Product management – Observations from Uppsala

The Quarterly Product and Feature Update

I think of myself to be a technical person. I like computers, simulators, code, things like that. And obviously interacting with people and helping them solve their technical problems using technology I know. However, it seems that one of the most impactful contributions made during my time at Intel was to start a meeting series. Maybe you can call it a process innovation.

Time to Do Something New

The time has come to do something new. I am leaving Intel (and the Intel Simics team) at the end of September (2024). After more than twenty years with the team and the product this is a big step into the unknown. But when Intel offered a “retirement” package as part of its current round of cost reduction measures, I felt that it was a golden opportunity to find something new to do.

The HidrateSpark… Internet of Drinking Bottles

Earlier this Summer, I received a HidrateSpark PRO water bottle as a gift. It is a fascinating piece of “smart” technology. The bottle itself is a decent piece of engineering and a somewhat practical product. But the overall product concept just strikes me as mostly contrived. The associated app is almost comical in its attempts to turn a piece of hardware into a “service”.

Building or Designing, Lego and IKEA

Back in April, I presented a talk about how you can use Lego as an analogy for software development in the ProductBeats Show. The talk was based on my previous musings about Lego and software. It was a great fun 15 minutes with a good after-discussion moderated by Magnus Billgren. As always at the ProductBeats show, Magnus nudged me and the audience to think. He kicked off the talk by asking the audience and me about the process of assembling IKEA furniture. Is that assembly about building or designing? That is a very god question. Here is my attempt at an answer.

Don’t Look behind the Curtain! (Please)

In a previous blog, I talked a bit about the hazards of coding to an implementation and not a specification, based on 1980s home computers. While the specifics and peculiarities of that case is hopefully confined to old hardware, the lessons are still worth contemplating. There is a modern variant of this phenomenon that is based on open-source software, and that I must admit to feeling a bit annoyed by. Fundamentally, the question is this: when figuring out how to use an API – should you look at the documentation or the implementation?

Minimum Viable (Replacement) Product – The Teams Example

During 2020 and 2021, Intel switched from using Microsoft Skype for Business (also known as Lync) to Microsoft Teams as the primary internal calling, chatting, and conferencing tool. While (finally) Teams has turned into quite a decent communications tool, the transition started a bit too early from a feature completeness perspective. Microsoft in essence gave us an enterprise Minimum Viable Product (MVP). Not a proper Replacement Product (RP). Teams left out many rather important and useful features, degrading the user experience and value, and making my life harder. I don’t think that was particularly well handled. I can understand it as a product manager, but as a user, I don’t like it all.

DVCon Europe 2021 – Testbenches, AI, and Open Source

Just like in 2020, the Design and Verification Conference (DVCon) Europe 2021 was a virtual conference. It took place from October 26 to 27, with the SystemC Evolution day on October 28 (as usual). As has been the case in recent years, the verification side of the conference is significantly larger than the design side. This is common with the other DVCon conferences in the world. In this blog, I will go through my main observations from DVCon Europe, and share some notes from some of the presentations.

Intel Blog: How Teaching Users Drives Product Improvements in Simics

I have a post out on the Intel Software blog about my experience developing and delivering training for Simics over the past few years. A key observation is that building training is a great way to test the product, and drives changes and improvements in the product. The blog is found at https://software.intel.com/content/www/us/en/develop/articles/teaching-users-drives-product-improvements-in-simics-sw.html