Behind the Scenes at Global-Roam

The post below is an early draft (and is incomplete).

It has been superseded by a more recent update, which I posted here on the blog on Thursday 25th February 2010.  The post below remains here (for now) as a historical curiosity.

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The role of the Product Manager follows a similar model as that we will apply to our Chief Software Engineer and, as such, the position might be equally termed:

Manager for Discerning, Developing and Delivering what the Customer Wants

Again, all three aspects of the role are important.

1)     Summary

As Product Manager, you will accept direct responsibility for one (or more) of our Mature Products.

With this responsibility, your focus will be on maximising the value we deliver to clients through this product – whilst at the same time maximising the value we generate for ourselves, over the longer-term.

You will also accept responsibility as a Project Manager in the software development process – utilising the Agile methods promoted by the Chief Software Engineer.

If necessary, you will also play a role in coding, though this will not be your primary focus.

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This post is a 2nd draft, and is still an incomplete work-in-progress.  In particular, please note that this has been posted (as a draft) in order to facilitate input from a variety of different people:
1)  As a team we will be discussing these Roles and Responsibilities at Beer O’clock on Friday 23rd January.
2)  We are also seeking input from both Shirlaws and Sound Reasoning with respect to these drafts (as they both bring a different perspective on our business).

Following from the role descriptions for our Chief Software Engineer and our Product Managers, the following could be viewed as the role descriptor for our Code Monkeys:

Developer and Deliverer of what the Customer Wants

Again, all focus on what the customer wants is important.

1)     Summary

To be added

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Here’s an interesting video (runs for an hour) promoting a new book “Glimmer:  How Design Can Transform Your Life, and Maybe Even the World” by Warren Berger (and Bruce Mau).

Seems like an interesting book, so have thrown it in our shopping cart, and will review it sometime in 2010.

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In 2010, as a result of our Autopsy 2 process, we have identified that we need to make two key appointments in 2010:

GM of Design, Development & Delivery.

GM of Marketing & Sales

We need to do this for a number of reasons – not least of which is to ensure that the company can become sustainable over the longer term, and to allow me to spend more time focused on other aspects of continuing to grow the business.

These appointments will be key positions for us, moving forwards. Hence this book was very timely….

1)  Binary Review

… not to mention a great read!

The Book	What we thought
“Great People Decisions” by Claudio Fernandez Araoz	Very thought-provoking

Full Disclosure – yes, that’s a tracked link to Amazon shown above. We buy quite a large number of books on a wide range of topics, all relevant to our business in some way.  If you did happen to purchase the book from Amazon, they’d throw a few shekels our way, which would help us to buy (and hence publish reviews of) even more books.  Hence, Karma would return the benefits to you…

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I posted recently about how I have fallen down, sometimes, in the establishing a shared understanding about the ways in which our business needs to operate.

See aside below**

Recently I ran into another of these internal points of confusion …

What should I be working on?

This is a key question I have been asked numerous times in the past 10 years.

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Whilst there is some debate about the order in which they should be ranked (i.e. is it customers-employees-shareholders or employees-customers-shareholders) it is fair to say that employees are central to any business’ success (including ours).

With all the changes we have had on the go in the company since the autopsy, I have been very conscious of the need to ensure that all employees are still engaged and aligned (despite the fact that I might not do a great job at this at times).

1)  Binary Review

Hence this book was of great interest to me:

The Book	What we thought
“People Glue” by Ian Hutchinson	A great framework

Full Disclosure – nope, not an Amazon link this time. Picked up this book at the AIM’s Management Bookshop, so the link above is to this source.  Well worth reading, even for our overseas stalkers.

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Read this book in spurts, but all together, it probably only took a couple of hours to get through it all.  Definitely a framework to apply in our company.

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Paul Klaptocz pointed me at this interesting blog post from Stephen Few entitled “Malcolm Gladwell, modern problems, and the analytics age”.

With us having read two of his books many months ago (Blink and the Tipping Point – sorry, no book reviews up yet) and having previously discussed the follow-on from his 3rd book (Outliers) in my post about the 10,000-hour rule, I was curious to read further. read more »