Lots of figures and thoughts.
Patrick has documented the Bingo Card Creator so thoroughly that it ought to be relatively straightforward to describe it in terms of workflow. Then ... iterate.
Monday, December 31, 2012
Business patterns
Interesting service concept
OK, here's a neat little idea: given a site, build a moderately customized quality survey for it and submit it to the Mechanical Turk for a series of cheap evaluations. This kid built this for his own site, then put the service together as something available for other site owners/builders.
It would be instructive to sketch out the business processes for very simple businesses like this, and provide a kind of "business iteration framework" to cookie-cut not only the site itself but the entire business - automation and all.
It would be instructive to sketch out the business processes for very simple businesses like this, and provide a kind of "business iteration framework" to cookie-cut not only the site itself but the entire business - automation and all.
Customer/product development
So here's a very interesting article about customer development - outlining an actually rather simple process for finding out the language people use to talk about your service domain, and who those people are.
But let's consider for a moment what that actually means. When doing customer development, you're kind of understanding a group of people united by a common need - maybe before they even know this. Your task is to find that need, solve it with something you already have (or, in product development, build something that solves it), and then contact those people in a believable way so that they will also see that their need can be solved.
1. Find the need and the people: customer development
2. Find the solution: product development
3. Communicate the solution: marketing
4. Manage the solution: technical support
5. Manage customers' interactions with the solution: customer support
Each of these areas is kind of a part of any business plan that involves solving needs for money. Which might be all business, but I'm not prepared to make such a sweeping generalization.
So here's the thing. How automated can the discovery part of this process be made? Can I spit out business ideas just by searching yet?
But let's consider for a moment what that actually means. When doing customer development, you're kind of understanding a group of people united by a common need - maybe before they even know this. Your task is to find that need, solve it with something you already have (or, in product development, build something that solves it), and then contact those people in a believable way so that they will also see that their need can be solved.
1. Find the need and the people: customer development
2. Find the solution: product development
3. Communicate the solution: marketing
4. Manage the solution: technical support
5. Manage customers' interactions with the solution: customer support
Each of these areas is kind of a part of any business plan that involves solving needs for money. Which might be all business, but I'm not prepared to make such a sweeping generalization.
So here's the thing. How automated can the discovery part of this process be made? Can I spit out business ideas just by searching yet?
Saturday, December 22, 2012
Thursday, December 20, 2012
Friday, December 14, 2012
Research APIs
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Blog monetization
Interesting post. I really need to develop a set of blogging processes that I can drive with minimal effort, based on statistics that are analyzed automatically.
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Sunday, December 9, 2012
The business case for APIs
Of course, the elements of the business process description are automatically API candidates. Here are some interesting business-level aspects of APIs.
Friday, December 7, 2012
Cofounders and startup management
Questions to ask potential cofounders. And a neat slideshow on "How to run a 5-whys" - this is apparently a buzzword for a post-mortem. Which is itself a buzzword, I suppose.
The point is: in a human organization moving at great speed, mistakes simply will be made. It is essential to understand the mistake and to construct systematic ways of improving - otherwise the mistakes will simply continue to be made. People are fallible. "Trying harder" isn't a solution.
The point of the slideshow is that it's imperative to use humor to circumvent people's sense of shame at failing. Otherwise you won't stop failing.
The point is: in a human organization moving at great speed, mistakes simply will be made. It is essential to understand the mistake and to construct systematic ways of improving - otherwise the mistakes will simply continue to be made. People are fallible. "Trying harder" isn't a solution.
The point of the slideshow is that it's imperative to use humor to circumvent people's sense of shame at failing. Otherwise you won't stop failing.
Monday, December 3, 2012
Software maintenance
Actually, "tool maintenance" - you'll be maintaining your processes as well.
A note from one of the authors of BugZilla: suck less over time. Address issues, know your users' actual pain points, and alleviate them, especially the paper cuts.
A note from one of the authors of BugZilla: suck less over time. Address issues, know your users' actual pain points, and alleviate them, especially the paper cuts.
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