A brief presentation made during a CTO Circle meet in Berlin, exploring thoughts on vision to execution, the tension between founders and technology people and tools to help manage them. This very much just thoughts, supporting a discussion, not fully formulated guidance.

1. Product & Technology
Dr. Thomas Boltze

2. About Me
• CTO for a while
• reservebar.com, floranext.com, tuanpin.com,
yiqilai.com, dailydeal.de, zencap.de/es/nl
• Zoyto (fulfillment center & enterprise suite)
• Philips: Professional Audio Products and Standards,
Run Development / Research lab in China
• Intel: Classmate PC + 20 other ideas

3. Product Talk?
• Kai’s hats were missing the product role
• Were here to implement product

4. Matrix of Inevitability
founder / pm actual technological knowledge
perceivedtechnologicalprowess
😄
💨
?😞?
???

5. low/low == happy
• Founders / PM focuses on understanding and
explaining the business problems / questions
• Realises he is not good at technology, so he
does not attempt to make designs
• Fruitful discussions, little waste

6. low/high == lots of work
• Founder / PM focuses on designing solutions,
which are typically wrong
• We need to gently lead them away
• The actual business problem does not get
explored and decided
• Lots of wasted time, energy and goodwill

7. How do you deal with this?

8. A/B Test
Founder (opinionated):
This layout is shit, it is killing
conversion, you must
change it like this
immediately ….
A/B Test (unbiased):
There is no statistically
significant difference,
would you like to continue
the test?

9. A/B II
• Hypothesis Test Adjust
• Only works if you have very tangible clear goals
• Perfect tool (read weapon)
• against endless discussions
• ‘smart’ founders/marketers/product/customer

10. Vision
Five years from now, Computer Services Ltd. will
have annual revenues of over one million by
consistently providing timely, reasonably priced
repair and instructional services.
⚡️

11. Let’s try that again
A world where access to clean drinking
water is a reality for all people.

12. Your Mission?
We will strive to enthusiastically monetize interdependent
resources so that we may continue to professionally leverage
high-quality technology to set us apart from the competition.
⚡️

13. Better
I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the
goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon
and returning him safely to the earth.

14. Goals
Founder:
Build your department
agendas and present to me
Head of X:
But what are our company
goals for this year?

15. Goals II
• Focus on achieving measurable success metrics
• World leader top three by revenue in 20
countries
• Coolest place to work ??
• Defect free software ??

16. On USP’s
Peter Thiel (Zero To One):
Aim to be at least 10x better
than any current solution
Even Better:
Only game in town

17. USP II
What are your USP’s?
Do they matter?
To Whom?
Why?

18. Examples
• Head & Shoulders: "You get rid of dandruff"
• Anacin "Fast, fast, incredibly fast relief."
• Domino's Pizza: "You get fresh, hot pizza delivered to your door in
30 minutes or less—or it's free."
• FedEx: "When your package absolutely, positively has to get there
overnight."
• M&M's: "Melts in your mouth, not in your hand."
• Metropolitan Life: "Get Met. It Pays."
• Southwest Airlines: "We are the low-fare airline."[5]
Source: Wikipedia

19. Roadmaps
Who has a six-12 months committed roadmap?
Why (not)?
How did you get there?

20. Roadmaps II
• Scope: everything the company does so there
can be alignment and achievement
• Business value of feature (measurable)
• Dependencies
• Priorities

21. Roadmap Tools
a <=> b
Why? * 5
http://radiantminds.com/10-tools-to-create-impressive-product-roadmaps/
Three Horizons
What is success?
MVP?Value to X
ROI
Persona

22. Persona
A user persona is a representation of the
goals and behavior of a hypothesized group
of users.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persona_(user_experience)
… include behavior patterns, goals, skills, attitudes, and environment …

23. Customer Journey
Mapping all possible contact
points of a user and a brand

24. On MVP’s
Have you built an MVP?
Or Two?
Or Three?
Are they still MVP’s?

25. UI(X) Design
Can Must be learned

26. Clarity
Bootstrap + Balsamiq + Relentless Testing

27. The Gifted
• 10,000 hours of practise (Malcom Gladwell,
Outliers)
• Practise perfect
• Lack of practise ?

28. Just one last scare
http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2015
More than 100% of
developers have no
formal education in SW
engineering

29. Thank You!