280 Insider Newsletter
September 2006

• The 280 Insider
• Creating Compelling Product Roadmaps, Part 3
• Developer Program Toolkit Now Available
• November Product Management & Product Marketing Training
• Recommendation: 4Marketeers
• You're Going to Call Her What? Part 2
  
  

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Creating Compelling Product Roadmaps, Part 2
IIn the last issue we discussed an eight step process for creating product roadmaps and how to prioritize requirements. Now we'll talk about how to logically organize the features once you have them prioritized.

Strategies for Organizing Features
Once you have gathered and prioritized the features, you need to decide which strategy you want to use to organize them. There are three strategies generally employed: Themes, Golden Features and Timed Releases.

Themes
Themes are a simple and effective way to organize your releases. To create a theme take the original list of prioritized feature requests and begin to classify them into similar categories to see if any trends emerge. For example, it might be that the majority of requests are for product stability or for increased performance. There might be a trend towards better security in the product, or a trend towards multi-user collaboration. The key is to identify whether there are one or two high-level categories that have a large
number of features that fall logically under them. You can then group them into releases to put on the roadmap, each with its own theme.

Golden Feature
The idea behind the Golden Feature technique is that you choose a single feature that is the absolute most important priority for the release, and then you get the entire team to rally around it as the
focus. This single feature provides enough customer value to hang the entire release on. It is compelling enough that all of your customers will want to upgrade (and some potential new customers
will be further convinced to purchase). And it is simple enough to communicate from a marketing and competitive point of view that it gives your product a noticeable boost. Ideally you should be able to describe the Golden Feature in one to five words. Some examples might include: 1.) 30% Faster Performance 2.) Import MS Word files or 3.) Double your battery life. It has to be simple and very compelling - if your release has a long list of features, but you can't find a one to five word value message to communicate, it's going to be very hard to build a marketing campaign and keep your product focus.

The Golden Feature technique is particularly effective if you are on short release cycles or are doing a point release (1.1, 1.2, etc). Many of your team members may want to include all kinds of other
features that can be of varying interest and value to your customers. If you can get them focused on the one Golden Feature for the release (and in agreement that everything else is a "nice to have" priority but that you won't hold up the release for it), you'll have a much better chance of success. You'll also have a
higher likelihood of meeting a tight schedule, as you can plan therelease with more certainty if the Golden Feature is the only critical path item.

Timed Release
The timed release strategy uses pre-determined release dates to drive the schedule rather than features. You decide on a release interval (quarterly, every six months, once a year, etc.) and then you take the prioritized feature list and estimate which of the top features can make it into each release. If a feature misses the release it gets moved to the next release.

The timed release strategy has the advantage of providing your customers, partners and internal company constituents with known ship dates they can plan around. It also alleviates the pressure of
everyone trying to vie to get their "pet" feature into the next release, since they know that there will be another release coming along shortly. The downside of the timed release strategy is that it
doesn't work very well for features that have long development cycles. If your team is working on a feature that will take several release cycles to complete they may be pulled off to finish work for the interim releases.

Next month we'll talk about how to create roadmaps for multiple product lines and include some additional best practices tips.

Developer Program Toolkit Now Available!

Are you in charge of recruiting developers or putting together a program for incenting them to write for your platform? The Developer Program Toolkit can save you time and make your efforts much more effective.

The Developer Program Toolkit includes:

* A narrated seminar/presentation that teaches you best practices

* Guideline Documents:
- Developer Evangelism Plan Guidelines
- Developer Briefing Guidelines
- 3 Year Roadmap Guidelines
- 1 Year Roadmap Guidelines

* Templates & Samples
- Evangelism Plan Template
- Sample Evangelism Plan
- Seeding Program Invitation Letter
- Developer Database (Excel & FileMaker formats)
- Evangelism Project Cost Estimator
- Evangelism Timeline
- Developer Briefing Agenda
- 3 Year Roadmap
- 1 Year Technology and Tools Roadmap
- 1 Year Developer Training Roadmap
- 1 Year Marketing Opportunity Roadmap
- Partner Program Agreement

* Developer Program white paper

* Half hour consultation with the 280 Group

If you are responsible for recruiting developers the toolkit is a must have, and will save you hours of time and effort.

November Product Management & Product Marketing Training
Want to advance your career and improve your PM skills?

The week of November 6-10 we'll be holding a five day training course in Silicon Valley for Product Management and Product Marketing professionals. Based on the methodology in the 280 Group Product Manager's Toolkit, the five day course is the most comprehensive and affordable training available.

After taking this course you will have a deeper understanding of both theory and practical application, and be able to perform your job better and advance in your career more rapidly.

Register before October 10th to guarantee a spot and receive the early registration price reduction.

Recommendation: 4Marketeers.com
One of the best mailresources we've found is 4marketeers.com. They are a free worldwide marketing portal & community serving 10,000 marketing professionals from over 2000 high-tech, low-tech & no-tech firms since 1998.

I encourage you to join their mailing list - lots of good resources.

You're Going to Call Her What? Part 2
What You Can Learn From Professionals About What Not to Name the Baby

By SB Master, President and Founder, Master-McNeil, Inc.
Copyright 2006

Part 2 - continued from last month's issue.

Celebrity or Fashion-Influenced Names - The most popular name list usually includes several entries which can be attributed to a famous person—often from the entertainment or sports world—who was “hot” that year. For example, “Destiny” was rising in popularity anyway in the U. S., but received a big celebrity blip starting in the late 90s. From #87 in popularity in 1994, to #59 in 1996, to #38 in 1998, the name jumped to #24 in 2000 and reached its height of #22 in 2001, the year of the “Survivor” album, with three songs in the top 100. “Angelina” is another celebrity example. This name hovered in the mid-high #200s throughout the 1990s, then jumped to #162 in 2000, #95 in 2001, and #74 in 2002. “Shaquille” burst suddenly into the naming stats, rising from #743 in 1991 to #185 in 1993, and then back down again, #635 in 1996 and below 1000 after 1997. It will not be hard to calculate the likely year of birth for these thousands of girls and boys, and that is the problem with choosing a name of this kind. Today’s hero or star may be forgotten tomorrow, but these children will be forever tied to someone else’s moment of glory. Unless it is a celebrity license for a specific purpose and duration, corporations know better than to link their future to someone else’s image and name.

Commerce-Influenced Names - Which brings us to “Tiffany”— not a famous person, but a store. While apparently derived from ancient Greece, I would bet the parents who choose this name are thinking of fancy jewels in turquoise boxes from Tiffany & Company, not of ancient history. Tiffany averaged #34 in name popularity throughout the 90s, but by 1999 had dropped to #80, then #100 in 2000, #127 in 2001, and #143 in 2002. This is a healthy trend. It is not a good idea to name your child after a corporate entity, however upscale.

Name Clusters - Corporations often create a family of brands with some naming characteristic in common, such as Chevrolet’s long-time preference for car names beginning with “C” (Corvette, Corvair, Colt, Cavalier, Caprice, Calais, Corsica), or Ford’s current SUV line-up: Excursion, Expedition, Explorer, Escape. Real families often do the same thing, using the same initial letter for all their children’s names (Mary, Mark, and Michael) or one letter for all the boys, and a different letter for all the girls (David and Drew, Kate and Kristen). Sometimes, corporations will choose a naming theme, such as the “exotic locale” names for Pepperridge Farms Distinctive Cookies—Lido, Geneva, Brussels, Milano. Families do the same thing, selecting all Biblical names, or all Celtic names, for example. Sue Sally Hale, who broke the gender-barrier in the world of polo, playing in tournaments for 20 years by disguising herself as a man, chose a more unusual theme. Her girls were named Sunny, Stormie, and Dawn, and her boys Trails and Brook. These approaches work well, and can be a source of pride and fun for families, whether corporate or human.

Where the family-of-names approach can get you into trouble is when there is a specific, limited number of names in the set selected. Imagine the feelings of a son, child #3, whose two elder sisters have been named Faith and Hope. Clearly he was meant to be a girl, so the trio could be complete with baby Charity. All his life he may wonder if his parents really wanted him. Similarly, Matthew, Mark, and Luke were obviously supposed to be followed by baby John, and little Maria will figure this out sooner or later. The naming lesson here is that it is fine to choose a common thread or theme as the source of your names, but that there should be a large number of candidates within that theme, and no particular order, so that your family can gracefully adapt as children come along.

Initials and Shortened Versions of Names- When choosing a new company or product name, corporations are very careful to ensure that it is unlikely to be shortened into something embarrassing, whether that be its initials, or a shortened, nickname version of the name. It was all too easy for unhappy customers to change Allegheny Airlines to Agony Air (before their name change to U S Air); Taco Bell is too easy to change to Taco Hell. The likelihood that an obvious nickname might suggest something negative or embarrassing is something parents should also consider, and it is clear that they sometimes do; from a top 10 rank in the U. S. throughout the 1960s and 70s, “Richard” had dropped to #35 by 1991, #45 in 1996, #72 in 2001, and #77 in 2002. Presumably this fall corresponds with the rise in slang use of its nickname “Dick.”

The ability of perfectly acceptably names, in combination, to add up to something undesirable should also be considered. Paula Isabel Goss becomes P.I.G., not so good on the playground; John Adam Parker becomes J.A.P., a pejorative in several cultures; Brian Marks becomes B.M. Fancy families may also want to review the potential for problems when the initials are written in monogram format, with the surname initial in the middle. Brian Daniel Anderson’s monogram, in this format, would read B.A.D.

Conclusion-Corporations invest millions of dollars to create and establish a new name, and because of this, they cannot afford to make naming mistakes. While parents may not be investing similar amounts of cash, the choice of a name for a child is equally important. By applying the same tools and lessons as corporations, parents can avoid naming mistakes, which are costly to families and children in ways which are far more important than money.

Why not take advantage of all that corporations, corporate naming professionals, and trademark attorneys have learned about choosing names? While these rules will not tell you which name to choose, following these rules will definitely determine what NOT to name the baby:

Rule #1 Avoid the fifty most popular names.

Rule #2 Do not make a common name more unique by giving it an unfamiliar spelling.

Rule #3 Your selected spelling and pronunciation should be obvious; verify this by conducting market research.

Rule #4 Avoid fanciful, made-up, and otherwise difficult names.

Rule #5 Be especially cautious with historic, family, and foreign names.

Rule #6 Adopting the name of a celebrity will tie your child forever to the deeds of that person.

Rule #7 Sets of related names are fine only when the number of names in the set is unspecific.

Rule #8 Consider your name’s shortened, nickname, initials, and monogram form, and avoid all negatives.

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