Management

i’m writing this series articles to spearhead the new marketing campaign for into the American market. I will be covering a wide range of topics that will allow us to position the company in the proper way so that is excepted as a provider of High-quality software in America.

The key to converting an American CEO or CFO is the trigger point for the American business culture. The trigger point for America is responsibility.   This means in business you must be responsible. You also look for business partners that are responsible.  

But let’s take this into the newest more powerful view that we need to have now.  

The scene from the point of you of the CFO sitting at the head of the financial controls of a large hospital conglomerate. Put yourself in the mind of the CFO. What are they concerned about?  

As an American CFO they will be very concerned about whether they are being responsible in their job and responsible to the hospital, staff, shareholders, patients and the management above them. 

And this is how we get our foot in the door in this American niche market. If we present ourselves as offering something that “May” give an answer to specific problems that they know that they have, they must give us a chance to present a Presale. The reason is because they are responsible, and if there is a solution as an American Director you must explore that solution.

It would be irresponsible to not explore a potential solution.

Then it’s a simple case to actually give value in the presale meeting and convince them that we can deliver some thing that will benefit their business and profits.

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In our last article we covered the anatomy of a presale meeting gone wrong. In that article we posed some questions for everyone to think about. What exactly does an American company wanting to hire a Russian custom software development company, feel about this Russian company? What are they afraid of? What are their concerns?

In the end we came up with five concerns.

1. Is the company a fly by night company, is the company a one-day company?

2. Will they be professional in supporting or developing the software that they've sold to us?

3. Will they have proper data security?

And now the two new ones that are because of the mess the world is in now...

4. Will they be able to complete the project on time? This includes proper internet access an infrastructure to support IT.

5. Where is your team located? Are you still located in Russia?

Now we're going to look at the last 2, number four and five.
However let's look at number 5 first.

Many IT companies today if they want to work with the United States or even Europe they must not have their developers located inside of Russia. Matter of fact it goes so far that if a developer is located in Russia and they're using a VPN and somehow the VPN is breached the credentials are canceled for that developer to work on the project.

It's for this reason that Russian IT companies are opening offices around the world. Let's look at Armenia as an example.

Wait a minute I have to go back for a second...... We must discuss how countries look to America Canada and Western Europe. I basically give them a score based on questions that are brought up in the mind of the American company or European company.

Product management runs on choices. What to develop next, what to put on hold, and what to discard altogether. Getting these choices right steers products toward success. It's more than just a list; it's understanding needs, managing resources, and aligning with the company vision. Prioritization is, without a doubt, a major skill for any product manager.

For most of us, the daily challenge is juggling plenty of tasks, features, and stakeholder requests. But not all demands carry the same weight. It's easy to get swayed by the loudest voice in the room or the most recent email in the inbox, but these aren't necessarily what the product or the users need most urgently.

To get it right in product management, we need the right tools and approaches. Let's see what it takes to nail prioritization.

Key challenges in prioritization

As I noted before, in product management, facing various and often unpredictable challenges is part of the job. However, deciding which tasks to prioritize can be especially confusing, and here are a few factors to consider.

1. Changing customer demands: Customers are the heart of any product, and their needs and desires can evolve rapidly. One day, a feature might be all the rage; the next, it's old news. For instance, a messaging app might find its users clamoring for dark mode due to its increasing popularity across platforms. Adapting to these shifting demands requires constant observation and a readiness to pivot.

2. Evolving market trends: The broader market can influence product decisions as much as individual user feedback. If there's a sudden surge in voice-activated technologies, products that don't incorporate voice features might find themselves left behind. Staying attuned to the market means continuous research and the agility to tweak your product roadmap accordingly.

My name is Paul Karol and I work connecting Russian IT with their customers in the United States. Please find on Hbar my previous article for a complete explanation of my credentials.

Today we're going to look at a presale meeting that was not successful and we will explain exactly how the Russian company lost this business. Please take a look at this photograph.

Going into this presale meeting the client (large American chain store) had worked with the software for a little more than a month and we're pretty happy with the result. From all indications they were going to buy the software this day. The sales manager had a good relationship with the American managers of the company. There was lots of buying sign that was known to the Russian company prior to this presale meeting. Suffice to say that they believe that they would have an easy sale today.

There was some very specific things that the Russians did that cost them this business.

We will be using this as a case study and we will discuss exactly everything that they did as a mistake and how to not do these same mistakes for your company.

First we must do some brain work. A thought experiment, if you will. What do you believe are the concerns of an American company doing business with Russian IT developers today. The current situation between the countries does make it more difficult but the same exact concerns are still there from before maybe slightly more amplified and there may be one more concern that wasn't there prior to the difficulties in Ukraine.

Today, many companies are transferring their development processes to Agile frameworks. In this article, I discuss how the concept of a Project and the position of classic Project Manager are transferred in accordance with the Agile paradigm.

Russian speaking IT presales and passing interviews to the West

I'm Paul Karol an American and I've been living in Russia and working internationally with businesses for the last 10 years. My first client was a Gazprom high level director and we worked on international communication and connections with the West and China.

I am the keynote speaker in many events and also give companywide training for companies that interact with other countries. I have been working deeply with The IT community of Russia for 6 years. My job is to make them pass their project interviews. Also I work with the presales and make sure that the company gets the projects that they want.

I'm the expert on Russia, Chinese and the  Western cultural relations.

First: if your company is just beginning to approach the Western market including America you want to have success in the beginning. If you're successful at passing the first few presale meetings or project interviews your reputation will be established. If you fail a few interviews or presales then you start to develop a reputation.

Brainstorming is a popular working method which is commonly used by UX design teams. It involves a group of designers meeting (whether offline or via video call) and generating as many ideas as possible to find the best solution to a specific problem or come up with creative design ideas. Brainstorming sessions are usually held at the start of a UX project so that designers could use the ideas they think are the best later in the process of product creation. These sessions can vary in duration and form depending on which problems need to be solved, how many people participate and how many ideas need to be generated. 

Multidisciplinary project emerges when multiple teams with different expertise areas join to create a product. Despite the fact the product development is not something happining merely my a wish, product leads often perceive it as an easy walk. Usually this easy walk becomes a crash course. Let's uncover what leads to crash and what is necessary to succeed.

- Continuous Improvement is also a Project, a meta-Project, a maintenance that usually lasts longer than the main development project.

- If you can fit into the Sprint boundaries with your development cycle, then the concept of Retrospective as it is formulated in SCRUM may also suit you. But if you are bigger and not oriented on CI/CD, then be ready to make a hybrid of SCRUM with classical Project Management – thanks God SCRUM is good embeddable (proven by SAFe) !

- What is left out in when we run retrospectives quarterly? – Plan and Check. The placeholder of classical SCRUM Retrospective is quite suitable for that purpose, surrounded, of course, by some additional groomings, providing required action plans and decompositions up to sprint-length steps.

I am a Project Manager. 14 years of project management, 5 years in agile framework, last 4 years in product companies, last 3 years in ABBYY, mobile technologies. I would like to share my practical experience, how we have organized the planning in ABYY Mobile Technologies having SCRUM development.

“SCRUM — you get too little, and you need to add the missing.” The story about how we adjusted the Planning procedure for yearly roadmapping and budgeting, how we have organized the SCRUM‑planning for the feature‑driven development with product development cycle 2–3 months and more.

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CTO: Balancing Leadership and Architecture.

As a CTO, effective leadership goes beyond technical architecture. Conducting regular performance reviews is a crucial part of managing teams.

Note: The performance review schedule may vary depending on the specific
company's policies and guidelines.

For early-stage startups, lacking CTO expertise in conducting performance reviews is common. In my experience, I've tailored grades to encompass all aspects of professional iOS development, keeping project-specific needs in mind. Being the first in the team can offer significant growth opportunities. However, acknowledging any lack of people management skills and compensating through continuous growth is essential.

I've compiled my insights on structuring the iOS development department, conducting performance reviews, and most importantly, emphasizing the significant distinctions between developers' levels based on well-defined criteria.

Against the backdrop of a sharp decline in venture investments in various traditional industries (this is clearly related to the global economic situation), but against the backdrop of certain upheavals in the crypto industry, the question arises of a driver that can become one of the «pillars» of the development of a decentralized industry.

Today, it becomes quite obvious that the situation with web3 technology is becoming similar to the situation with programmatic advertising 10-12 years ago. When programmatic-ads just started, the major market players were not very optimistic - it was much easier for them to follow the well-known paths with chains of publishers and agencies. However, once programmatic got rid of the «childhood diseases» and became simple in use, effective in attracting customers, it has taken a dominant position in the modern advertising market - providing precise targeting and cost reduction. The situation with web3 is similar - all publishers ideally want to have systems for lifetime tracking of customer achievements (that is, Soul Bound tokens in web3), theoretically stable decentralized data storage systems that cannot be broken through a simple server attack, real users’ ownership for his content, as well as simple cross-border payment systems that have built-in algorithms for calculating all duties and taxes. Sounds like a perfect world, but even Amazon doesn't do that yet. Why?

The problem is the web3 entry point, which is difficult for users. As soon as they start talking about opening a crypto wallet, about 12 phrases as a backup, most users interrupt the onboarding process and immediately leave the site. This is obvious - over the decades of the development of the digital market, users have become accustomed to facilitating and simplifying systems for interacting with the site. One-click registration, effective convenient UI, visibility and the «metro principle», where the client is led by the hand – this is modern digital progress. And here some 12 phrases are offered, incomprehensible tokens - and, most importantly, why? So, it turns out that a self-sufficient audience of geeks or really advanced users revolves around web3, which is growing weakly.

When developing functional digital products, especially at the preliminary stages (from MVP to alpha versions) many teams use the «technology first» principle. This means a minimum of user convenience, a maximum of engineering competence. When evaluating the potential of a product, further efforts are already in the direction of creating ergonomic visitor paths, design and more. However, here lies the catch - since not two clients or a prospective investor can evaluate the entire user route, touch it with their hands and make sure that the system works, you can lose both clients and partners.

Avoid duplicate content

Many online merchants face a common challenge with multiple product variations, leading to duplicate content issues. When similar products have slightly different URLs like "?=sortby" or "?p=2", search engines may view them as duplicates, impacting your website's credibility and search rankings. To tackle this:

AI technologies offer unprecedented opportunities for innovation, efficiency, and growth in such industries as advanced machine learning algorithms or intelligent automation systems. However, to harness the power of AI, effective communication becomes paramount.

The growing impact of AI in modern business is undeniable. Organizations leverage AI to automate processes, gain insights from vast amounts of data, personalize customer experiences, and make informed decisions. Yet, the complex nature of AI technology often creates a significant gap between AI capabilities and the understanding of its users.

Here the role of a technical writer becomes crucial. Technical writers act as a bridge between AI technology and its users, ensuring that complex concepts have a clear, concise, and user-friendly manner of speaking. They are the main participants in making AI accessible to a broader audience, facilitating adoption, and maximizing its potential.

Effective communication is essential to reduce the gap between AI technology and its users. While AI systems may be sophisticated and comprehensive, their impact can be weak without proper understanding and utilization. Technical writers contribute to the success of AI implementations by translating complex AI concepts into easily digestible documentation, user manuals, tutorials, and other communication channels.

Furthermore, technical writers understand the importance of tailoring information for different audiences. They communicate with non-technical stakeholders, including executives, decision-makers, and end-users, who may lack extensive technical expertise. Using the AI capabilities, benefits, and potential limitations, technical writers empower these stakeholders to make informed decisions and embrace AI solutions.

Generative AI is creating waves in the way we work, significantly revolutionizing the software development process. AI tools are appearing in various phases of software development, such as design, development, and testing. However, there aren't many tools specifically focused on software business analysis tasks.

But with a little creative thinking, we can put "one-size-fits-all" applications like ChatGPT to good use. It can definitely speed up execution of many typical tasks and free up analysts to focus on the more challenging, strategic aspects of the job.

I have been working in Agile since 2017 in several projects.
And I would like to note here a couple of moments from real experience through the eyes of developer role in project.
Hope it will be helpful for you!