC. All Rights Reserved.

SNAPSHOT

Koudas says “MAP is a vast repository of social media data that helps market-ers understand what is being said and who is saying it.” Active since 2006, the tool crawls and archives blogs, forums, Twitter feeds, social networking news and wikis - 24x7. The data is cleansed and analysed for useful information on demographics, sentiment, brands and products. During the listening and moni-toring phases, marketers use MAP to capture either very broad or specific market intelligence.

Sysomos also developed a product called Heartbeat - a real-time monitor-

ing and measurement tool. Beyond help-ing you keep up with the buzz, Heartbeat provides a corporate platform to coordinate

employee actions. Koudas said “it allows you to zero in on the key influencers and opinion leaders, and if you like, to en-gage with them directly.” Depending on the information received on corporate brand pages (a sales inquiry vs a cus-tomer support issue) messages can be flagged within the tool for later response by the appropriate department.

A useful note on Sysomos is that they create interesting studies using their tools and publish them to the Reports & Whitepapers section of their website.

Strategize:Questrade, a direct access Canadian online brokerage, offers a platform let-ting investors take charge of their financ-es. As a financial services company, communications are highly restricted. Communications manager Lynn Suder-man states that Questrade takes a very cautious and disciplined approach to managing their social media presence. Questrade maintains internal alignment right up to the C-Suite and engages ex-perts to help form their understanding of the landscape and ensure compliance.

Lynn authored a best practices docu-ment she says is “a living document that describes what we’re going to do and

TPMA

Social media is in its infancy and debates rage over what social media is and what it is not. Traditional media is a mono-logue broadcast from publishing outlets to many individuals. Television and print are traditional communications media in which content is pushed out by creators and consumed in a closed environment.

The social medium is the internet. Indi-viduals use computers and smartphones to access the internet and both consume and distribute content through social in-teraction. Social media is an open en-vironment that allows communication between “studio” and “audience” and be-tween audience members themselves. In essence, the media is a ‘many to many’ dialogue and broadcast technology.

Internet based media networks such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, tear at the barriers of mass communication enabling anyone with internet access and a camera to become publisher and broadcaster. In a commercial context these networks provide the platforms for business to interact with consumers. It allows consumers to share experiences with each other, and for professionals to reach previously inaccessible peers.

Is it relevant for product managers?A product manager’s primary role is lifecycle management and new product development. The success of a product depends on how well it is adapted to the wants and needs of the target market. The market for your products and servic-es is online - in blogs, forums, fan pag-es, webpages and dedicated networks. These sites contain valuable information

and insights on products, markets and campaigns. A product marketing manager’s primary role is outbound messaging and promo-

tion. Social networks capture rich user de-mographics allowing marketers to select specific segments to deliver messages at a surprisingly low cost.

At no cost, social networks provide the platform to host conversations about brands and products and provides the ability to monitor, understand and en-gage an audience of consumers.

How to Engage your Audience?It is not hard to, and recognise imme-diate value for a small investment of time. From interviewing various compa-nies in the GTA, three key observations emerged on social media use. Product managers and product marketing man-agers use social media for research, engagement and professional develop-ment. A five step framework for engage-ment also emerged:

Listen & Research, • Strategize, • Develop the Right Tools, • Participate & Engage, and• Monitor & Evaluate. •

What follows are the first three steps.

Listen & Research:For personal research there are several free tools that let you see what the fuss is about. Time, however, is one of the greatest costs of social media. While the free tools are effective they do not have

the power of commercial appli-cations to manage, customize and report on the findings of your research.

Toronto based social media technology company, Syso-mos created a Media Analysis Platform (MAP) to address this issue and empower analysts to focus on insight generation instead of information extrac-tion. CEO and founder Nick

Social Media: New Tools for Product Marketers

About the Author:Ameet Wadhwani is the founder of Baseline Marketing, an agency that marries marketing, design and technology to deliver managed so-lutions to businesses in

the Greater Toronto Area. He can be reached at ameet@baselinemarketing.ca or on Twitter @baselinemktg. You can also follow this article on the blog at www.baselinemarketing.ca

TPMA

how we’re going to do it.” Coming in at just under 10 pages, the document con-

tains valuable insights gained during the research phase and guiding principles that lay out where Ques-trade will maintain a presence, what kinds

of communications and interactions are appropriate and the role social media will play in their business. Lynn stressed that understanding the medium, accept-ing the rules and learning best practices came long before the first tweet or blog.

While each network governs how organi-zations can interact with individuals, there are un-written rules that early adopters established to keep social networks from being overtaken by advertising. First, for a brand to partake in a conversation it must be invited. Second, marketing distributed directly from brands to indi-viduals through social networks must be done entirely on an opt-in basis. Spam-mers are black listed and brands break-ing these rules are shunned.

Develop the Right ToolsBig Time Design is a Toronto based graphic design, web development and

social media com-pany. Early on, they understood the rules of engagement, the bandwidth challenge and the effectiveness of ‘pulse-based, link

driven’ messaging. Big Time Design de-veloped a tool called Pulse described by founder Karim Awad as “segmented social media distribution management”. Full disclosure: I partner with Big Time to deliver marketing services.

In almost the same amount of time it takes to opt-in to a newsletter, Pulse users can select to receive private mes-sages by SMS, RSS, Twitter, Facebook, Windows Live Messenger or email. Brands and organizations invite individu-als to their marketing lists by offering a choice of information they can receive and the platform they want to receive it on. Users then receive ‘pulses’ of infor-mation from brands they trust, based on

their selections. Pulse can be used for highly segmented marketing communications, service no-tifications and feedback requests. It can also be expanded to separate Pulse pro-files based on different products or ser-vices being offered by the company.

“We knew that in order for it to work we’d have to consider both the marketers’ and

consumers’ perspec-tives and ensure there were no deal breakers on either side. We think we’ve created a real win-win. Pulse gives consumers choice and

control over where, when and what in-formation they get from brands. Market-ers receive permission to reach them, an easy to use yet powerful tool to manage the communication and the all-important measurement and analytics engine to enable ongoing success” explains Ka-rim. Best of all it is affordable. About the only thing Pulse does not do is draft the communications plan.

Concern over messaging, specifically what is being said by whom within the company, is a big issue for executives in larger organizations. Enter Syncapse, a Toronto based social media technology company specializing in workflow man-agement and content distribution. They solve some of the bigger challenges of integrating social media into large enter-prises.

“We noticed a lot of fragmentation in where the conversations were happen-ing and how content was being distrib-uted,” explains Michael Scissions, CEO of Syncapse.

Fragmentation exists where content on network specific brand pages remain iso-lated. “You can have the same questions being asked on multiple networks. The question gets answered on one network but sits unanswered on another.” Syn-capse’s SocialSYNC uses a synchroniz-ing engine to connect multiple discussion boards in real time. Brands using it, have questions asked on a Facebook page in-stantly posted to other platforms. This al-

lows brand followers on other platforms like Myspace and Orkut to post answers and participate in the discussion.

SocialTALK, another Syncapse tool, structures and streamlines the approval

process, simultane-ously publishes con-tent to multiple plat-forms and captures metrics on posts to measure effective-

ness. All this within one enterprise plat-form. It provides an opportunity for more employees to engage while allowing a communications manager to get approv-als, edit content, and control the time and place of releases.

Product managers at Syncapse are high-ly engaged in social media and Michael even encourages the team to converse with customers. Product managers at a large global company, however, may be restricted from directly engaging the so-cial sphere due to governance or legal issues. Michael suggests that product managers keep up with the conversa-tions and engage the research and in-sights teams to capture feedback and to help improve their products through crowdsourcing (garnering insights from a multitude of interested participants).

What’s Next?The next issue will discuss the rules of engagement, how participation and en-gagement do not have to be on behalf of your brand and how engaging as a pro-fessional can reap social rewards - even leading to your next job. Finally, we will also address the elusive returns on in-vestment question.

TPMA

Agile, Scrum, XP, you name it. Agile is the hot topic for product management these days. Development shops have evolved to being agile, and product managers have to keep up. This article reviews how to get started as an agile product manager, is a source for resources, and states what is good & bad about it.

As a background, I have been in Product Management for 10 years, and for the past 3 have been a product manager in 2 agile shops (Tucows Inc., and presently at I Love Rewards Inc). In both cases, I was instrumental in bringing the process in, and believe that a product manager that works in an agile environment can be much more successful than one in a waterfall environment.

It is definitely different. There are a lot of changes in the workload when you work with an agile development team. The graph above summarizes the workload changes between working in an agile shop, compared to waterfall.

Working in a waterfall method, you in-vest most of your time up-front into the specification. All research is done prior to the spec. While development is under-way, you are less busy, and have less interactions with the development team. With agile, because there are more re-leases, workload is evenly spread, and you must think about a smaller set of features, more often. It evens out the ebbs and flows of the development cycle from a workload perspective.

What’s good about Agile?Manageable Chunks- You break • your work into smaller, manageable

chunks. You only have to tackle a small set of features at a time. You don’t have to write requirements for a mammoth release. Instead it’s in bite size chunks.

You can change your mind- One of • the things that drives developers crazy during a waterfall environment is changes. Because there is such an overhead to the “spec”, and all of the requirements meetings, chang-es become catastrophic. Changes are expensive, and product manag-ers are encouraged to stick to their decisions, regardless of the busi-ness environment changes. The reality (even if people do not admit it) is that things change. Instead of ignoring reality, agile allows you to

change your mind, sprint to sprint, without the overhead of the bigger plan.

Lack of Documentation- There is not • much documentation with an ag-ile method. This can be seen as a weakness. Instead, the documenta-tion is real time, and is concentrated on user stories rather than annotat-ing every thought. The idea is that there are more discussions, than documents.

Team effort with the Development • team- Because there is no big hand-off between the product manager and the development team, a team based approach is important. The team has to work together to deliver the features, and with continual pri-oritization, the product manager is very aware of how things are going, and can flex with changes in reality.

Ability to change course more quick-• ly- Things happen. Two months into a waterfall development cycle, the company changes course, or is met with a competitive threat. With agile, change is the constant. Because re-leases are shorter, and sprints within releases are even shorter, you have the flexibility to adjust course. This allows a more proactive & reactive development cycle that meets com-pany goals more effectively.

Challenges with Agile:Overhead of releases- Require-• ments are only one part of a release, marketing support, documentation, customer launch all require a partic-ular amount of overhead. The entire organization has to be able to sup-port the agile environment. Although changes may be smaller in nature, you do need to think in an agile manner for all departments touching a release. There is a fine line to walk between getting releases out, and the overhead of launching. I have found that the smallest increment is about a month (4 week, 3 weeks of development, 1 week of testing), but this depends on your environment.

Ability to absorb the rate of change- • Customers are only able to absorb changes to the environment so of-ten. If features are changing too drastically, it causes customer sup-port issues. Assessing the impact of a release is important. It is help-ful to choose which customers see release upgrades, or to roll out fea-tures incrementally. Again, this is up to your organization. This also varies for SAAS vs installed software (see the common questions below).

Big picture, small details- Because • the releases are smaller in nature, and even each release is broken down into sprints, it’s easy to be caught up in the small details. It’s the product manager’s job to keep an eye on the prize - being the cus-tomer valued features to be deliv-

Primer on AGILE Development What is all the fuss about, and should I care?

About the AuthorKim Phelan is the Direc-tor of Product Manage-ment at I Love Rewards Inc. She has been a product manager for the past 10 years. Her pas-sion is solving problems. Prior to I Love Rewards,

Kim ran the product management group at Tucows Inc. At both organizations she was instrumental at implementing the Agile methodology, and is a regular speaker regarding product management and agile methodologies.

TPMA

ered. Agile methods ask that the developers break things down into small digestible tasks, but you need to ensure that features important to the customer - is what ends up be-ing delivered. Keeping close to the development team, and seeing de-liverables early and often can help mitigate this risk.

Diligence for non development • tasks- It is very easy to get pulled into the weeds of details with devel-opment when you have implement-ed agile. Whether it is sprint related meetings or being available for de-veloper questions, you can spend 100% of your time on the release. Try to be market sensing - at least one release in advance at any time. Spending at least 30% of your time on advanced market sensing will keep you in line.

Basics of AgileWhat are the basics of agile? There are different types of agile development methodologies, with the basic tenants:

Backlog- The product manager 1. owns the backlog. The backlog is a prioritized list of work for the de-velopment team. Prioritization is based on business needs. Develop-ers work from this list, in order. The backlog is a living and breathing set of requirements that changes week-ly (depending on the length of your sprints)

Sprints- Sprints are a short time 2. frame in which you plan work. There is a planning meeting at the be-ginning of the sprint (based on the backlog), and a sprint review at the end of the sprint to present what was delivered. Priorities are set by the product manager, and the devel-opers self organize to decide who will work on what. For each release, you will do a set number of sprints, and they will contribute to the final release. QA generally tests a sprint behind the developers. A rule of thumb for sprints is the newer your organization is to agile the shorter the sprint should be. If things go off the rails, you know sooner, and can adjust your list, and process.

Daily Standups- Every day there 3. is a daily stand up meeting (called “scrum” in some circles). Each de-veloper outlines what they are work-ing on and obstacles encountered. The goal of these meetings is to get problems out of the way so that developers can be productive. The role of the scrummaster (the head of the process) is to remove obstacles. As a product manager it is a good idea to attend but keep your market sensing priorities in mind.

Common QuestionsQ:How does Agile work for a SAAS based product vs packaged S/W / H/W?

It is definitely more challenging when • you are dealing with hardware pro-duction or waiting for customers to deploy new versions of the software (in the case of packaged software). Understanding you may have com-plexities, you can still run agile within your organization, even if you don’t ship the actual release. Decoupling release and shipping can be a way of adjusting agile to work for your or-ganization. If you’re running a SAAS environment, this is much simpler.

Q:How can you involve customers in an agile environment release?

You can always show customers in • a beta format before you finish the release, or release one version be-

hind the development organization. Whether it is releasing the software to install, or enabling features for them alone, client feedback should be incorporated into the release.

Q: Where can I go for Agile resources?There are many resources for ag-• ile, but for a great primer, I am a fan of this Google tech talk by Ken Schwaber, (known as the father of Scrum) http://tinyurl.com/ydquftk, it’s a great intro to Agile/Scrum.

Q: What’s the best agile type methodol-ogy Scrum, XP(Extreme Programming), KanBan etc?

Everyone has their preferences, and • it’s really up to your development or-ganization to decide what works. I have always worked in an organiza-tion where we flex agile to meet our organization, and it’s a hybrid. There is no “best way”, just a best way for your organization.

ConclusionAgile is a great way to be responsive to your market, and to build a partnership between the development and product management organizations. The tenants of good product management are not lost with Agile, although the work style is definitely altered. Agile will deliver better solutions for your customers, and hap-pier developers.

Agile is a win-win methodology.

TPMA

Q1 MONTHLY SEMINAR QUICKTAKESMarketing in the Social Media

Revolution, Alfredo Tan (26-Jan-2010)

Avoid 10 Common Risk Mgt Errors, Diana Del Bel Belluz,

(23-Feb-2010)

Working with an Agile Development Team, Lead: Kim Phelan, (23-Mar-2010)

With one of the biggest groups the TPMA has hosted recently - Alfredo Tan, Senior Director of Sales at Facebook - deliv-erred a rivetting presentation on the dy-namics and new era of social media.

Alfredo provided some astounding fig-ures, like Facebook having surpassed 350 millions users as of January, with 60% returning daily to

check and update their account. Surpris-ingly, of the 19 million Canadian users, the fastest growing demographic cat-egory are people 35 years and older.

Beyond the interesting statistics, Al-fredo also spoke to the importance of social media to the modern company, with examples like the Honda virtual fuel -gauge-Heart - giveaway on Facebook. Honda gave away 750,000 gifts, drove 1% increase in engagement, 10% asso-ciation with Honda, and strengthened the association of fuel efficiency with Honda vehicles. This drove to the heart of in-terest among the marketers and product managers - alike.

A key message from the evening was the Coca-Cola example. For any active brand, a company MUST engage social media. That is where the customers are going to be, and will discuss the prod-ucts, services, brand and company. If a firm does not actively take hold of its brand in the the new media, then cus-tomers will. To stay relevant a company must participate in the conversations.

Alfredo pointed out what to focus on:Leverage the social graph1. Build your brand and shape it2. Get started and iterate3. Develop a conversational calendar4.

All-told, it was a thoroughly fascinating and engaging evening - with tremendous member interaction and discussions.

Both Agile experts and the uninitiated - were treated to a panel discussion on using, deploying, and the benefits and challenges with implementing the Agile development paradigm and techniques.

This meeting was hosted by Kim Phel-an, Director of Product Management at I Love Rewards. Panelists included:

James Woods, Director, Product • Management, Xtreme Labs Adam Eisner, Director, Domains, • Tucows Inc. David Pellerin, Development • Manager, CTV Inc. Gino Marckx, Agile Practice Lead, • Thoughtcorp

To start, the panel defined Agile as a method or philosophy of iterative process development, intended to result in faster, cheaper and better products. Panelists addressed the migration from Waterfall to Agile development, similarities and differences of scrum masters and project managers, and pointed out that Agile is not only for software development.

Key points were that self-organisation, and solid communication are critical to the success of Agile development. On implementing Agile - it is a very different style with little documentation, and short-bursty iterations. It all seems “loosy-goosy”... and when done well - works!

Diana started the session off with a pro-cess for risk management, being to:

Identify the risk, • Frame the context, • Analyse the situation, • Evaluate possible scenarios, and • Treat the risk consequence. •

Applying this process outlined must be done within a framework of communica-tion, consultation and continual feedback. Those familiar with Agile techniques, will find this a natural fit.

10 Risks to facing an adversity:Complacency,1. Incorrectly assess risk severity, 2. Use Gut instinct to assess risk,3. Overlook information you have,4. Focus on the wrong risk,5. Not linking to performance mgt,6. Not building resilience,7. Failure to acknowledge and learn 8.

from near misses,Not accepting constructive feed 9.

back, and Failure to cultivate a relationship 10.

with external stakeholders.

TPMA

Have you ever noticed that many people are better at selling their product, service or company than they are at selling themselves? In today’s environment, that has got to change!

With apologies to David Letterman’s top ten list, here is my list of resume tips, as an executive recruiter in the Canadian technology world.

Resume gets the interview. The pur-1 pose of your resume – CV – career overview is to get you an interview. So when you write the resume, get all the criteria’s and self sorts out of the equation. The resume gets you into an interview!!!

Your resume is an ad-2 vertisement of you. An online or offline advertisement is about selling a brand – your resume is an advertisement to sell YOU!! Whether your advertisement-resume is sent via e-mail or on paper, make it look great!!

Stopping Power. 3 Purpose of the first page of your adver-tisement-resume is to get people to read i t . What is on the first page, that will get a buyer to buy what your selling – you. What is on the first page, that will get the buyer to read the sec-ond page? You’re selling you, sell it well!!!

Three Second Test. Think of your 4 resume, as a billboard on Highway 401 – if you can’t read the key point in three seconds, you remember nothing. Look at your resume quick-ly – have your partner or a friend look at it for three seconds. What was the first point that registered? What was the second? What was

10 Resume Tips for the Busy Product Managerthe third? Those three points are what you want the buyer to remem-ber about you. These are the stop-ping points, that get the buyer to read more – read the second page – offer you an interview.

Tombstone data won’t get you an in-5 terview. Forget putting your name in 20 point, bolded, underlined spe-cial script – unless of course you’re BRAD PITT. Over 50% of the re-sumes I see waste the top 3 inches of their advertisement-resume on name, address, city, postal code, telephone number, fax number and e-mail address. Some even include their age, martial status, health and

family configuration– yikes! On the top of your re-

sume, on one line put your name and e-mail

address –Frank Huggins hug-g i n s @ m a n -drake.ca. On page two of your resume at the bottom on two lines

put your tomb-stone data. I

promise you, that if you get a buyers attention in The

Three Second Test with Stopping Power,

they’ll find your tomb-stone data!

You graduated from school. Your 6 education got you your first job. Ev-ery job after your first has little to do with your education. Therefore, put your education on page 2 of your resume, keeping valuable selling space on page 1, for selling you!

Trade a nickel for a nickel. Every 7 one of Mandrake’s 300+ clients wants to hire a person who’s already doing the same job, just at another company. So don’t be shy – the job your doing now and the previous one should be the first two points, in the Three Second Test. Director,

Product Management shout it loud, shout it proud! Manager Develop-ment, Product Marketing Manager -scream it, make people notice.

References available on request. 8 Lose this line. The only person who can’t provide references has just been released from a long stay as a guest of the Canadian Government! Don’t tell me the blinding obvious, use the space, to sell yourself!

Be industry specific. “Career objec-9 tive: I’m passionate about making a difference in an software/telecom-munications/technology firm. That’s like me saying I’m a specialist in the marketing/high-tech/interactive/in-ternet/sales promotion/wireless ex-ecutive recruitment business. You can have more than one resume, so make it specific to the opportunity-company you’re applying to.

Sell your value. If you don’t toot 10 your own horn, who will? You must take each of your experiences and proudly tell about it. How did you add value? How did you make things better? What changed as a result of your contribution? How did teamwork improve as a result of your contribution? Did you company achieve deeper penetration or in-creased market share as a result of what you did? Did you identify and conquer a new market segment? You get the idea-don’t be bashful.

Like it or not your resume is the initial selling point of you. The best people don’t always get the job. Why? They don’t get an interview. Like it or not your resume is the initial selling point of you.

About the AuthorFrank Huggins is an executive recruiter at Mandrake Management Consultants and can be reached at huggins@mandrake.ca

TPMA

Using technology to get things people need from each other rather than from companies, is the premise of the ground-swell - or social media starting point.

Groundswell addresses the broader theme of the various socially inspired new technologies. More importantly it addresses the broader perspective of how companies must attend and adapt to this new space of customer orientation. Clients today seek, receive and have greater trust in information received from fellow clients – rather than messages carefully crafted by the provider. Like it or not – the power of advocating a prod-uct, company, brand or service is now ir-reversibly in the hands of the individual contributor to the social media space.

Li and Bernoff speak to how companies must actively partake in the new me-dia space to thrive. The authors aptly describe not hav-ing a presence in the Groundswell as similar to a corpora-tion having a simple one or two page website – today, with two simple graphics some descriptions, and little else.

Beyond the corpo-

rate and management direction aspect, Li and Bernoff speak to how companies use social media to test products, fea-tures and offerings. Rather than guess at important features – ask the clients in real time - on social networks.

Groundswell explains how some of these new technologies were implemented in existing firms of various sizes. This high-lights the effort, sore spots, how to repli-cate positive results, and the importance of having senior management involved in driving the effort and outcome.

The book provides a broad stroke on the new realm of technologies like Twitter, Facebook, Second Life, LinkedIn, Wikis, YouTube, CommuniSpace, Blogs, Deli-cious (tagging), and analytics. It also provides abundant examples of how companies successfully implemented this wide array.

Its most important message was that companies must embrace this technol-ogy space today as a fundamental of business. Failing to do so means the company risks being left behind by its customers – as irrelevant.

Readability: Content: Applicability: Overall:

About the ReviewerCharles Dimov is the Strategy Business Plan-ning Manager at HP’s printing division, man-aging a product mgt & sales team. With 17 years of business ex-perience, he has spent

over 10 years in product & market-ing management. Contact Charles at cdimov@hotmail.com

BOOKREVIEWPRODUCTCAMP

RETURNS!Sunday, May 30th at the Ted Rogers School of Management, Ryerson University.

Join product managers from across the Greater Toronto Area for some great discussions on product management, and product marketing.

ProductCamp Toronto is a collaborative, user-organized, unconference - focused on product development, product marketing and product management.

There is no cost to attend ProductCamp Toronto, but your participation is required to make this a great event. We will be looking to you to lead a session or actively participate in the session discussions!

To help focus the sessions and discussions at this year’s ProductCamp, we will be having several tracks at the event. Talks and discussions in each track will focus around a particular theme or will be aimed at a particular audience.

PM 101 • — this is aimed at people new to Product Management or Product Marketing or those who want to learn more about the basics of the topic.

Start me up!• — this is aimed at entrepreneurs or those who are interested in or involved in startups

Advanced Product Mgt• — while open to anyone, this track is intended for experienced Product Managers and Marketers who want to go deep into topics with others in their field.

For more information and to register for ProductCamp Spring 2010 visit:www.productcamp.org/toronto

TPMA

COOLTOOLS: XOBNI

XOBNI ... “inbox” spelled backwards, is an add-on to Outlook. It provides fast search through all your email. It works reliably unlike some desktop search en-gines.

Features• Find files sent in email. Alone, this can save hours in multiple searches, • Suggests meeting availability times based on your Outlook calendar,• Instantly view of all email conversations and appointments with a colleague,• Shows a photo of sender found on Fa-cebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter, • Provides a profile of emails sent/re-ceived from the sender, letting you know the likely time to get a response, and • Fascinating analytics on your own e-mail responsiveness, average traffic, daily/weekly traffic, and much more.

Xobni is a HUGE help in finding emailed information located somewhere on your PST files. Alone, this will dramatically im-prove your personal productivity.

PDMA - Ontario ChapterThe Product Development & Manage-ment Association (PDMA) Ontario Chap-ter is a local chapter supporting people engaged in developing and managing of new products - both manufactured goods and services. We are committed to facilitating and providing networking, knowledge sharing and overall learning opportunities and events for Ontario‘s New Product Development Profession-als. Please visit: www.ontariopdma.ca

Highly recommended for any business person drowning in email.

A Free trial version is available, with the full version costing only $29 ... WORTH EVERY PENNY!

Download: www.XOBNI.com

cdimov@hotmail.com

Lee Garrison President Charles Dimov Exec Editor Gale Geddes Past-President Kevin Lister Treasurer Jacques Chamberland Executive Niki Coons Executive Allan Neil Executive Kim Phelan Executive Norman Sung Executive Aldwin Neekon Executive

Published: Apr 27, 2010

EXECUTIVE TEAM

SPONSORS

Fees collected through sponsorship help to defer the costs of obtaining exceptional speakers, operating the web site, and building our resources and tools. These are activities which in turn attract more members, drive higher activity on the web pages, and increase the exposure for our sponsors. This is very much a win-win scenario.

© 2010 Toronto Product Management Association

See www.TPMA.ca/sponsors for more details or contacts us at info@TPMA.ca to find out about Commercial Sponsorship or Corporate Membership.

Submit Articles!Inspired? Write an article relating to Prod-uct Management, and submit it to TPMA Focus. Writing an article helps your as-sociation, and shows your expertise.

Send to: cdimov@hotmail.com

Corporate MembershipCorporate Memberships let your com-pany register up to 10 staff so they can attend our monthly events, participate in forums and enjoy the other TPMA resources. Only $500 per year!

Discuss at your next staff meeting. Corporate membership is a small cost giving your colleagues a professional forum in which to partake, learn and progress. To find out more, contact us at sponsorship@tpma.ca

LinkedIn & FacebookJoin us on LinkedIn and Facebook. Search groups for the “Toronto Product Management Association” or TPMA... and join the discussion. You will find opinions, advice, Job Postings, product management oriented news and more.