Category: Product Management Books

Book Review: How to Lead in Product Management by Roman Pichler…

Ram SevakLeave a comment

The book “How to Lead in Product Management: Practices to Align Stakeholders, Guide Development Teams, and Create Value Together” by Roman Pichler is a quick read which would resonate well with middle to senior product professionals better. The author relies on his past experiences and literature to press home his points. The chapters are organised fairly independently so one can read it backwards if one wants to!

The author starts the book by outlining key challenges for product leaders. He brings forth an important point that a stakeholder is anybody with an interest in your product!

Key challenges that product leaders face are

    • Lack of transactional powers unlike their engineering counterparts
    • Team can be large and heterogeneous with group dynamics in flux
    • Limited influence in choosing who you want to work with!
    • Dual role in terms of being able to guide as well as contribute to team goals
    • Leadership needs at vision, strategy and tactical level are varied

Thereafter author offers a few tactics to influence people and encourage change namely Behavior Change Stairway Model propagated by Voss

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Figure 1: Behavior Change Stairway Model by Voss (2016)

Author opines that empathy is probably the most important leadership quality and in order to do that that, he suggests the following (BTW as the author points out developing empathy is the first step in design thinking, an innovation process originally created by IDEO)

    • Cultivate a genuine caring attitude for the people you want to lead, whether you like them or not
    • Improve your expertise as becoming a competent, well-rounded product person requires a continued learning effort
    • Seek the right management support
    • Choose the right leadership style basis people and org context e.g. visionary, democratice, affiliative, delegative, coaching, directing or autocratic. Ultimately one should be flexible in leadership approach and balance the different leadership styles depending on the needs of the stakeholders and the situation at hand

Essentially effective leadership is centred on three components: leader, followers, and situation

After Introduction, the rest of the book is organised as the following: interactions among stakeholders, shared goals, conversations among teams, conflict and its dynamics, decision making / negotiations and self-leadership. This review is also structured along the same lines

A. Interactions

This chapter is focused on scrum master and her responsibilities although general principles could be applied to product managers as well

For effective interactions, gaining people’s trust is vital to guide and align people and to move forward together. Some tactics to build trust are 1. Coming from a place of curiosity and care 2. Listening with an open mind and 3. Being supportive

    • Organise teams around products since component teams tend to have more interdependencies than feature teams —teams that are organised around features—which makes it harder to quickly validate ideas and to offer new or significantly enhanced functionality
    • Form stable teams since teams with stable membership have healthier dynamics and perform better than those that constantly have to deal with the arrival of new members and the departure of veterans
    • Let the Team own the Solution by including the team members in product discovery and user experience work and allow them to directly observe and interact with users
      • Product discovery refers to the work that determines if and why a new product should be developed and how an existing product can become or stay successful
    • Give the Team Time to Experiment and Learn. PMs should engage in enough discovery and strategy work to see things coming and to make the right choices

Lead the Stakeholders by involving the right people. After identifying stakeholders, author refers to power-interest to suggest how to engage with individuals

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Figure 2: Power-Interest Grid Ackerman and Eden (2011)

He offers the following tactics to interact with these stakeholders

    • Subjects can make great allies who can help you secure understanding and buy-in for your product across the business. Keep them involved by aligning product roadmaps. Some examples for subjects are product folks from adjacent teams
    • Typical context setters are powerful execs. Regularly consult them to build and maintain a healthy relationship, but don’t allow the context setters to dictate decisions
    • Stakeholders with high interest and high power are called players . These individuals are important partners for PMs. Consequently, one should establish a trustful relationship with them. Attentively listen to what they have to say and empathise with them, but have the courage to decline their suggestions and requests if they are not helpful to create value for the users and business
    • Everyone else is part of the crowd. As these individuals are not particularly interested in the product and don’t have the power to influence product decisions, it’s usually sufficient to keep them informed

Build a stakeholder community. Instead of interacting with the players on a one-on-one basis, aim to build a stakeholder community whose members work together for an extended period of time and who learn to trust, respect, and support each other. In short, move from stakeholder management to stakeholder collaboration

B. Goals

This chapter introduces a set of product-centric, cascading goals as well as guidelines to help one create the right goals
A goal expresses an aim, something we want to achieve. Some goals are big and may never be fully realised, like a vision; others are SMART—specific, measurable, agreed upon, realistic, and timebound

A chain of goals for PMs typically look like this

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Figure 3: A Chain of Goals for PMs (Roman Pichler)

Product Vision: It describes the ultimate reason for creating a product and the positive change it should bring about e.g. healthy eating

    • As the vision is an inspirational and visionary goal, it cannot be measured. In fact, one might never fully realise the vision

User and Business Goals: These are strategic goals that are derived from the vision. Also one must make sure that they are specific and measurable. This allows PMs to select the right key performance indicators (KPIs) and understand if the product is meeting its goals

    • Pay particular attention to the vision, user, and business goals. If these goals are not understood and accepted, then getting people to follow product and sprint goals will be challenging

Sprint Goals: These are a step towards the next product goal, and it covers the next one to four weeks. It is a tactical, short-term goal

Objective is a goal that can be measured. One can therefore select metrics to determine progress towards the goal. If the goal is strategic in nature, like a user or business goal, then the metrics would be typically referred to as key performance indicators or KPIs

OKRs (objectives and key results) are the measures used to determine if an objective has been met

How to make goals great and effective?

    • Shared so that people feel responsible for reaching them
    • Neither pressure individuals to agree with you nor leave it up to others to decide the goals
    • Realistic – achievable and measurable. This does not apply for visionary goals
      Inspirational
    • Alignment creating
    • Holding other people accountable for meeting agreed goals, and don’t let them getting away with ignoring goals they have agreed to

C. Conversations

This chapter helps reflecting on and improving listening and speaking habits so that one becomes even better at understanding and guiding people

  • Listen deeply. Effective listening not only helps you receive what is being said but also allows you to tune into the speaker’s emotions and empathise with the person

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Figure 4: Covey’s Listening Levels

PMs have to listen with the intent to understand, not to critique or convince

  • Listen inwardly. When listening, pay attention to feelings and thoughts. If you are getting distracted or overwhelmed by your reaction to what you are hearing, then pause the conversation
    • Give the other person full attention. Pay close but respectful attention to the other person’s body language and look out for inconsistencies, expressions that don’t match the words
    • Also prefer face-to-face meetings over email and telephone conversations, particularly for important conversations
    • The speaker’s choice of words, pitch, volume, and facial expressions, including eye movements, gestures, and other body language elements, often reveal her or his feelings
    • A great way to discover the needs behind people’s words is to ask why questions

Listen with patience. Learn to be comfortable with silence which is often necessary to encourage the other person to continue to talk and to share something that might be uncomfortable or difficult

How to handle difficult conversations?

    • Positive first. Before you say something critical or negative, first share a positive observation. This must be genuine and not flattery
    • Another way to help people receive difficult messages is flipping and framing
      • Name it: What is the problem?
      • Flip it: What is the positive opposite? Example: instead of saying you always come late to the product backlog meeting,” say, “It would be great if you could be on time for the meeting”
      • Frame it: What is the desired outcome of the positive opposite?

How to be kind in speech?

    • Keep your speech free from anger or other unwholesome emotions
    • Be grateful for the other person’s time and interest, even if you disagree with the individual
    • Apply kind speech not only to the people who are present but also to those who are not
    • Postpone continuing the conversation if you feel that no meaningful progress can be made right now, possibly due to the presence of strong, difficult emotions

D. Conflict

This chapter deals with some tactics to deal with conflict which is perfectly normal at work

Some common pitfalls with conflict

    • Win-lose. Treating conflict like a zero sum game gives rise to the following common but unhelpful conflict strategies a. Competitive confrontation b. Passive aggression c. conflict avoidance d. Passivity which is the opposite of competitive confrontation: You give up what you want and agree to the other person’s requests or demands, thereby trying to appease the individual
    • Blame game. Accepting responsibility and moving from a blame frame to a contribution mindset will help the two individuals stop being caught up in a blame narrative and resolve the conflict
    • Artificial harmony. This is germinated in the workplace because of either fear of confrontation, wrong priorities, work culture or lack of trust

How to resolve conflict?
Conflict resolution is not about winning, retaliating, or putting the other person in her or his place. It’s about developing a shared perspective on what happened, agreeing on the changes required, and re-establishing trust

    • Acknowledge any wrongdoing, but do not allow it to define who you are
    • Author offers compassionate communication template which flows along the lines of

“When I see / hear [observation],
I feel [emotion]
because I need / value [need].
Would you be willing to [request]?”

    • Before one starts the conversation to resolve a conflict, one must let go of negative emotions and thoughts. One must be willing to share observations while being mindful of words
    • Uncover needs. In non-violent communication, needs are considered to be at the root of our feelings; they are the real reason why we feel the way we do and why we want what we want
    • A great guide to your needs is your emotions: Becoming aware of them and asking yourself why they are present will usually lead you to your needs
    • Make Your Request Clear, Specific, and Positive
    • When you make a request, ensure that you ask and not demand

What should one do when they cannot resolve a conflict?
Stop the process, talk to your line manager and HR, and consider involving a neutral and skilled mediator who can help resolve the conflict
When you witness conflict between several stakeholders and the individuals don’t show any sign of successfully resolving the disagreement, don’t ignore the situation since a lingering conflict does not only affect the people involved but also impacts the rest of the group by reducing morale and productivity

E. Decision Making and Negotiation

This chapter shares the techniques to help one develop inclusive solutions and reach sustainable agreements

Benefits of collaborative decision making

    • Better decisions since it harnesses power of collective wisdom
    • Stronger alignment
    • Increased motivation

How to be set up for success?

    • The more important a decision is, and the less people know and trust each other, the more beneficial it is to bring everyone together in the same room
    • Employ a dedicated facilitator in situations when people either don’t know about collaborative decision making or don’t trust each other
    • Set ground rules. Always speak from a place of respect for others and assume good intentions on the part of the group members
    • Don’t bargain over positions
    • Delegate a decision if others are better qualified to decide or if your input is not needed
      • Delegation ensures that the best-qualified people decide, and it frees up your time
      • When applied correctly, it also sends a positive signal to the appointed decision makers
      • If you need to be involved in the decision, then do not delegate it to others, but participate in the decision-making process
    • Choose a decision rule. Such a rule clearly states who decides and how you can tell that the decision has been made. Four common decision rules that facilitate group decisions: unanimity, consent, majority and product person decides after discussion
      • Unanimity and consensus are not synonyms. The former means that everyone agrees; the latter refers to reaching some form of agreement
      • Unanimity should be used when the stakes are high but we wary of it getting degenerate into design by committee
      • Consent is the absence of objections. A decision is made when none objects

Taking the right decision making steps

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Figure 5: A Collaborative Decision Making Process based on Kaner et al (2014)

    • Gather diverse perspectives. Be wary of groupthink in well functioning teams. Play devil’s advocate, suggest to get out of the building and adapt the group composition
    • Build shared understanding. Help people understand where they are coming from and encourage them to explore the needs and interests behind people’s perspectives
    • Develop an inclusive solution. While it’s great to care about the decisions you make, don’t search for the perfect decision
      • To develop an inclusive solution, start by considering how you can address people’s needs, interest, and concerns while at the same time moving the product in the right direction

Tips for negotiating successfully
Conversation techniques which can be used during negotiation a. Mirroring (repeating the words) b. Labelling. Acknowledge emotions c. Open-ended question to uncover other person’s needs d. Patience for active listening

    • One should not be desperate to strike a deal. Don’t allow the other person to put you under pressure. No deal is better than a bad deal
    • Behavior Change Stairway Model – explained in Chapter 1
    • Principled negotiation method by Fisher and William (2012)
      • People : Separate the people from the problem
      • Interests: Instead of arguing over positions, look for shared interests and needs
      • Options: Invent multiple options, looking for mutual gains, before deciding what to do. Avoid the mistake of prematurely excluding options and opting for one solution
      • Criteria: Use objective criteria or a fair standard to determine the outcome

F. Self-leadership

Self-leadership is about developing yourself, about becoming a happier individual and a better leader

    • Practise mindfulness. Mindfulness means paying attention to the present moment, to what is happening right now. It helps you become more aware of your feelings, thoughts, and moods
      • “The point is not to get carried away by our feelings and thoughts but to relate to them wisely
      • Benefits of developing mindfulness – greater serenity, increased empathy, better decision making, improved communication
    • Hold personal retrospectives. Every week around 30 mins to ask oneself and note A. What did I get done this week? B. how am I feeling right now? C. What changes do I want to make next week? Select one or two things which you can realistically improve

Leverage Failure. Cultivate self-compassion i.e. being kind towards yourself, without ignoring the shortcomings you might have

Do one thing at a time. To focus your efforts, consider setting yourself a daily goal. Spend a few minutes in the morning planning your day, and decide what the main thing is that you want to achieve and what the desired outcome should be

Don’t neglect important but less urgent work like product discovery. Author suggest Eisenhower Matrix towards the same

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Figure 6: The Eisenhower Matrix to prioritise time

The book ends with the advice about taking care of one’s health and not prioritizing one’s job over everything else. As the book says, there is more to life than work!

Overall, I feel this book packs a few punches for tackling practical PM situations and can be read quite enjoyably by middle and senior levels of product professionals. I can however identify a few things which could be improvised upon in future editions

    • The book is probably more biased towards Agile ways of working. It also emphasizes role of Scrum Master in first two chapters which seems out of place with overall theme of the book
    • Although chapters are supposed to be independent from one another, a certain background implicitly is assumed which could be bewildering for new PMs
    • Sometimes I feel the content could be sequenced better. Conversion techniques appear under negotiations, whereas stairway case for behavior change appears in two chapters with similar level of detailing
    • For couple times, points seem to be just enumerated and they don’t necessary gel with the structure of the chapter

The book can be ordered from Amazon. Could not find it on Flipkart!

Book Review: Escaping the Build Trap…

Ram SevakLeave a comment

‘Escaping the Build Trap’ by Melissa Perri offers some practical insights into why organisations fall into the habit of just building stuff. She works her approach through a case study format which makes the book an enjoyable and relatable read

Although the mandate to escape build trap often requires CXO-level interventions, there are quite a few takeaways from the book for product people at every level

What is the Build Trap?

The build trap is when organizations become stuck measuring their success by outputs rather than outcomes. It’s when they focus more on shipping and developing features rather than on the actual value of those things

Companies can get out of the build trap by setting themselves up to develop intentional and robust product management practices

Fundamental premise in the book is to view companies as a value exchange system and explaining product management as a key driver of this exchange

Companies which fall in the build trap typically confuse this fundamental exchange. They also cannot define value for their customers since they don’t understand customer problems

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Figure 1. Companies as a Value Exchange by Melissa Perri

Community, technology and market typically act as outside constraints on this system, although companies can control their own policies, strategy, incentives and structures to efficiently provide value to customers

The book also argues that the most optimal way for organizations to deliver customer value is to morph into product led organisation which has the following key components

    • Creating a product manager role with the right responsibilities and structure
    • Enabling those product managers with a strategy that promotes good decision making
    • Understanding the process of determining what product to build, through experimentation and optimization
    • Supporting everyone with the right organizational policies, culture, and rewards to allow product management to thrive

A major chunk of the book is organised along these four themes – role, strategy, process and incentives for product managers. I summarize the book in the same buckets

Part 1. ROLE of product managers

A few short chapters focus on the following key questions

1.1 How do you define Product?

The author discriminates between products and projects since the two can be interchangeably used in some orgs. Products are defined as vehicles of value, which can provide recurring value to customers without requiring a company to build something new every time. OTOH services use human labor to primarily deliver value to users and projects are discrete pieces of work towards a specific aim

Product-led companies have the following characteristics

    • They optimise their products to achieve value and desired outcomes
    • Growth is driven by product
    • Organisation is scaled through software products

1.2 What is product management?

Defined as the domain of recognising and investigating known unknowns and reducing the universe around unknown unknowns

1.3 What does it take to be a great PM?

    • Product managers are focused on WHY whereas projects managers on WHEN
    • Goal of a good product manager is to reduce risk by focusing on learning
    • Great product managers always focus on the problem and WHY

1.4 How should the product teams and their roles be organised?

Traditional teams are organised around value streams (think end-to-end customer value prop), features or technology. However best teams are organised around org strategy

Part 2. What is STRATEGY? 

    • It is a framework which helps make decisions. It is not a plan. Sometimes it can also be thought as what a company would NOT do
    • It can also be thought of as a deployable decision-making framework, enabling action to achieve desired outcomes, constrained by current capabilities, coherently aligned to the existing context (Ref. Steven Bungay, The Art of Action)
    • Strategy should not change every year or month, lest it be confused with a plan

2.1 What are the pitfalls of strategy as a plan?

It typically fails owing to divergence between outcomes, plans and actions. This gives rise to three gaps a. Knowledge gap b. Alignment gap c. Effects gap

Organisations try to respond to the knowledge gap by more detailed information, alignment gap by detailed instructions and effects gap by tighter control. And this does not work smoothly across functions unless companies view strategy as an action enabler towards achieving results

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Figure 2. The Effects Gap by Stephen Bungay

2.2 What does a good strategy framework contain?

Should be made up of two parts 1. Operational framework for day to day activities 2. Strategy framework detailing how the company realises the vision while strategy deployment is the act of communicating and aligning narratives and stories told through the org

It has four levels in the org 1. Vision 2. Strategic intent 3. Product Initiatives and 4. Options or Solutions

2.3 How to create strategy?

The book introduces a framework called The Product Kata for scientifically creating products

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Figure 3. The Product Kata Framework by Melissa Perri

2.4 What is a company Vision?

A good mission explains why the company exists. A vision explains where the company is going based on that purpose. Sometimes the vision is clear, the difficult part is connecting it back to the company’s operations. This is where it’s necessary for company leaders to specify strategic intents. These few, concise, outcome-oriented goals focus the company around how to reach the vision. Strategic intent is always aligned to a company’s current state. They are also at a higher level and business focussed

2.5 Where do product initiatives come in picture?

The product vision communicates why you are building something and what the value proposition is for the customer. OTOH Product initiatives translate the business goals into the problems that we will solve with our product. The product initiatives answer how

If there is no coherent vision, product may not be able to scale 

Part 3. How to uncover the right solutions to build? What is the PROCESS behind it?

Enter the Product Kata as explained earlier, there are 4 steps to this. However understanding which phase in a product under is critical to success

    1. Understanding the direction 
    2. Problem exploration
    3. Solution exploration
    4. Solution optimization

3.1 How do we understand the product direction?

This is where product metrics come in. She introduces two frameworks 

    1. Pirate metrics or AAARR framework as promulgated by Dave McClure. The familiar acquisition, activation, retention, referral and revenue framework does not capture customer happiness and therefore…
    2. HEART framework which stands for happiness, engagement, adoption, retention and task success. However overly relying on retention has the lacunae of it being a lagging indicator. A product may not have that long a runway and therefore need to focus on leading indicators like engagement

3.2 How do we perform problem exploration?

There are well known frameworks like problem based user research aka generative research whose objective is to find which problems to solve. They key here is to ask customers the right questions

3.3 Which solutions to build?

First the PM has to be clear about the distinction between building to learn and building to earn. She defines MVPs as something which is built to learn and therefore should be scoped out as something which contains the minimum effort taken to learn

There are 3 frameworks introduced to explore solutions 1. Concierge which is essentially delivering solutions to customers manually and see if it works. More suited for B2B companies and of course it is labor intensive and won’t scale 2. Wizard of Oz which is real-like product rolled out to a larger set of users. The key here is to not run the experiment longer than it should since the experiment is still essentially manual 3. Concept testing like with a prototype. It is more generative than evaluative in nature 

3.4 When should you not do a design sprint?

Although design testing has become a preferred method to experiment and learn, they should not be conducted before user research and identifying customer problems to solve

3.5 How do we optimise a solution?

This is where product vision helps, in sensing direction of progress and helping teams find alignment in solutions proposed. North Star document is one such tool

North Star document explains the product in a way that can be visualized by the entire team and company. This includes the problem it is solving, the proposed solution, the solution factors that matter for success, and the outcomes the product will result in

3.6 How do we prioritise among different solutions?

Although there are many framework prioritization, she talks about the Cost of Delay in prioritizing work. Cost of Delay is a numeric value that describes the impact of time on the outcomes you hope to achieve. It combines urgency and value so that you can measure impact and prioritize what you should be doing first

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Figure 4: Qualitative Cost of Delay by Arnold and Yuce

Part 4. How to transition to being a product-led ORGANISATION in ethos and practice?

In product-led organizations, people are rewarded for learning and achieving goals. Management encourages product teams to get close to their customers, and product management is seen as a critical function that furthers the business

4.1 Why is communication important in organisation?

Visibility in organizations is absolutely key. The more leaders can understand where teams are, the more they will step back and let the teams execute. The more PMs try to hide their progress, the wider the knowledge gap becomes and it becomes difficult to sustain the product for long

4.2 How should one communicate product roadmaps?

Instead of thinking of roadmaps as a Gantt chart, one should view them as an explanation of strategy and the current stage of product. This combines the strategic goals with the themes of work and the emerging product deliverables from it

4.3 Why should one communicate the product phases clearly?

It is important for company wide alignment on what stage a product is in – experiment, alpha, beta or generally available (GA). This helps in reducing friction among different units as well. For example, alpha – a phase in which the objective is to determine whether the solution is desirable to a customer – cannot be included in the sales presentation to customers. Beta products – to see whether the solution is scalable – can be

4.4. How should people be rewarded?

One should be rewarding people for moving the business forward— achieving outcomes, learning about your users, and finding the right business opportunities. Rest is vanity!

4.5. Why should experimentation be encouraged?

Experimentation is the ultimate risk-management strategy because, when you experiment early, you can prevent the failure of something you will have spent billions

4.6 How to budget products?

Fund them like VCs. One should allocate the appropriate funds across product lines for things that are known knowns and ready to be built, and also in discovering new opportunities

Lastly the book ends with tips for identifying whether a company is product-led. My favorites are

    1. Who came up with the last feature or product idea you built? The answer should normally be the team
    2. What was the last product idea that you killed? Killing products is sign of a healthy product culture
    3. When was the last time you talked to your customers?
    4. What are your PMs like?

Overall this is an excellent succinct resource for all product professionals. Some of the things I think could have been better covered because of their relative importance in avoiding the build trap are

    • She could have elaborated more on aligning CXOs towards the need for being product-led org. Also for people below in hierarchy, it becomes quite impossible to manage this chasm and the book does not quite offer tactics to manage this transition without the risk of becoming a product martyr!
    • Delving deeper into which product metrics to adopt since they are critical to assessing the product direction and identify product initiatives
    • Product roadmap’ing and communication have been largely not covered although she does refer excellent resources on the same

The book can be ordered on Flipkart and Amazon!

Book Review: Gamification — Using Game Elements in Serious Contexts…

Ram SevakLeave a comment

I have been reading up on how to gamify core product experiences and the current state of art. Came across this book Gamification — Using Game Elements in Serious Contexts, it’s published by Springer whose technical books I tend to like apart from the venerable O’Reilly’s. This book is structured like a compendium of research articles, prose has the same “academic” overtones and each chapter can be read independent of one another. Some familiarity with standard terms in gamification parlance would definitely help in quickly skim through the short but dense book consisting of 11 chapters

Chapter 1

Some points and key definitions are belabored again and again throughout the book, mostly since each chapter is contributed by different researchers. For example, definition of gamification i.e. using game mechanics in a non-gaming / non-serious / business context — so called funware. Also defined at many places are external and intrinsic motivations and how gamification can help generate the latter

Equally important is how affordances for gameful experience may enhance user experience AND outcome. The book also differentiates between a play and game — the latter being rule based and goal oriented form of playing

This 2×2 explains the use of play and games and their integration into products (cited from the book)

Courtesy: “Gamification — Using Game Elements in Serious Contexts”

This chapter then introduces well-cited MDA framework i.e. mechanics, dynamics and aesthetics of gamification design. Then various types of game mechanics are enumerated namely points, leaderboards, levels and achievement systems or meta tasks. Game dynamics is defined as the run-time behavior of game mechanics acting on player’s inputs and each other’s outputs while aesthetics describe the desirable emotional responses in a player. In the gamification context, aesthetics should represent goal of the gamified system. The chapter then lists the player types as killers (acting on other players), achievers (acting on the world), socializers (interacting with other players) and explorers (interacting with the world)

The chapter ends with describing different types of achievements per achievement goal theory. Instructors are used to guide users throughout the process, quests are unlocked when users accomplish significant tasks, content discovery achievements encourage users to explore the applications, grinder achievements are unlocked when a task is repeated given number of times, Herculean tasks are like bar raisers — relatively difficult and hard to perform tasks. Trophies are designed to mutually exclude other users from winning them and are therefore rare. Loyalty achievements reward the most loyal users

The chapter sounds familiar — more so when many of the current product engagement hooks built by the likes of Flipkart, Amazon, Swiggy, live quizzing products (MMOs) are using these achievements types as part of core gamification design. Sample these: random often silly sounding games in ecommerce apps’ home screens, product hunts, game design of referral programs, loyalty programs which can only be unlocked at the end of the month, extra lives for watching game till the end….

Chapter 2

This chapter can be termed as core of the book with important inferences as to how user behavior can be influenced by gamification. Motivation (desire to perform an action) is an important factor since it drives human behavior and is used to start an activity. Extrinsic motivation (doing things solely for their outcome) doesn’t create sustainable gamification effect. Use of cultural influences is considered in shaping people’s preferences. Four cultural categories in communication are time (2 mins delay is not the same everywhere!), space (personal or shared), context (explicit or direct) and information flow (e.g. message speed). Culture and design can be combined to create serious games e.g. cultural appropriation can be employed to support game’s mechanics, storylines and interface by designers. Amazon’s Great India shopping festival and the use of elephants in logo!

From this perspective, semiotics, symbolic interactionism and metaphors are important extensions.

The authors then proceed to explain Fogg Behavior Model which shows that human behavior is an outcome of three elements: motivation, ability and trigger happening concurrently. Now famous Nudge Theory covers the last two elements: ability and trigger wherein designer simplifies the environment and the context that lead to a certain action while tiny habits method breaks down the desired method into easy-to-adopt small habits

Chapter 3

This chapter touches on gamification analytics — tools that help to monitor the success of gamification projects, to understand user behavior and to adopt gamification designs

One can sequence activities in gamification analytics as business modelling and requirements, design workflow, implementation, monitoring and adaptation. No surprises there for a product manager!

Some of the key metrics while analyzing gamification:

Gamification feedback rate: while gamification feedback is any state change in the game which the user perceives as success. Feedback rate describes total amount of feedback per time user spent in the gamified application. Too low feedback rate could imply — scope of gamification is too narrow vis-a-vis problem space or game is too hard!

Point distributions over users can help detect flaws in the balance of point amounts for gamified actions

Achievable gamification elements: helps to see overall progression of users in the game. Also useful for making adaptation in gamification design — too easy or too hard game!

User distribution on gamification element state: this should be self explanatory

Temporal statistics — how long users need for the completion of particular gamification elements

User characteristics related cohorts

The chapter ends with evaluating certain tools for gamification analytics e.g. Upsight, HoneyTracks, GAMEhud, GameAnalytics etc. Criteria or product capabilities used for ranking the tools are: ability to monitor app KPIs, gamification elements stats, gamification design adaptation, user group of interest and simulation

Chapter 4

This chapter discusses use of gamification in customer-oriented strategies specifically Open Customer Innovation (OCI). OCI to me seems fancy term for denoting prosumers. More generally, it can be defined as the process for integrating customer feedback into companies’ processes collaboratively

OCI can have different stages basis how much value companies extract from their customers. For example, OCI can just be an idea spotting tool or a tool to identify customer’s interests and preferences like surveys. It can also be used as co-creation concept or coproduction (provide new products on a regular basis). Design thinking is in fact one variant of OCI wherein customers are integrated in design and innovation process. Certain risks of an OCI approach could be: non-awareness on part of customers vis-a-vis their responsibilities concerning the final product, retaining customer motivation to cocreate on a regular basis, lack of creativity on part of customers in the long run

Gamification can help in leading to mental states like self-efficacy and flow. Playing can support divergent thinking while learning / unlearning can be initiated by exposing players to new situations. Customers can also be provided background stories to make customer familiar and acquainted with the company as well as its values and vision thereby mitigating some of the key risks of an OCI approach driven product creation

Chapter 5

This chapter focuses on obstacles and challenges in the use of gamification for virtual idea communities (VICs). VICs are the communities in which distributed groups of individual customers focus on voluntarily sharing and elaborating innovation ideas. As an aside, open source software has developed along these lines from the beginning. Linux Kernel Mailing List (https://lkml.org/) is legendary we all know! Firms benefit from VICs since 1. These are less complex than face-to-face workshops, focused group studies or panels 2. Customer base can be broader in VICs

However having knowledge about customer motivation to participate in VICs is important for firms. Customer may be motivated by 1. Having fun developing ideas 2. Altruism 3. Product innovation and enhancement 4. Capability-signalling motive or self-marketing motive 5. Recognition motive 6. Learning motive 7. Need motive e.g. lobbying or influencing the firm and its products 8. Contacts-to-peers motive

Some of the game design elements which can be used in VICs are game points (as starting point to drive competitive behavior), social points (for fostering a sense of social belonging and as competitive anchor), redeemable points (autonomy for individual development and differentiation), levels (to increase competitive character of the community and to enable inter-user comparison), leaderboards and high scores (highly competitive game design elements to drive behavior), virtual identities (to overcome hierarchy levels and silo thinking) and collecting (to demonstrate social status)

Some of the challenges behind gamifying VICs are misuse by developers and decision makers, manipulative users and overjustification effect demonstrated by players in which external incentives harm intrinsic motivation

Chapter 6

This chapter focuses on designing social media based on open innovation tool to harness potential of play by applying game mechanics to innovation management. There can be broadly two ways 1. Enriching open innovation tool with game mechanics i.e. gamification 2. Adjusting a multiplayer online game for the purpose of ideation (online ideation game)

There are two challenges organisations face regarding design of social media based on open innovation tool 1. Motivating individuals to participate in a state of high involvement and flow 2. Inspiring individuals to generate creative output. For this purpose, online ideation games OIGs can be of high gamefulness i.e. high extent to which design of the system appears to be a game

How to structure game mechanics in the context of innovation management?

One way is so called genex framework . According to this framework, efficient creativity supporting software tool must encourage four generic behavior: accumulating (learning from previous work), relating (consulting with peers and mentors), creating (exploring and creating possible solutions) and disseminating (spreading elaborated solutions)

Game points can serve as trigger for all four behavior while social points can trigger “relating”. Redeemable points can serve as trigger for creating and relating. Two of the largest idea management systems in the world Hype and Spigit use virtual stores

Levels can trigger accumulating and / or creating. When levels are implemented as sections, it indicates possibility of browsing through information and hence accumulation. While when stages are implemented as stages for example by providing ever-increasing challenges they relate to creating. Leaderboards can trigger accumulating and relating while collecting can be assigned the behavior of accumulating

On the other hand, OIGs follow the idea of game with a purpose. They have two design elements: mission specificity and duration (not necessarily though)

In online communities, minimizing the risk of fraud is very important. Few thumb rules to increase fraud-resistance of a gamified system or OIG are

  1. The larger effort and more time to cheat the system, the lower the probability of fraud. For example, users can receive game points based on their trustworthiness levels. Trustworthiness can be calculated by rating the rater or by using meta data about user behavior. Similarly social points are only allocated if certain persons rated the idea positively. Downside is it can lessen site’s credibility and usability
  2. The more transparent the rules are, easier it is for cheaters to find strategies for cheating. That why Google and Amazon’s rankings are a secret!
  3. The more the true identity of a user is known, the lower the probability of fraud. Completely anonymous virtual identities may trigger fake identities and spam. However if privacy concerns are to be addressed effectively, real identity characteristics of every community member can be made visible to only administrators. Thankfully, recent changes in Aadhar point to adopting similar approach when only virtual Aadhar details are to be shared for authentication!

Chapter 7

This chapter focuses on gamification in the context of social collaboration. The central argument of authors has been that gamification elements have mostly ignored augmenting intrinsic motivation. Game elements that include monetary oriented goals can be seen as extrinsic stimuli whereas achievements to learn or improve in a certain activity lead to intrinsic motivation. In specific elements like points, badges and dashboards could diminish intrinsic motivation of users since these elements only support extrinsic motivation. This effect of secondary extrinsic motivation lowering the primary intrinsic motivation is known as overjustification effect

Authors then review certain market tools in this space e.g. Chatter, IBM connections, SharePoint and JIVE. Assertion is that market for gamification in social collaboration software is dominated by third party plug-ins. Microsoft SharePoint remains an exception

Chapter 8

This chapter is pretty interesting, more so product managers. Think about gamification as a market research method for purchase decision process! This space has been traditionally dominated by classical qualitative market research methods e.g. focus groups, interviews and diary studies. Few “problems” with these methods are: methods may be outdated providing only hypothetical and unrealistic results. Probands (best consumers) are rarely able to describe their purchase decision retrospectively since it’s mainly an emotional process. Besides sample bias may be dominant and problematic. Additionally studies themselves run the risk of influencing the decision process!

The universe of games and related research fields can be visualized in this 2×2 (adapted from the book). Horizontal axis denotes the difference between designing a full game and merely employing some game elements in another context

Courtesy: “Gamification — Using Game Elements in Serious Contexts”

Serious games are also games but with another purpose than mere entertainment for example, teaching the player something

Why games in market research studies?

Advantage could be that games allow players to immerse themselves deeply into the topic. As result, player gets in a so called flow and give more valid answers. Players are also more attentive and authentic. There could be higher willingness to participate as well

Authors then describe a hypothetical serious game (a board game) which mimics purchase decision making process by making the users park the car in middle of the board after having reached a predefined number of information fields. One advantage of having smartphone application of this game is insights can be transmitted to researchers in real time. By changing a few design elements, authors claim that it could be adopted to other products or simulate different processes altogether

Chapter 9

This chapter should interest all product managers — use of gamification in requirement engineering (RE) and stakeholder management! Essentially gamification in RE establishes feedback loops that reward the “useful” participants. On the other hand, related trend of crowdsourcing can be employed to maximize the number of participating stakeholders — crowd-centric requirement engineering CCRE. To be unambiguous though, the chapter falls short in suggesting some practicable action points for typical software products

Two pillars that authors have proposed to increasing stakeholder engagement and participation are: gamification as means to improve motivation and finally quality 2. Crowdsourcing to achieve higher and broader involvement by means of an open call

The resulting CCRE method has seven phases

  1. Feasibility analysis (determine applicability of CCRE for the specific situation) including scope of the method. CCRE would be unsuitable for a product with very few clients and products for which PM has clear vision and low openness to crowd. Conversely CCRE would be more suited for products with numerous customers, low vision and high openness
  2. Context analysis: analyses the context of requirement elicitation by identifying candidate stakeholders to involve in crowdsourcing as well as existing channels used to provide feedback
  3. Crowdsourcing preparation: before actually involving the crowd, it has to be formed, its characteristics assessed and members prepared for success. CCRE method should provide enough incentives through gamification elements e.g. roles, points, leaderboards, group formation, exploration and endorsement
  4. Crowd involvement: this is the phase where gamification and crowdsourcing occurs
  5. Requirement identification: one has to distinguish between minority and mainstream requirements as well the requirement priority based on business value, implementation cost and business risk
  6. Focus group execution: organized selectively for requirements with higher business priority and shareholder value

Challenges of applying crowdsourcing for RE

Diversity may render decision making processes harder to achieve (inconsistent requirements for example). Collaboration among stakeholders may also lead to dominance of certain opinions and clustering among the crowd providing the requirements

Challenges of applying crowdsourcing for RE

Gamification of RE processes has technical and organisational costs. Stakeholders may be given an option to opt out of gamification which has its own complexities. Gamification may also negatively influence trustworthiness of elicited requirements as certain users may participate just for the sake of it. Some stakeholders may also lack intrinsic motivation to participate

Chapter 10

This chapter takes example of gamified e-books to discover distinctive rhetorical resources used to enhance reading experience and achieve convergence with original literary world. Convergence i.e. the capacity to enhance rather than distract from the narrative is considered a key element for assessing an interactive e-book. Three dimensions to examine convergence between gamified e-books and literary world are: enacting the material world, navigating the medium of text (this can be measured by ratio of reading to other actions, implemented as animated or interactive calligraphy or adding digital materiality to draw attention to text or by concatenating text as taps and choices on user screen), empathy / perception / emotion and choice

Empathy can be developed through perception for example through animation and interactivity, through choice, through emotions

In specific, multimedia feature of e-books has a small positive effect on young children’s literacy development.

Chapter 11

This chapter analyzes gamification of teaching in higher education and I found it a little underwhelming. Authors have developed a game called GamEducation in a master’s level course over two years. While gamification improved major fields of university teaching e.g. motivation, fun, participation and learning efficiency — work load for both students and teaching staff increased. This has roots in both increasing competitiveness among students as well as increased number of challenges

Typical learning management systems (LMS) are criticized because of their restrictions, refusal of use, complexity and reconstruction of established procedures. However even with integrating game mechanics, projects may not always result in increased learning efficiency. The chapter ends with qualitative evaluation of GamEducation game as described by students themselves

This is a unique book, little theoretical in its approach — nevertheless to their credit authors concede this limitation at few places in the book. However if you can correlate your workplace learning with amazing situations various contributing authors place their readers in, this book could teach a thing or two.