Notes from 4/5–11/5

Never attribute to stupidity that which is adequately explained by opportunity cost

Ideas will be generated much faster than there’s bandwidth to execute on them, so you’re doing something right if your backlog is growing indefinitely.

To me this reflects a misunderstanding of how product development should work. Backlogs should be growing indefinitely. What a good team will do is to accept that, and establish a good relationship between product and tech, and make sure you constantly keep reprioritizing.

Blockchain

Blockchain and Education in China: New Possibilities and Challenges

“since data on blockchain is transparent and cannot be tampered with, blockchain systems are well suited for student credit management, college entrance, recruitment and employment, scholarship, qualification certification, industry-academia cooperation and other aspects, and are of significant value for the healthy development of education and employment.”

(1) the traceability of blockchain technology can be used for the copyright protection of educational assets and intellectual achievements, solving the problem of intellectual property disputes from the source;

(2) using distributed ledger technology to directly connect resources and their users can simplify the process and improve the efficiency of resource sharing, thus promoting the open sharing of educational resources.

(3) blockchain can weaken the monopoly of schools or governments in educational services, so that any institution with educational qualifications can offer educational services and issue effective academic certificates, realizing the effective integration of formal and non-formal education, and promoting the participation of the public in reforming the education system.

Development

Automate Your Stock Portfolio Research With Python in 6 Minutes

Python APIs for stocks. 500 requests a month only

How I Passed the AWS Certified Developer Associate Exam

I suppose this is something I should get into

How We Created a Realtime Patient Monitoring System With Go and Vue in 3 days

Brilliant and simple, really says a lot about what development can do now

sql police department — to learn SQL in a game

Brilliant but slow

Product

Rocking at Product Strategy: 3 steps and 10 tools to succeed where most companies fail

Product strategy is the link between the vision and what the teams will work on. Is how to define goals and assign resources.

0. Gather information

Local vs. Global and General vs. Industry-Specific.

1. Generate insights

• Tool 1: Core value proposition + Blue Ocean ERRC

• Tool 2: Opportunity Solution Tree (first part)

• Tool 3: 3 Horizons of Growth — McKinsey

Horizon one represents those core businesses most readily identified with the company name and those that provide the greatest profits and cash flow. Here the focus is on improving performance to maximize the remaining value.

Horizon two encompasses emerging opportunities, including rising entrepreneurial ventures likely to generate substantial profits in the future but that could require considerable investment.

Horizon three contains ideas for profitable growth down the road — for instance, small ventures such as research projects, pilot programs, or minority stakes in new businesses.

• Tool 4: Lego’s innovation Matrix

1. Meet with the team that has a new product or service concept, and place the innovation in the appropriate column in the matrix.
2. Brainstorm complementary products, services, business models, etc., that could make the core innovation more successful
3. Ask who will work on these complementary innovations
4. Consider staffing, funding, and review

2. Select

• Tool 5: DHM (Delight, Hard to copy, Margin Enhancing) by Gibson Biddle

Used on Netflix:

• Tool 6: Google’s 70/20/10 rule

The basic idea of this “paradigm” is that you should allocate 70% of resources in “now strategy” (or core business), 20% in near-term growth (like adjacent opportunities), and 10% in future potentially disruptive ideas (moonshots).

• Tool 7: GLEe model by Gibson Biddle
• “Get Big on” is an excellent follow up for thinking about your core value and how to increase it.
• “Lead” helps you select opportunities that are new and growing and that if missed, it may kill your business (as in the infamous Kodak example).
• “Expand” is similar to the 20% of the 70/20/10 or the second time horizon in the McKinsey model.
• Tool 8: Strengthen the core

Focus on opportunites that enhance core of business

3. Synthesize

• Tool 9: The “drivers” model

• Tool 10: Kernel model

Start by deciding what’s the fundamental core (Kernel).

The “Diagnosis” provides insights on how things currently are. It should explain a compelling “why”.

The “Guiding policy” is a description of the direction to move towards, without stating any specific action. It should help everyone in the organization make decisions that help to move towards the goal even in situations not covered by the strategy definition.

Let’s wrap up not with a tool but with a concept. No matter how you synthesize your strategy, keep in mind that saying what you will not do is as important as saying what you will do.

Tools

bubble website builder

Not sure why this is useful, this scene is getting crowded