Things that will disappear by 2030

In most of the developing countries where telephone penetration was 15-40 per 1000 15 years ago has a cellphone penetration of 500 per 1000 households. In developing countries it is 800-1200 per 1000 households. The landlines in these developing countries have reduced from 400 to 250 per households.

This tells me that some of the most sought after product/service will no longer be relevant in few years. Here is my list of things that might disappear by 2030

• Wired telephone/ cable/ DSL: With Zigbee and Wi-Fi chips selling at a Dollar each in mass will eliminate the need of any wired technology

  

  Image via Wikipedia

• Optical drives in computer: CD/ DVD/ Floppy/ Hard disk will be replaced with SSD
• Insulin chips in the body will constantly monitor the diabetes level and release it only as much required, and that will eliminate regular checking and diabetes in 5 generations (Darwin’s effect)
• Developing countries will see freeway like noodles, and developed countries will move away from freeways to high speed rail like Shinkansen. Flight travel will be done only for more than 3 hours of flying

  

  Image by timtak via Flickr

• Gasoline will be priced on par with Olive oil, and cars will mostly be hydrogen cell based, and electricity would mostly come from Atomic reactors
• Plastic bags, Li-Ion/Alkaline batteries, non-recyclable products will all be eliminated

  

  Image by Getty Images via Daylife

• Paper books, newspapers, magazines will find place in museums
• The highly controlled regulations and disclosure policies will eliminate magic sauce in any business and ensure that clean transparent business with subscriptions based models will make money
• Need to carry different gadgets will be eliminated: You will have an integrated watch, TV, computer, phone, wallet, ID with simplistic human interfaces

  

  Image by ubersurgeon via Flickr

• Augmentation reality/layer for all the 5 human senses. You will be able to get information on everything you see from your eyes, will be able to voice search and get info on everything you heard, view similar items on search on whatever you touch, get reviews and provide instant reviews to internet on whatever you smell or taste, and so on. And this will be that one gadget that you will carry as mentioned above

  

  Image by K.Costin Photography via Flickr

  

  Image by Chuckumentary via Flickr

• There will be a new disease caused due to information overload where victims will go through de-addiction and rehab centers from internet, social media type of sites

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Product Managers

Product management is the most contradictory of all professions. Product Managers (PMs) need to be product experts and perpetual students. They must be creative, articulate multimedia marketers, and yet able to speak technology, finance, and legal-ese.

No wonder there are so few great Product Managers.

After 20 years researching and working with all types of Product Managers, I’ve boiled down what distinguishes a good Product Manager from a great one into 7 key attributes:

1. Great Product Managers know their product but also knows their own limits.
Obviously, a PM needs to know as much about the product as possible including the customers and their use of the product, the competition, the pricing, etc. This doesn’t mean that the PM should know the details of the code or database schema.

Nothing ticks off engineers like a know-it-all PM. Yes, the PM should be
aware of the overall architecture, what language or toolkit was used, any standards supported, and interoperability requirements. However, leave the development details to the pros. A PM will be more respected for it.

2. A great Product Manager listens first.
A PM’s job is to evangelize but the biggest failure in doing this is to assume too much about your audience. Engage and educate people by listening to them first. A great PM will find out specifically what their audience wants to know and the best way to deliver it.

3. Great Product Managers ask why, not what.
Great PMs know not to jump on every suggestion made for a product enhancement or pricing adjustment. They ask why the change is important before expending valuable time and resources. Only the answers to “why” can expose if there is already a less obvious solution or if there are other ways to address the
opportunity.

4. Great Product Managers are decisive.
PMs must make decisions regularly and as such, they should be firm and ready to defend their decisions. Great PMs get data when it’s available and if not, they acknowledge that it is the best decision under the circumstances. They also are prepared to change their decision if more information becomes available and the change is yet positive.

5. Great Product Managers are responsive.
Let people know that you aren’t ignoring them. When unresponsive, people assume you are unorganized, pretentious, or incapable. Great PMs are conscientious about their own image and reputation as they are about their product’s.

6. Great Product Managers communicate frequently, concretely, and concisely.
The hardest talent may be to say a lot with only a few words. A great way to do this is to use charts, graphs, and other pictorial representation of complex information. Another way is to spend time becoming a great writer and speaker. These are not natural gifts but rather practiced arts which when mastered, are the means to gain and sustain attention and credibility.

7. Great PMs manage passion.
Passion is critical and can’t be faked. However, too much passion is annoying. Great PMS are enthusiastic but they don’t lose an honest perspective that not everyone agrees that their baby is beautiful.

Great PMs never lose their temper at a colleague or superior. They are the ever level-headed negotiators and influencers. Their opinions are strong but they also strive to obtain win-win. This is an art form as much as it is a personality trait but great PMs have the confidence to do the right thing and do it with style

*By Alyssa Dver on March 13, 2008
Based on her popular Webinar, Alyssa Dver breaks down what the best Product Managers have in common.

Skyfire 1.5, the best mobile browser for Windows Mobile phone

Some of the smartphones now are more expensive than netbooks. We carry one all the time. We know we can take pictures to upload it to Facebook, update Twitter status on the new blog or web article that you just read, check your Gmail while waiting for a time, searching for something, etc. With iPhone in the market for over 2 years, the gap between the iPhone and OtherPhones has increased tremendously. The 3

Rcich content with Skyfire 1.5 browser on mobile

G data speeds enable you to perform most of the tasks on the cell phone that you can perform on the netbook.

Having said that, the phones themselves have tons of limitations such as browsing PC like websites that are not optimized for mobile, filling forms, making reservations, canceling tickets in the nth moment, and many other such tasks. Some of these can be addressed by using a great browser than can ensure that your phone only becomes a display assume like a monitor and the CPU is somewhere in the cloud to process data, web content, compress it, optimize it for mobile viewing, and so on.

Skyfire 1.5, a next generation browser has some new innovations built into its engine just to do it. The browser has the capability of delivery a PC content onto your cell phone by making your cell phone a dumb monitor and all the processing happens in the Skyfire cloud. So, what PC content are talking about? rich websites? flash games? video streaming? silverlight media content?mash-ups?rss feeds? emails? news feeds? social media aggregation?enabling PC websites on mobile phone for e-commerce transactions? the answer is ALL of the above. Yes, Skyfire 1.5 delivers all of the above on your mobile phone. Virtually anything that you access through WWW can be accessed via mobile phone with the same familiar look and feel (*unless someone turns off exclusively for Skyfire). Is not that cool? It plays all formats of videos. For instance, if you search for videos on video.google.com, you would be able to see tons of different streaming technology and options and you will be surprised to see that most of the videos are played inline. You can zoom into it to fill your screen and watch them on your hand held device.

With such great technologies I see a future where everyone will have a PC which is hosted on cloud somewhere and user will be able to access all the apps, tools, content, and media through any PC, mobile, TV or even on any wall or table in future. Skyfire 1.5 surely is one step into the future to fulfill one leg of that future.

Well done Skyfire

-Sridhar Karnam

iPhone: A best case study of efficient inventory management

How Apple Inc. used efficient inventory management for its product launch and growth of ‘iPhone’

When Steve Jobs has announced about the new revolutionary mobile communication in his Macworld presentation, iPhone was judged a triumph of design and functionality, not to mention it’s X-factor. Similar to other hot electronic products such as Xbox, PS3, Wii – analysts expected big shortages when the iPhones would go for sale across counters, but that didn’t happen, instead iPhone turned out to be the triumph of inventory management along its supply chain.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Selling 270,000 iPhones in 30 hours of transaction, a million units in 3 months, and 3.75 millions in 6 months shows the meticulous planning of its inventory control and management along its entire supply chain. Key to this success was:

• Choosing right suppliers and partners
• Establishing synchronization in the value delivery chain

Choosing right suppliers and partners:

• Choosing the hardware suppliers from USA, China, Taiwan, Japan, etc. worked out in Apple’s favor. They were able to manufacture the iPhone initially at $200-220 per set including distribution cost. They sold over a million units at $499-599 shooting their profits to $6.22 billion . Apple then was able to bring down the prices by almost 40% and yet generate huge profits by increasing the volume to 3.75 million units, through stable supply chain management in 6 months
• Selecting AT&T for distribution was a strategic move. The buyers were committed a 3-minute activation time, and customers were offered across-the-counter activation for those who buy them at the AT&T stores
• Fedex Express was another strategic partner who ensured smooth distribution of products from China to US, and to distribute those products to individual stores on time, just few hours before the launch time of 6 PM
• They partnered with Yahoo!, Google, Flicker, etc. for the applications that were relevant to the US market

Image via CrunchBase

Establishing synchronization in the inventory chain:

• A value inventory chain consists of suppliers, production, distribution, partners, etc. Typically every single step where some value is added from production to consumption of the product
• First, the communication layer was synchronized, and all the partners and suppliers shared a single version of the truth. The market research data was shared with its suppliers along with its management’s goal in terms of the number of units to be sold in each month. This enabled the partners to plan their capacity and production well in advance
• The assemblers of the product in China had manufactured the expected quantities well before the launch dates. The distributors had it sent to US a whole week before the products were to be sold. The goods were sent to the retailers few hours before the lunch break so that stores could close and reopen at 6 PM to prepare for sales till midnight
• Retailers had also made some changes wrt merchandizing the products. iPhones were sold near the entrance area of the shop
• Bringing together all these components and synchronizing helped a very historical launch of this product resulting in exceeding the expected sales during the first few days of the launch

Efficient Inventory Control and Management

Introduction

Efficient inventory management is achieved through inventory control and inventory management. Inventory control involves managing the inventory that is already in the warehouse, stockroom, or store. The information about where is it, how many of them and how much each of it costs. Inventory management involves determining what, when, whom, and how much to order. It is forecasting of the future requirements based on current and past trends.

It is best to start with inventory control. Once you have all the information, you can use scientific methods to forecast and perform inventory management.

Inventory items

They can be broadly classified into ‘stock’ and ‘stuff’. Stock is the material you intend to have in warehouse. These are materials that you anticipate that your customers will want for a given time frame. It is a commitment that a reasonable quantity is available for immediate delivery/ shipment.

Stuff is any other material that you have. Inventory is not worth what you paid for it, but what someone is willing to pay for it. So it is important to liquidate the stuff and focus on stock.

The liquidation of ‘Stuff’ can be done in following ways:

• Return the material to vendor: depending on the time of purchase, condition, nature of goods, etc., this could be a good option. Assess vendors fees and conditions before making decisions
• Move the stuff internally to some other store/ location/ branch/ division which could be a stock there. Transportation and handling charges might be an issue to consider
• Liquidation sale: any price above cost of liquidation is a good sale price to get rid of the ‘stuff’
• Donate the material to non-profit, if it can benefit from your ‘stuff’. There are provisions to take tax deductions up to twice the cost of inventory.

‘Stock’ management

These are some of the following methods by which stock can be managed scientifically:

Just-in-Time (JIT):

It’s a strategy to reduce work-in-process inventory and its associated costs. The process should be driven by signals and these signals should indicate the when to make the next part. This signaling is achieved through a job-card or ticketing called Kanban. These processes can be simple visual signals such as presence or absence of part on the shelf, etc. but, when implemented effectively, it leads to dramatic improvements in organization’s return on investment, quality and efficiently.

This technique was first used by Ford Motor Company, US as described by Henry Ford’s My Life and Work (1922): “We have found in buying materials that it is not worthwhile to buy for other than immediate needs. We buy only enough to fit into the plan of production, taking into consideration the state of transportation at the time. If transportation were perfect and an even flow of materials could be assured, it would not be necessary to carry any stock whatsoever. The carloads of raw materials would arrive on schedule and in the planned order and amounts, and go from the railway cars into production. That would save a great deal of money, for it would give a very rapid turnover and thus decrease the amount of money tied up in materials. With bad transportation one has to carry larger stocks.”

However this technique was pioneered by Toyota Motor Corporation, Japan. When Toyota executives made a visit to Ford and Piggly Wiggly in the US, they saw how it was conceptualized but never used fully by Ford, and its effective implementation at Piggly Wiggly. They adopted a lot of what they saw at Piggly Wiggly at Toyota and published the Toyota Production System (TPS).

Material Requisite Planning (MRP)

This is a software based production planning and inventory system used to manage manufacturing process, the objective of MRP are:

• Ensure materials are available for production and products for delivery
• Maintain lowest possible level of inventory
• Plan manufacturing activities, delivery schedules and purchasing activities

Cycle Counting & Physical Inventories

Radio-frequency identification (RFID) is the use of an object (typically referred to as an RFID tag) applied to or incorporated into a parts for the purpose of identification and tracking using radio waves. Some tags can be read from several meters away and beyond the line of sight of the reader.

Capacity Requirement Planning

Capacity planning is the process of determining the production capacity needed by an organization to meet changing demands for its products. In the context of capacity planning, “capacity” is the maximum amount of work that an organization is capable of completing in a given period of time. The inventory management will get the input from capacity requirement planning.

Best practices of inventory control can be achieved by:

• Bill of material accuracy
• Handling efficiency issues proactively
• Inventory accuracy such as auditing, using cycle counting, etc.
• Recording inventory transactions with barcodes/ RFID, etc.
• Inventory reduction

The least the Middle Manager needs to know

• What major initiatives and projects are they supporting and are they completing them on time?
  • MM is the interface from the team in translating the strategic goals into actionable items. It is important that MM identifies them and assigns the proper resources for them.

• What are the primary products and services produced by this team?
  • MM needs to know what products and services that his team is supporting as MM represents the team to other departments and also externally to customers. Also, when he is in strategic meeting with executives he needs to know his products and services to accept the strategic goals.

    

    Image via Wikipedia

• What is the quality of the inputs and outputs
  • MM is responsible for the delivery of his projects and programs and it goes without saying that the quality standards must be met and any unacceptable quality products or services makes no sense as it has to be redone, which would affect the schedule, promises, resources, etc.

• What are the internal and external customer’s expectations for responsiveness and throughput?
  • The internal customers are the value delivery chain for whom the MM’s output is his input. If MM’s organization fails to deliver the output at the desired timeline, quality or quantity then the overall delivery of the organization would fail.
  • External customer feels the MM is responsible for the overall delivery of the output with the specified budget, schedule and resources. They expect MM to be responsible as he has the authority to get things done. MM has to be very agile and responsive to customer’s requests.

• What is the most important contribution that internal and external customers expect?
  • Internal customers: They expect the MM to be organized, understand the risk involved in the project/program, and understand the goals, schedules, deliveries, process, controls, and expectations.
  • External customers: They expect the honesty, integrity, timely delivery of the output at the pre-defined budget, resources and quality. In short they do not expect any surprises from MM.

• What are the expectations for improving the departmental processes and procedures?
  • The processes are dynamic and needs to be tailored according to changes in the customer’s requirement, organization goals, etc. Since it is important to adhere to process to come out with better results, it is also very important to set the process and controls in the first place.

• Are the team members looking for ways to improve?

• Process improvement can not happen from just one MM. He can be pivot, he can set the controls and ensures with auditing that they are followed, but to understand the process and to constantly improve them, the initiative should come from everyone in the department.

How Middle Manager achieves his top goal

The number one goal of MM is to maximize the efficiency of his resources. MM is dependent on his team, resources, infrastructure, etc. to achieve the task that has been assigned for him. It is the responsibility of the MM to translate the strategic goals of the organization into projects and programs that needs to be delivered.

Image via Wikipedia

MM does this by following a management framework:

• Identifying the goal
• Knowing the schedule
• Setting the process and tone
• Identifying the key resources
• Risk analysis
• Change control methods
• Auditing at every milestones to ensure that the path leads to destination

Attributes of a Middle Manager (MM) a.k.a Director

• Honesty and Integrity: MM is a role model for efficient his organization and sets the tone of the organization. The organization is as good as a leader and he will lose his command and respect without these values.

• Understanding of people: MM is a people’s manager. His primary responsibility is to efficiently utilize his resources and delegate the authority and responsibility. He is as good as his team, and if does not have a support from his team, he will fail.

• Understanding of project and program technology: MM is an interface to other departments in negotiating resources and milestones. If he does not understand the project and program, he will put his team under a lot of stress and end with no support from them.

• Alertness and quickness: MM shall always be alert and agile. His agility again sets the tone in the organization and information flows freely back and forth. If MM does not respond to emails for days, then eventually his team will stop depending on him

• Versatility: MM plays different roles at different situations from sales, to HR, to marketing, etc. and it is important that he plays all these roles.

• Energy and toughness: MM sets the tone of his organization. He is has to be enthusiastic and transferring high energy to his team. MM also needs to make right and tough decisions and not just correct decisions.

• Decision-making ability: MM has to make decisions quickly with limited information. His delaying in process with have a dominos effect in the entire organization

• Ability to evaluate risk and uncertainty: Since MM delegates most of the tasks to different project groups and has the overall delivery responsibility, it is important that he constantly evaluates the risks involved and things that might halt the programs.

• MM is expected to be accountable and take ownership: The first level managers are only responsible for the projects or tasks given to them. The execs are responsible for the organizational goals. It is the MM’s responsibility to bridge the gap and map them.

• MM are expected to make a positive contribution to the business: MM has access to both the organizational strategic goals and overall program scorecard. He can contribute more by mapping the two and enabling a proper communication channel

• MM needs to get results: MM is measured on the results and not on the process. Process is only the path he takes to achieve the ultimate goal.

• Good managers are responsive to others’ ideas and concerns: It is very important to get the feedback, suggestions, ideas, etc. from the front end employees who are either performing the task or facing the customers. Ultimately any strategic move has to be implemented by them.

• Gossip or badmouth others: MM sets the tone of the organization. If MM starts badmouthing his team members or others, the whole team would do the same. That brings down the morale and trust in the team

• Obstruct or otherwise subtly sabotage changes: MM should be considered as a leader who is open to innovation. If he starts obstructing every idea, that again brings down the morale of the team. His team members will stop going to him for any opinion or advice.

• Allow differences in style or personality to get in the way of working productively with a peer or employee: Each manager has a different style MM should be considerate of other’s style of working. If the personal agenda overtakes the objective then the task will only head downhill.

• Interfere or take over a project or task that one of your employees owns: MM should set the controls and systems and audit periodically if it’s working. He should focus more on result than micromanagement.

• Let work pile or become disorganized: If MM becomes a roadblock because of lethargy, his team will find ways to avoid him for consulting, advice and decisions. MM should lead by example by being agile and setting the priorities right.

• Play favorites or make business decisions based on friendship: A biased manager will never get complete support from his entire team. Even the person who is MM’s favorite might not get full support from his team and peers. MM should be objective in decision making.

Top responsibilities of Middle Manager

The middle manager or Director is responsible for representing his department internally and externally. Consider each of the triangles as hierarchy of different functions such as HR, sales, product management, etc. Director is the first level interface between various departments. For instance Director of Engineering will talk to Director of HR for recruitment & training, will talk to Director of Marketing for getting the MRD in time, etc.

Each of these Directors has the specific goals assigned to them by their management in their triangles plus the organizational goal that all of them share.

The MM participates in cross-functional meetings, evaluates the supply chain internally and is always aware of the processes and context diagram. ie… where his inputs are coming, what are his dependencies, what are his outputs and who it should be fed to. The Directors discusses and negotiates on the schedule and services among them during the peer or cross-functional meeting and they communicate the goals and processes to their organization both up and down.

They bring the status updates regularly from their team, and update to their peers in other departments apart from their management. The Directors also have the responsibility to oversee the implementation of the processes and to audit periodically to check if its controls and systems are working.

Role of Marketing in a product company

The marketing is responsible for finding the needs and wants of the end-user or customer. The marketing department prepares the Marketing Requirement Document (MRD) while doing market research on the latest trends in the market, what customers are choosing, what customers are willing to pay, what are the users requirements, classification of requirements. The output of these marketing efforts will be MRD, which will act as inputs to Product Requirement Document (PRD).

The engineering management team then takes the MRD and breaks down the functionality requirements such as needs and wants to specification and tasks. They further breakdown the tasks into components and use the project management methodology to assign resources to each task, calculate the hours required for each of the tasks and come up with a schedule and budget for the project. The engineering management typically follows one of the project management life cycles to get the budget and schedule.

Irrespective of the cycle they use, they typically do the following steps to perform the project:

• Analysis
• Design
• Implementation
• Test

This PRD with the budget and schedule information is then checked with the marketing department to ensure that there is no miscommunication. The marketing will also evaluate the cost of the project and hence the final price of the product there by reassuring the ROI on investment, the number of products that they feel can be sold, etc.

The inputs of PRD, MRD and Return on Investment analysis is fed to the senior management for their approval of product design and budget approval. If the budget is approved then the project is started immediately with same specification. If there is a cut in budget/ schedule then the engineering management contacts the marketing in prioritizing the requirements. Typically they will find out the minimum requirements that are needed to make a first significant sale, and then build functionality in modular structure based on the budget and schedule availability.

During the development life cycle it is possible that due to customer engagements in the form of alpha or beta testing, they might come up with new requirement or functionality. This will then follow a change control process where this functionality is fed to engineering management for analysis, design, implementation, and test cycles. Estimation of budget, resources, and schedules is reworked and fed to senior management for their approval.