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

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.

It’s so easy for the right hand to not know what the left hand is doing. But with more transparency of what everyone is doing, you avoid people giving excuses for dropping the ball because they assumed the other guy was doing it. Transparency == win for managing expectations.

At the end of the session, during Q&A, I threw a question that wasn’t that much in line with all the other questions posed by everyone else. The questions from others were mostly about business processes, writing requirements and so forth, but I had a different itch and had to ask. I noticed that Enterprise Informatics was a software company that had a very diverse portfolio of customers in unrelated industries, ranging from finance, government, construction, to oil/gas and nuclear power.

I’m not nuclear expert, but obviously selling into the nuclear industry is highly “niche” to say the least, for any software company. You have to have the domain expertise and know how to sell to these companies. Surely the nuclear companies have all sorts of red-tape and policies/regulations on how they can just randomly trust some software company with their prized data. It’s gets easier to get that 10th customer if you already have 9, but I’ll bet getting that 1st customer must be difficult.

My question to Alan was about how one gets that very first customer. You can satisfy a customer and rely on word of mouth if you do a good job, but again, how do you get that first customer with no proven track record?

The answer was that “It’s tough” (yup, I know). Alan said to outsell yourself like hell, but then again, that doesn’t actually say much, because everyone can talk, not many people can walk the talk (yup, I totally agree). Alan said to believe in yourself that you actually have the chops to pull it off (product managers have to do whatever it takes!), and just find some leverage you can use (the customer usually have other agendas)–so the lesson here is to align yourself as much as possible to the customer’s implicit agenda too, and try to work out a win-win. (Awesome advice)

This actually reminds me of another story that I read in Founders At Work (it’s an awesome book, by the way). Ann Winblad (another awesome person that I’ve met in person!), in her startup days faced the same kind of problem. She pulled it off by exuding confidence. She said that her initial investors threw her money mostly because they were rooting for her, and just wanted to see her succeed (raising funds for a startup is scary, but the lesson is to not be afraid).

I remember Ann saying that you should look at where you currently are (point A), look at where you want to be (point B), to then identify that gap. Then you do the best you can to find all these “levers” that you can leverage to close that gap. If no visible path exist, you will need these levers to even get there. If a visible obvious path exists, then you still want levers to accelerate you to point B, because these will serve as your competitive advantage over any competitors who may be on the same path.

Alan is quite the self-made guy (my kind of person!), and also a turn-around artist. He’s got a technical background and rose through the ranks in Product Management to CEO. Product management is definitely interesting to me because it’s not very well defined–you have to know a little bit of everything, you have to have your hands in everything (especially in smaller companies like startups), and you have all the responsibility when sh!t hits the fan, but none of the direct authority. Someone described product management as “the art of prospering between a rock and a hard place.” It is no wonder then that product management is a fertile breeding ground for CEOs to be.

Having the title of CEO to your name is fancy and shit, but if you can’t handle bad news — best you stay off that path. Marc Andreessen (another awesome person!) is a Silicon Valley veteran that I also got to meet last week when I was at Stanford for YC SUS says this about being the chief exec:

CEO job is an unrelenting stream of bad news. If it’s a international big company, then you get bad news from all over the world. The key is to be able to listen to and absorb all that news, then filter and act on it; not letting it get to you emotionally.

And oh, the last thing I learned of from Alan — this funny “Dilbert” blog for product managers: CrankyPM

Details of the SDSIC event, sponsored by Intuit (of Turbo Tax fame):

Integrated Product Management and Development – A Case Study

Enterprise Informatics is a local San Diego software developer of information management products used to meet compliance and regulatory requirements in several industries. The company’s products are used in diverse organizations including cities, mining companies, and nuclear power plants. Although modest in overall headcount, the company’s development and product management teams are spread across 3 continents and release products to customers several times a year. This has only become possible after redesigning the company’s approach to defining and managing product requirements and releases. This presentation focuses on the key concepts that have led to major improvements.

Alan Kiraly – CEO, Enterprise Informatics

Alan has been actively involved in information management his entire career creating early systems on VAX mini-computers. He spent years working directly with customers deploying systems in the Aerospace and Automotive industries. Since 1998 he has been pursuing a vision to make information management technology more accessible in terms of price, implementation, and administration. Over the last 25 years Alan has held various positions in engineering, sales, consulting, and leadership roles.

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