Apr

24

SDSIC Integrated Product Management and Development - A Case Study

Filed Under business, entrepreneurship, marketing, people i like, product management, project management, san diego, startup, strategy | Leave a Comment

Recently, I’ve been really fortunate to have met so many amazing people, that I can just learn from through osmosis, merely by just hanging around them (the converse is also true, which is why I am careful to stay way from people I don’t want to model myself after). Two days ago, I attended a San Diego Software Industry Council (SDSIC) event on Product Management where a real world case study was presented by Alan Kiraly, CEO of Enterprise Informatics.

When I last took Rod Whitson’s class on product management at UCSD, I particularly liked the real world case studies that we went over. It was definitely a plus that Rod actually had real world experience to draw from. Likewise with Alan, who is also an industry veteran. The other thing I like about an actual face-to-face event is the people interaction, the stuff that you learn that nobody will actually write in a book.

Here’s a couple of things I picked up from Alan’s presentation.

A solidified and well defined business processes can be quite the competitive advantage. Alan talked about how Enterprise Informatics use their own product for their SOWs “lifecycle” management (eating your own dogfood == awesome!). What I particularly liked about this really manages decision making. Once an SOW is defined, if the time is not right, it can be thrown out in the “parking lot”. At a later time, if the opportunity arrises, the SOW can be picked up, dusted off a little, tweaked and be reused by putting it on the development cycle train.

The obvious value here is in saving time and resource in planning. Planning and strategizing stuff takes time and .. well, brain power! Too many times have I figured a whole plan for something, shelved it, and then later when I want to revisit it, I have to redefine the entire plan from scratch again.

Transparency is good. Ok, so nothing really ground shattering here, but it’s nice to hear about real world problems when transparency is not advocated. In a global and diverse organization, with people working across various continents and different timezones, synchronizing work and expectations can be a challenge. I can surely relate to that–my team at work, consist of folks in California, Australia, Israel, China, France, and the UK.
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Apr

20

Y Combinator Startup School @ Stanford Univ. ‘08

Filed Under entrepreneurship, people i like, photos, silicon valley, stanford, startup | Leave a Comment

Jeff Bezos & me, Y Combinator Startup School @ Stanford

That’s Jeff Bezos, chairman and CEO of a small company called Amazon.com. And oh, the founder of a space company too.

At SUS, after each speech, the speaker usually has a 5-15 min Q&A session with the audience. The way Jeff handled his Q&A, and carried himself impressed me. He respectfully and politely provided a “good enough” answer when someone posed him the question in an attempt to pitch AWS head to head against Google App Engine.

What really impressed me though, was when someone asked him about some technical limitation imposed by the company on Amazon Web Services, an answer to which Jeff did not know, so he redirected the spotlight to one of his aides standing by the stage for an answer. The aide essentially gave a beat-around-the-bush type “politically correct” corporate cookie-cutter, investor-relations cover-your-ass type answer. Jeff cut the aide of in mid-sentence when he saw that the answer was practically rubbish, and said, “so basically, he’s not really answering your question” (referring to this aide) and apologized to the developer for not knowing the answer.

He then said the name of his aid so that the developer could follow up with his aide for a real answer. Jeff is obviously trying to woo developers to build on top of AWS. I tip my hat for his efforts to gain trust from the developer community. That burst of honesty, cutting through clutter .. was refreshing.

The videos at Y Combinator’s Startup School 2008 can be found here: http://omnisio.com/startupschool08

Picture taken at Kresge Auditorium, at Stanford University.

Fact: Did you know that Blue Origin does their computational fluid dynamics calculations on the AWS Elastic Compute Cloud? At first, I thought that was just corporate incest (and another sleazy marketing ploy) — but I was wrong. Blue Origin previously took 70 hours per calculation, and now they can get results in just 12 hours, quickly deploying (scaling up and scaling down) a massive fleet of servers! Talk about eating your own dogfood. Now that’s just plain good practice.

Update — Check out this video(s). In personal decisions, my methodical nature can confuse me. Some decisions are best made with the heart.

Apr

13

What a week (or weeks ..)

Filed Under execution, failure, fear, goal setting, perseverance, quotes, things to ponder about, things to remind myself | 2 Comments

Wow, this is the longest lull in my blog since a long time. I have been sooooo busy. I know I’m always busy, but this week was my worse ever.

This past week has just been absolutely surreal for me. Been hit with so many things, in so many dimensions of my life that I’m just sitting here trying to figure out where I am right now. This week is also one where I had really high ups, and also extremely low downs. Standard deviation? Off the charts!

Seems like every time I double down and set my sights on something important, stuff just gets in the way to stop me short. Life has a funny way of messing with me like that. Everything I have ever wanted, I’ve always had to put up a fight for, and .. pay the price. Life has just never has been a walk in the park for me. This week I got slammed with so much madness, even from all the people I care about who cares for me.

Anyways. I can’t stop moving, I have to keep moving to stay alive. Keep my eye on the prize, and off all attractive distractions.

In fact, the more push back I get from seemingly random curve balls that life throws at me .. just gets me even more riled up and want to double down more on my commitment to executing my plans. All is fair in love and war. Life’s a game and I choose to play–even if given the option to observe and not participate. I know I will prevail, because I gots strategy. I recoup, plan, and execute. Bring on the problems!

A warrior of the light studies very carefully the position he wishes to conquer. However difficult his objective may be, there is always a way to overcome the obstacles. He verifies the alternative routes, sharpens his sword, and seeks to fill his heart with the perseverance necessary to face the challenge. But, as he advances, the warrior realizes there are difficulties he had not foreseen at the outset. If he waits for the ideal moment, he will never move from his position; he sees that a little madness is needed for the next step. The warrior uses a little madness. Because - in war and in love - one cannot foresee everything.

On a more positive note .. earlier this year I made a resolution to put myself out there and open myself up to the possibility of getting hurt. No pain no gains. Looks like I can mark that off my checklist now! That was fun. Fill ‘er up again!

A person can stand for the rest of his days facing one of the many doors he should go through, but he must understand that he has only truly lived up to that point. He may continue to breathe, walk, sleep and eat - but with less and less pleasure, because he is already spiritually dead and does not know it. Until one day when, as well as his spiritual death, physical death appears; at that moment God will ask: “what did you do with your life?” We must all answer this question, and woe betide those who answer: “I remained standing at the door.”

Thank you, Dr. Randy Pausch.

-If you lead your life the right way, the karma will take care of itself. The dreams will come to you.

-We can’t change the cards we’re dealt, just how we play the hand.

-Brick walls are there for a reason. They are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. The brick walls are there to stop people who don’t want it badly enough.

Apr

8

Lessons from the Warrior of the Light

Filed Under changing the world, entrepreneurship, execution, failure, fear, goal setting, passion, perseverance, quotes, regular reads, self improvement, startup, strategy, things to ponder about, things to remind myself, values | Leave a Comment

I’m definitely a fan of Paulo Coelho, the renowned Brazillian author. He has a unique way of teaching the lessons in life that he has learned through storytelling.

A few lessons from the Warrior of the Light.

Using one’s own madness

A warrior of the light studies very carefully the position he wishes to conquer.

However difficult his objective may be, there is always a way to overcome the obstacles. He verifies the alternative routes, sharpens his sword, and seeks to fill his heart with the perseverance necessary to face the challenge.

But, as he advances, the warrior realizes there are difficulties he had not foreseen at the outset.

If he waits for the ideal moment, he will never move from his position; he sees that a little madness is needed for the next step.

The warrior uses a little madness. Because - in war and in love - one cannot foresee everything.

Life is such that if you wait to gather 100% of every single detail before you can make a decision, others would have surpassed you. If you waited for the fog to clear, then what you see is what everyone else will also see. Given the perfect picture, anyone sane would make the same correct, best choice. This is exactly how *not* to beat the market.

CEOs often make decisions with incomplete data–and that takes a little madness. It’s about making decisions with the best information possible available at that time. Standing still through inaction is waiting to fail–and I’ll fail from action than inaction.

So when do you put yourself out there and wear your heart on your sleeve?
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