Product Camp Toronto was above all a great networking opportunity since there were lot’s of breaks between sessions for conversation. The day started with people sitting at tables chatting – and boy was there a buzz!

In this post I am going to give a quick pass at the four sessions I was at:

• Keynote on what is a product manager
• How to treat Customers like a Market and Markets like a Customer
• Open forum on Crowd Sourcing
• Market Research with Innovation Games

 What is a Product Manager?

The short answer is: someone who makes choices on product every day. John Stetic used the graphs below to show the breadth of skill required for product management and walked through some of the archetypal product managers and where they shine.

How to treat Customers like a Market and Markets like a Customer

Nick Van Weerdenburg had an engaging and insightful session. For me, the most engaging concept is to conceptualize a market as a person. Really ask yourself – what are they like? Personality? What do they think of you? Do they know your product? Good stuff. Read more below.

Open Forum on Crowd-Sourcing

I offered to facilitate this session (since I am getting pretty good at facilitation) and there was no one else around. As it turned out, we had a great mix of curiousity, skepticism and practical knowledge.

At the end there seemed to be consensus that:

Crowd Sourcing is a valuable activity that makes the Product Manager’s life easier, results in a better product and all this with minimal additional workload.

Below is a summary of the Crowd-Sourcing Flow:

Market Research with Innovation Games

Like crowd-sourcing, Innovation Games®are a powerful way of connecting with customers. The main difference is that Innovation Games® are focussed on real-time collaborative games as a means of engaging customers and stakeholders to reveal what really matters to them and to get breakthrough ideas.

I ran the session to give people an idea about using in-person and online games support envisioning, identifying hidden needs, and prioritization. We also briefly played Buy A Feature game online – and there were more than a few people hooked on it.

Slides are below:

Also, for reference, here is the handout summarizing the games:

Summary

I had a great day a Product Camp and would definitely recommend it.

I wanted to share this inspiring video on the art of possibility and how our stance in the world can change everything. Stance is very important for coaching.

This video is pretty long, but the best bits for me were in the first 12 minutes. Some great parts:

• Letter using Remember the Future for remembering why the student will have been wildly successful (3:43)
• You can give an “A” grade to anyone – to transform the relationship (4:25)
• “How Fascinating!” as a celebration of errors to maintain an available state (10:53)

Also, Benjamin Zander has a book with this title (haven’t read it yet).

Last weekend, a group of local Agilistas got together for BBQ, drink, and to play with Lego. Well, not just play, but StrategicPlay® – with a purpose. And wow, what a result! The outcome was some deep insights into the Agile community that we’d like to share with you.

Setting the Stage

After a brief introduction and practice with StrategicPlay® model building and sharing, everyone proposed a topic for the session by building a model and explaining it. After voting (with little wee Lego coins), the group decided on the model/topic show to the left: it contrasts the low level of connection within the Agile community and outside with other communities with the ideal/future state where there is a very powerful coherent tower of strength in the community.

Individual Visions of Agile Community Challenges

Now that the topic was establish, everyone built their own model of it and took turns explaining them. Below, for example, is an individual model. Even though it was by the same participant who created the topic, the process of listening and sharing resulted in a dramatically different model. It tells the story of seemingly growing success of Agile as a movement, but coupled with a disconnect in making a difference with much of the corporate world. The possible elephant in the room is that perhaps Agile is and always has been about innovators and early adopters.

Here is another one – showing factions arguing with each other in order to produce commercial success while the great challenge of waterfall waste is left largely unchallenged.

 A Shared Vision of Agile Community Challenges

The next challenge was for the group to work together to create a shared model that:

• Represented the most important concept from each person’s individual model, AND
• Everyone felt comfortable will all parts of the shared model

Although I only facilitated the process, I felt a strong connection with the model and ideas in it.

Credits

Credit for the model goes to : Alistair McKinnell, Jason Cheong-Kee-You, Jeff Anderson, Siraj Berhen, Todd Charron, and Sam DeBoni. Great work!

StrategicPlay® looks powerful – What can I use it for?

StrategicPlay® is great for working out solutions to complex problems. The more complex, the better.

It has a wide variety of applications from: team building and organizational change to product innovation to developing company strategy.

If you are curious to learn more about applications or the science behind why this stuff works so well, please read a more detailed description.