This past September, I successfully took an American to Europe for the first time for an amazing trip. Having grown up in various parts of Europe myself, I’ve already experienced the magic of Europe many times over. However, when my nearly 30 year old boyfriend confessed to me that he had never been to the Eastern hemisphere, I knew what I wanted my next big trip to be: a tour of the classic cities of Western and Southern Europe. Plus, one of my favorite things to do is play tour guide, so this would benefit both of us greatly.
Here’s how I prepared for my three week trip to Europe, including how I decided which cities to visit, how to travel from city to city, and how to pack.
Europe Trip Preparation by Timeline
6 months (March 2012):
– Language refresher (French, German, Italian)
– Plot route and cities to visit
– Purchase European guidebook
3 months (June 2012):
– Purchase airfare (21 June)
– Apply for passport
– Purchase walking shoes
2 months (July 2012):
– Post apartment on AirBnB
– Hotel reservations (19 July)
1 month (August 2012):
– Purchases: luggage, clothing, camera(s)
– Train tickets (30 Aug)
– Complete detailed budget
Right Before (September 2012):
– Call credit card companies
– Get haircut + make final trip-related purchases
– Double-check packing list & State Department Travel Warnings
When to Visit Europe
Dates: Wed, 9/19/12 – Sun, 10/7/12
I knew I wanted to visit Europe in late September, because it’s my favorite time of year in any city. But Western Europe is especially enchanting
High-level Itinerary
Paris > Brussels > Amsterdam > Stuttgart > Mannheim > Heidelberg > Eberbach > Heilbronn > Bad Wimpfen > Schwabisch Hall > Munich > Garmisch > Venice > Pisa > Florence > Rome
1) Micro or macro-management. — You give poor feedback or no feedback. Your report asks for more feedback and you don’t give it — a boss who cares about your development will be glad to share her perspective on what you’re doing well and how you could do better.
2) You set impossible expectations or no expectations – you reserve negative feedback for the annual review; you state multiple times that the review is “good.” You do not give details about bonus potential, nor their correlation to your review.
3) You don’t protect your team – you always “agree,” with your cohorts and throw your team under the bus as needed. You approach her with your concern about not having enough resources to tackle that new project or about butting heads with the department down the hall, and she’s unmoved. She may be signaling, “I’m not willing to change anything for you. If you want to make a change, it should be to a new job.”
4) You’re passive agressive or excessively aggressive – you always agree in person, and then disagree vehemently – behind people’s backs
5) Inaccessibility or indifference. — You consistently show up late for meetings and/or are distracted throughout meetings. All of your one-on-ones seem to get canceled or rescheduled at the last minute, or worse — your boss forgets you had a meeting altogether. The harsh reality is managers will make time for someone whenever they feel it is important enough to do so. So if you can’t get an audience with your boss while others can, he/she obviously has a specific problem with you.
6) You don’t keep your 1:1s confidential.
7) You take credit for your team’s work — unfairly. — you don’t help pull the weight, you don’t give good feedback, you don’t give any guidance.
8) You don’t engage your team in a healthy way — you talk over them, cut them off, tell excessive stories about your home life, bro-out with coworkers and then lay it on thick for other teams. You always derail your team’s meetings with non-related comments and don’t give good feedback prior to meetings when she prepares with you in advance.
9) You try to assign menial tasks or make your reports do your job for you. — You request reminders ahead of weekly meetings for you to prepare yourself. You worked hard for that bachelor’s degree. Even harder for the master’s. You have a sharp mind, a few years of experience under your belt, and you’re itching to get ahead. But it’s hard to do that when your boss views you as the office intern. Despite your qualifications, your boss has chosen you as his errand-runner, coffee-bringer and bagel-fetcher. Although you’re one of the hardest workers on the team, your efforts are being wasted on menial tasks because your boss has — for reasons known only to him/her — picked you as a whipping boy and personal slave.
10) You fail to teach your team anything they don’t already know.
11) You overload your team with work.
12) You discourage your team speaking with your boss / company VIPs. — Others might get invited to meet important clients or the board chair, but the boss never seems to ask you. And he seems to make a deliberate effort to keep you away from his own boss.
13) You make multiple mentions about your team’s future at “other” companies. — You imply you’re looking at other jobs and she doesn’t seem to care. Smart bosses will try to move heaven and earth to keep a great employee—but they won’t object when a mediocre employee considers leaving.
14) You discourage outside development through classes, conferences, seminars.
1) You have to pick your company very carefully. Culture is everything. Don’t pick management teams who are “too nice” or too mean.
2) Know when you’re ready for the next step in your career. Don’t waste your time treading water.
3) Demand recognition for your efforts.
4) Be strategic in your relationship building. Treat senior team members as mentors, your coworkers as allies, and junior team members as mentees.
^^^ A draft I lasted edited December 31, 2012 at 3:05pm. Very entertaining to look back on my apparent mentality at that time, as I publish this unfinished post at 5:52pm on December 10, 2017.
“A great Product Manager should have a brain of an engineer, heart of a designer and speech of a diplomat.” – Deep Nishar, UX @LinkedIn
Part I in a 5-part series about the process of implementing a new product lifecycle process within a high technology company.
A Great Product Life Cycle Process is the Framework of a Great Company
If you work in high tech, then chances are you follow some sort of product life cycle process — it’s the structure imposed on the development of a software product from the moment the idea materializes until the product must be retired. The question is: how good is the product life cycle process that your company uses? Should you optimize your product life cycle process to be more effective?
- Do your company’s departments all work in silos, handing off work via Project Managers?
- Do cross-departmental deliverables arrive late, incorrect, or insufficient?
- Is company awareness of what major projects are being worked on very low?
- Do your products or features have a tendency to fail in the market?
- Is there little to no project transparency for major projects?
- Is there a lack of individual accountability?
- Do you often have to complete tasks that are not part of your job description?
- Does your company suffer from project bottlenecks?
- Are critical or late-stage resources constantly stressed and overworked due to receiving dependency materials too late?
- Is your product bloated with features guided by the HIPPO (HIghest Paid Person’s Opinion) in the room?
- Do products get released and then get abandoned?
- Do projects get going and forget to include the right people until it’s too late?
- Do you find yourself with questions about the project and not knowing who to ask?
- Does your company seem to have arbitrary release dates and budgetary planning?
If you answered ‘Yes’ to any of those questions, it sounds like your product lifecycle could use an update.
What is a Product Life Cycle Process?
A product life cycle’s (or PLC for short) main goal is to ensure that the right people are working on the right projects at the right time. It identifies what tasks need to be completed in order to bring a product to market, as well as who is accountable for each task, who is responsible for approving each task/deliverable, at what point in the cycle each tasks needs to be completed, and so on. You can think of each product as having a point of conception (defining the idea of the product), then moving through an elaboration period (defining the specifics of the product) before going through the actual construction of the product (development), and then being released. And it doesn’t end there — a good product life cycle also accounts for the maintenance of that product (refining and adding additional features), measuring its success or failure, and eventually determining an “end of life” plan for it when it becomes technologically unsustainable, or irrelevant to the market or business.
While there are a plethora of process styles to choose from (each with their own varied approaches and timelines to essentially the same set of tasks or activities that need to take place), the two basic frameworks are Waterfall and Iterative (most commonly referred to as “Agile”).
Waterfall Product Lifecycle Process
An illustration of the Waterfall model (source: http://blog.hydro4ge.com/waterfall-to-boehm/)
According to Wikipedia, “the waterfall model is a sequential design process, often used in software development processes, in which progress is seen as flowing steadily downwards (like a waterfall) through the phases of Conception, Initiation, Analysis, Design, Construction, Testing, Production/Implementation, and Maintenance.” I couldn’t have said it better myself :). Basically, the Waterfall model’s aim is to plan a product 100% before handing over a “how to” guide of fully completed functional specifications to Development to build it. The spirit of this concept is to crystalize each team member’s efforts within a phase — the Business folk huddle up from Conception to Analysis, then hand it over to the Design team who create the mockups per their requirements, then they hand everything over the fence to Development for Construction, Testing, and Implementation. Waterfall models generally work best for cultures that demand order and structure.
Pros and Cons of Waterfall Model
Pros:
- Predictive model front-loads risk to planning phases
- Departments stay focused on specific tasks
- Emphasis on planning and research
- Staged approach enforces discipline
- Roles + tasks are well-defined
- Progress is easy to define through Waterfall’s use of milestones
- Use of full functional specifications make it easier to work with remote developers
Cons:
- Stifles collaborative creativity
- Difficult to anticipate and plan for all customer requirements
- Does not adapt to change well
- Does not fold in all departmental feedback during the planning process
- Takes a long time for something to be built
- Designs often need substantial rework once they get to development
Iterative or “Agile” Product Lifecycle Process
An illustration of the Agile process (source: http://www.sohamgreens.com/process.html)
“Agile projects are paintings, not photographs.” – Unknown
“Agile software development is a group of software development methods based on iterative and incremental development, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional teams. It promotes adaptive planning, evolutionary development and delivery, a time-boxed iterative approach, and encourages rapid and flexible response to change,” (thanks again, Wikipedia!). Basically, Agile methodologies are all about focusing on getting features out into the wild as quickly as possible, and then learning from metrics and customer feedback. It encourages internal feedback from all departments, embraces speed and change, and eschews thorough documentation. Agile methodologies work best in cultures that respond well to change.
Pros and Cons of Agile Methodologies
Pros:
- Encourages collaboration throughout the entire process
- Fast development cycles called “sprints”
- Products receive real-world market feedback quickly
- Adaptive model makes responding to change easier
Cons:
- Development spends more time planning, less time coding
- Risk of releasing unviable features is heightened
- Less time for market research and planning
- Lack of documentation can prove challenging
- Dangerous for mission critical projects due to iterative nature
So Which Product Life Cycle Process is Best?
Which product life cycle process is “the best”? The question really should be, which product life cycle process is best for your company. My next post will address why a company should invest in implementing a tailor-made product lifecycle process; and future posts will detail how to determine which product life cycle process is right for your company (SPOILER ALERT: it’ll most likely be a mix of the frameworks above), and how to properly roll it out to the company.
Next up in the Product Life Cycle series:
Part II: The Benefits and Risks of Implementing a Product Lifecycle Process
So You Want to Implement a New Product Life Cycle
1) Find a champion. This person will clear the obstacles and lend legitimacy to your efforts.
2) Establish a need. Business case, current issues, current strengths, how a process will improve bottomline, etc.
Of course, there can be many reasons why a company would want to implement a new product lifecycle. Perhaps you just want to optimize the process you currently have. Or maybe you feel like you need something with more checks and balances. Whatever your reason, a thoughtful, well-executed product lifecycle can result in benefits you can take to the bank — the money bank.
Positive effects of a proper product lifecycle:
1) Ensure the right people are working on the right things at the right time.
2) Streamline and optimize projects. Front loading risk so less burden on Dev.
3) Guides projects.
4) Provides checks and balances.
NOTE: Common sense and judgement should always prevail — don’t let the process rule the project.
It seems the whole world has gone crazy for design lately. Engineers fancy themselves UXperts, Ad Sales is requesting PSDs to tweak, and Upper Management just doesn’t like that shade of blue.
Personally, I blame Pinterest.
Pinterest’s rapid ascent into mainstream lexicon* is enforcing the concept that the visual aspect is the only important piece of a product. Well, I’m here to tell you that that ain’t true.
Take the ‘To Do’ app Clear for example — it offers one of the most beautiful experiences available in the App Store. However, it’s also missing major features! It limits characters to an unusable minimum, there’s no indication of navigational hierarchy, the ‘down’ swipe intended to change screens constantly pulls down the iOS drop screen instead, and once you remove your completed tasks there’s no way to recover them (which is really annoying if you do it with an experimental swipe!!).
Path is another gorgeous app with insufficient use cases. The idea behind Path is that it’s the social network that limits your number of connections, thereby keeping your friend list to only your nearest and dearest. Well, that’s all well and good, but good luck trying to figure out how to post on another person’s Path! Instead of encouraging users to interact with one another, the featureset encourages them to fixate on their own Path. It quickly devolved into what Facebook began as — the pool into which Narcissus tumbled (complete with self-indulgent duckface photos to boot).
It’s been touted in the industry that 2013 is the ‘Year of Visual Web’ based on Pinterest’s continued success, redesigns by eBay that put imagery first, Facebook’s purchase of Instagram, and more. With the growing focus on aesthetics, let’s just hope people don’t forget about the features.
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*A bit of an aside, but according to the New York Times, young women are driving linguistic change more than any other demographic. And ~80% of Pinterest users in the US are female. Hmm…coincidence?
So my 1st anniversary of living in New York City came and went — with me about 3,000 miles away at Oktoberfest in Munich. That, coupled with apartment hunting, a number of family birthdays, and the typical crush of getting out features before the year-end code freeze is why this post is about two months late. 🙂
Now the dust has settled and I’ve had a year to take in my new surroundings. Here are a few tidbits I’ve picked up this last year that may be helpful for NY n00bs:
- If you are between 5’9″ and 6’1″, you must shield your eyes from pointy umbrella edges at all times when there is even a hint of rain (I learned this the hard way).
- Manhattan subways are significantly more reliable, efficient, and easy to navigate than those of the Paris, DC, SF, or London systems.
- Old school NYers still won’t enter Central Park between dusk and dawn.
- Ordering food is a way of life.
- You can’t feel guilty about having your laundry picked up, done, and delivered back perfectly folded. But you can complain about the smell of the detergent they use.
- Manhattan is not impervious to natural disaster (as evidenced by Hurricane Sandy).
- You can take a cab from the Upper East Side to Chelsea and it’ll only cost you $18.
- NYers liken Staten Island more to New Jersey than to New York City (Staten Islanders included).
- Staten Island’s amateur baseball team is called the Staten Island Yankees.
- NYers swallow the ‘tt’ when they say “Manhattan.”
- The Upper East Side has wider sidewalks in order to contain all the old people pushing baby carriages while holding large umbrellas in one hand, and multiple dog leashes in the other.
- Techies are significantly more valuable out here than we are in the Bay Area.
- NYers “stand on line,” not “wait in line.”
- Shopping on 5th avenue is for tourists. Or the very, very rich.
- Hiking trails are surprisingly accessible via public transportation.
- If you’re going to take getting pushed and shoved personally, don’t get on the subway.
- Walk with purpose or you’ll constantly be doing that awkward trying-to-pass-each-other-but-not-succeeding-until-the-fifth-feint dance with strangers.
So hopefully the world doesn’t end next month, and I’ll get enjoy another year in Manhattan.
- Become really great at something. Your twenties have two purposes: 1) to allow you to apply the knowledge your parents bestowed upon you during your childhood + teenage years, and 2) to take that applied knowledge and see where your natural talent and personal interest intersect. Once you’ve found that intersection, your goal is to focus on it and become freakishly good at it (if at all possible, try to carve a career out of it too). Becoming truly amazing at something in your twenties will cut down on a lot of overhead in your thirties, when you’ll not have the time for such fripperies as surfing during your lunch break or throwing out three batches of homemade brownies just to get one right. For most of us, our thirties will be full of responsibility for others — don’t mistake your twenties for the time to “be a grown up.”
- Take a road trip across the U.S. – Whether you shoot across the northern route, meander through the southern track, or take the zigzag approach, you will not be disappointed with the Heartland’s multitude of oddities. Take advantage of the abstraction of time that is your twenties, grab some friends, and hit the road! The Bronze Fonz is not something you’ll regret seeing (and perhaps something one can only truly appreciate pre-30s).
- Live alone – That’s right — live alone. Perfectly, utterly, inexorably alone. The first year might be pretty tough, since you’ve likely lived with at least one other person from conception to, well, now, but the moment you discover the virtues of shamelessly walking around naked with a glass of red wine in hand or unselfconsciously leaving your dirty clothes in a corner ’til they’re good and ripe, you’ll wonder how you could ever go back to living with another living soul. Not to mention that after reveling in your own filth for a while, you’ll grow so sick of it that you’ll learn how to “keep a household” in short order.
- Get thee to Canada and Mexico – You can’t rightfully crack jokes about our neighbors to the north and south until you’ve actually been there.
- Scramble – Scrambling is at least as fun as it sounds, and its ambiguous nature makes it flexible enough to fit your needs (read: abilities). I’ve heard from friends who scramble that there’s a technique: One must ascend a rockface within X amount of moves, thus making it an almost chess-like game of strategy. However, since I can find no documentation of such a technique via Almighty Google, do with that what you will.
- Scuba or sky dive – Do something extreme! Sadly, some people (myself included) are unable to scuba dive due to an inability to equalize 🙁 For those of us who are excluded from the silent ballet that is deep sea aquatic life, let’s do something crazy to (over)compensate, right?! Jumping out of a plane will certainly suffice.
- Pay off student loans – Because your thirties will be full of brand new and exciting types of debt (mortgage payments anyone?). Plus, that’s just good business.
- Protect your credit with your life – It takes 7-10 years for collections, late payments, and (eep!) bankruptcy to be removed from your credit report. Don’t let a few casually missed credit card payments prevent you from getting everything you want in your thirties.
- Learn to sail – There’s something perfectly upperclass about knowing how to sail a scooner. Plus, you never know when you might need to steal awa’ in a sailboat, pirate-style. Ahh, the dichotomy that is sea-life.
- Eat at a Michelin star restaurant – It might be tough to swing for most 20-somethings, but if you’re ever in the vicinity of a Michelin star restaurant you simply must make a reservation! Not only is the food amazing, but getting dressed to the nines and sipping delicious wine will prove worth every one of the thousands of pennies you will undoubtedly spend. Still not convinced? Let me put it this way: French chefs have committed suicide as a result of losing a star. Yeah. That’s how hardcore the Guide Michelin is in the food world.
- Get published – Blog, newspaper op-ed, The New Yorker – it doesn’t matter. Get your voice out there, so you can remember what you sounded like in your twenties for the rest of your life. Plus, the internet immortalizes you; it’ll be fun for your future kids to look at when they’re all grown up.
- Take photos – Immortalize all the best moments of your life through photographs! Put everything in the Cloud and back them up on an external hard drive, so you have no risk of losing them. I went to Prague with a friend a couple years ago and I got pickpocketed — my deepest regret is that the thief took my camera before I could upload my photos. Do be careful what you share publicly though — it could affect not only your professional life, but also your friends’, family’s, and acquaintances’ perception of you (everybody e-stalks on occasion).
- Explore another continent – For Americans, it seems the ubiquitous Eurotrip is the obvious choice, but it doesn’t have to be! The world is shrinking at a terrific rate, so take advantage of it! Go somewhere less common — mosey through the Maghreb, travel through the Thailand-Vietnam-Cambodia trifecta, become one with the Balkan states, or trek from St. Petersburg through Siberia to Mongolia. Why? Because it will make you a better person.
- Ski/snowboard or surf– Whether the Alps or Lake Tahoe, skiing/snowboarding is both exhilarating and challenging. I recommend you get a friend who knows what they’re doing on the slopes to teach you how to “slip” and turn (who cares if you’re a total Betty?). It’ll save you some cash, and you can buy your beneficent instructor some hot cider later — everybody wins!
- Get to know your folks as something other than “your folks” – Your twenties are a magical time for many reasons — those damn hormones finally begin to ebb, you’re finally able to fund your unique (read: weird) passions, and you can eat whatever the hell you want. But one of the oddest and yet most fulfilling things is the change in dynamic between yourself and your parents. You should take the time to get to know them as human beings. Find out what they were like in their twenties, and what led them to start a family. Listen, learn, and take it to heart. After all, “it’s a wise man who knows his father.”
- Take an improv class – Not necessarily because you want to become the next Stephen Colbert. Taking an improv or even just an acting class will help hone invaluable skills that will improve your overall quality of life. It’ll help you become a better, more composed public speaker; it’ll help you think on your feet; it can improve your memorization skills; and provide an outlet for creativity. Who knew those theater geeks in high school had it right all along?
- Volunteer – Don’t be an asshole — give back. Volunteering will help you avoid becoming one of those trite, self-absorbed 20-somethings, a la Carrie Bradshaw (sadly, she took it all the way into her fifties).
- Get artsy-fartsy – [Ed. Note: I’ve always hated that saying, but am such a sucker for a good rhyme.] Even if you don’t think you have any real talent there is solace in putting paint on a page.
- Make a new friend – Don’t get stuck in a rut with the friends you made in high school and college. Try to make a new, genuine friend each year (acquaintances don’t count!). And fiercely guard the friendships you treasure most.
- Camp outside in a tent – Ever heard the saying, “you can never go home“? Well, that’s a half-truth; Mother Nature will always welcome you back home, and her peaceful stillness will envelope you at once. Forest, desert, snow-capped mountain, it doesn’t matter — your bones will know you’ve come home again.
- Document your personal milestones – One of the most helpful things I did in my early twenties was document my personal life goals and milestones. I thought about what was most important to me, and mapped each goal to the age I wanted to accomplish it by. For example, pay off student loans by 24, make six figures by 25, buy a home by 28, earn my MBA by 29, have my first child at 30. This kept me focused on where I was going, but it was also fascinating to see how the goals evolved overtime.
- Speak at a conference – It’s scary, it’s fun, it’s oh-so-adult. People will look at you with new levels of respect when you’ve been featured at a conference.
- Start a running list of Mate Traits – If you plan to couple up permanently at any point in your life, begin making a list. The list contains three categories: Priority 1 attributes – the features your potential mate *must* have or it’s a dealbreaker, e.g., must not have drug or alcohol problems, must have good earning potential, must want to have children, etc.; priority 2 attributes – the features you strongly desire in a potential mate, e.g., should be blond, shouldn’t be allergic to cats, should have all his fingers; and priority 3 attributes – the nice-to-haves of a potential mate, e.g., be able to grow a full beard, be a bazillionaire.
- Learn to say ‘No’ – The earlier you learn this the better: Nobody likes a flake. Nobody likes a pushover. Stand up for what you want, but learn to do it politely and firmly. Not standing up for what you really want will leave you resentful at both yourself and the other person. It’s toxic and a terrible habit that you should break at once.
- Climb a mountain at dawn – For all the annoyance of having to wake up at 4am only to lug yourself and your gear for seemingly endless vertical miles under the twilight sky, seeing dawn break from a mountaintop is wholly worth it. No photo nor imagination can capture that moment of quiet perfection that feels like the birth of the earth. Just look out for mountain lions 🙂
- Swim with dolphins, manatees, or sharks – At least, if given the opportunity, don’t turn it down. Swimming with a dolphin is a bit like playing with an underwater dog. Having not yet swam with manatees or sharks, I can’t comment on their personalities, but I know that each experience would reveal its unique brand of majesty.
- Face your phobia – Apparently, there are about 700 documented forms of phobia…no wonder so many Americans are medicated these days! A lot of people forget that a phobia is an irrational fear of something. For example, I have a visceral fear of sharks — I can barely go into the deep end of a swimming pool without my heart hammering wildly in my chest. My rational self knows a shark attacking me in a chlorinated swimming pool is about as likely as me waking up on Jupiter, but my phobic self just can’t reconcile with that train of thought. However, to overcome this phobia, I take baby steps. I’m not quite ready to swim with sharks, but I will force myself to snorkel around an atoll. It’s helped quell my fear, even though it hasn’t eviscerated it. That’s why I recommend you find a way to face down your phobia. If you have a fear of spiders, start by finding a book of somewhat abstract spider-inspired art. If you’re afraid of heights, force yourself to travel to the top of the Eiffel Tour. Clowns get your goat? Dress yourself in full clown regalia (in the privacy of your own home) and check yourself out in the mirror. Necrophobic? Go to a picturesque graveyard during broad daylight with your most supportive friend. Try to find the beauty in your fear.
- Pamper yourself – And do it often! If you intend to tackle even half the items on this list, you’ll require lots of self-love, calm reflection, and regular R+R. Spend at least one Sunday a month alone having an at-home spa day with luxurious self-administered mani/pedis, facials, full-body stretches and more. Do it all with a glass of wine and end the day with a bubble bath.
- Pick a team – Follow at least one team of at least one sport voraciously. Become one of those crazy fans screaming your lungs out at a game (full body paint need not apply). Not only will you discover the secret bond between fellow fans, but you’ll also realize how much adrenaline rushes kick ass — especially non danger-induced ones.
- Sing karaoke (shamelessly) – Do it sober at least once. It’s the only place in the world where being terrible at something is ok, so long as you really throw your ass into it. Plus, it’s a great remedy for overcoming any lingering shyness.
Flowtown – Social Media Marketing Application
10, Dec, 2017
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