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The opinions expressed by the bloggers below and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Ryma Technology Solutions. As they say, you can't innovate without breaking a few eggs...
Bloggers
Hakan Kilic
Hakan Kilic is Director of Product Marketing at Ryma Technology, where he is a market expert on Product Management and drives strategic initiatives and go to market strategies around the solutions Ryma delivers. Prior to Ryma, Hakan worked in the telecommunications, voice recognition, biometrics, and process improvement industries. With over 10 years of experience with high tech companies such as Ericsson, Scansoft and Nuance Communications, Hakan has managed several multimillion dollar product lines. He has also contributed to the W3C standards committee around VoiceXML, is Pragmatic Marketing certified and is an active community member and contributor of product investment management best practices through his experiences in the industry and with Ryma.
Hakan has a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Engineering from Concordia University, and an MBA in Marketing and Finance from McGill University. He continues to promote the business and technical foundations of solid marketing and product management best practices to large organizations worldwide through his participation in GrandView, the online product management community.
Hakan has a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Engineering from Concordia University, and an MBA in Marketing and Finance from McGill University. He continues to promote the business and technical foundations of solid marketing and product management best practices to large organizations worldwide through his participation in GrandView, the online product management community.
Recent Posts
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280 Group Webinar Recap: How to build a compelling and effective product roadmap
Roadmaps are great tools for communicating the vision, aligning people internally, raising money for investment, and engaging with sales and customers. But there are good ways of doing it, and bad ways of doing it. In today's webinar, Brian Lawley from the 280 Group did a great job explaining some strategies on creating your roadmap. In case you m ...May 02, 2012 -
280 Group Webinar Recap: Product Management Productivity: How to do twice as much in half the time
Saving time is a challenge for everyone, and based on my experience as a product manager, even doubly so. Constantly being interrupted, sales and executives injecting requests into our roadmap, hundreds of emails a day and never enough time to talk to customers. Brian did a great job with some tips on saving time during this webinar. If you didn't ...Apr 25, 2012 -
280 Group Webinar Recap: How to build & grow an amazing Product Management team
It is difficult enough being a product manager, it’s equally hard to build and lead a product management team as well. There was some great insight from Brian Lawley today on how to grow and build an amazing product management team. The slides from his presentation can be found here. If you want to watch the recorded webinar, including slides and a ...Apr 11, 2012 -
Sneak peek into the next generation method of creating Product Management documents
Our webinar today covered the important aspects of a well written market requirements document, a business case and a product requirements document. The full webinar can be found here. The MP3 and slides are also available. We also showed off FeaturePlan 2012, our latest version of our product management software solution, which now includes ...Apr 03, 2012 -
280 Group webinar recap – Optimizing Product Management at Your Company
On March 28, Brian Lawley from 280 Group presented a great webinar on how to optimize product management at your company. The recorded webinar (along with audio and slides) can be found here. Below are some of the questions and comments that came out of the webinar: · Why are product managers put into product janitor roles? @PmDude replies tha ...Mar 28, 2012 -
Other entries by Hakan Kilic
Val Workman
Val Workman is a Fellow of Ryma Technology Solutions, and long term contributor to the product management community.
Val has direct experience in successfully leading the deployment of over 50 formal Communities of Practice. He has participated in over 250 deployments spanning a timeframe of over 15 years, in a wide range of industries such as Aerospace and Defense, Food Manufacturing, Energy, Woman's Apparel, Telecommunications, Medical Devices, Electronics, Home Appliances, Scientific, Mining, Technical Services, Software, and Publishing. These communities have been both private and public.
Val has served in the Boy Scouts of America in various capacities for over 30 years throughout many regions in the United States. He has over 50 years of combined service experience with volunteer organizations such as the Jr. Leadership Council of Austin TX, Product Camp, PDMA, INCOSE, SAVE, AIPMM, Republican Central Committee, and PMA. He has participated in the successful development of hundreds of volunteer leadership groups.
He has also served as Director of Global Marketing at Telelogic. He served as Director of Space Commercialization at EDS, and CEO at Sumatran. He currently sits on multiple Boards in Austin TX. He served as Sr. Lead on the Committee for Reusable Launch Vehicles under Senator Graham, and Director for the Committee on System Engineering Certification for the State of Texas under Governor Bush.
Val has thousands of hours experience training in both academic and corporate environments. He has taught Math and Science at Saugus High School, University of Southern Utah, University of Malaysia, and the University of Soul. He taught Systems Engineering at San Jacinto College and Product Management at Texas State College. Val has taught the principles of product management in a wide variety of companies and applications across America such as Abbot Labs, Motorola, GE Health Care, Ericson, NASA, Thompson, SAIC, Anderson, Techtronic, Logitech, Panasonic, BOSE, Wrigley, CheckFree, Visa, Chicago Board of Trade, Federal Reserve, Nextel, AT&T, MCI, Raytheon, Lockheed, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, Meredith, Bertelsmann, Oceaneering, Tyson Foods, Ben and Jerry, Alcoa, Caterpillar, Otis, Harley Davidson, National Oilwell Varco, Vitec, High Performix, and the DOE.
Val has successfully coached CoP leaders and product managers over the last three years. As a result, over 130 new product managers and community leaders have received personal guidance and vision from Val. Today Val's time is in high demand, and is limited to the initial setup and launch of new communities.
Val has worked as the Product Manager for over 7 years on products such as Siemen's Team Center and Mercury's Test Director. He has worked on multiple product management teams for companies such as Ford Aerospace, Raytheon, Vitec, and FreeScale. He has been continuously engaged in this practice beginning in 1983. His 20+ years of experience helps turn academic theory into daily practice.
Val has lead the selection and installation of over 580 different software applications supporting product management activities. Val is one of the authors of the APM deployment methodology, which provides the encapsulation and modularization of the technology, culture, and processes required for a truly incremental deployment of change.
Val has direct experience in successfully leading the deployment of over 50 formal Communities of Practice. He has participated in over 250 deployments spanning a timeframe of over 15 years, in a wide range of industries such as Aerospace and Defense, Food Manufacturing, Energy, Woman's Apparel, Telecommunications, Medical Devices, Electronics, Home Appliances, Scientific, Mining, Technical Services, Software, and Publishing. These communities have been both private and public.
Val has served in the Boy Scouts of America in various capacities for over 30 years throughout many regions in the United States. He has over 50 years of combined service experience with volunteer organizations such as the Jr. Leadership Council of Austin TX, Product Camp, PDMA, INCOSE, SAVE, AIPMM, Republican Central Committee, and PMA. He has participated in the successful development of hundreds of volunteer leadership groups.
He has also served as Director of Global Marketing at Telelogic. He served as Director of Space Commercialization at EDS, and CEO at Sumatran. He currently sits on multiple Boards in Austin TX. He served as Sr. Lead on the Committee for Reusable Launch Vehicles under Senator Graham, and Director for the Committee on System Engineering Certification for the State of Texas under Governor Bush.
Val has thousands of hours experience training in both academic and corporate environments. He has taught Math and Science at Saugus High School, University of Southern Utah, University of Malaysia, and the University of Soul. He taught Systems Engineering at San Jacinto College and Product Management at Texas State College. Val has taught the principles of product management in a wide variety of companies and applications across America such as Abbot Labs, Motorola, GE Health Care, Ericson, NASA, Thompson, SAIC, Anderson, Techtronic, Logitech, Panasonic, BOSE, Wrigley, CheckFree, Visa, Chicago Board of Trade, Federal Reserve, Nextel, AT&T, MCI, Raytheon, Lockheed, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, Meredith, Bertelsmann, Oceaneering, Tyson Foods, Ben and Jerry, Alcoa, Caterpillar, Otis, Harley Davidson, National Oilwell Varco, Vitec, High Performix, and the DOE.
Val has successfully coached CoP leaders and product managers over the last three years. As a result, over 130 new product managers and community leaders have received personal guidance and vision from Val. Today Val's time is in high demand, and is limited to the initial setup and launch of new communities.
Val has worked as the Product Manager for over 7 years on products such as Siemen's Team Center and Mercury's Test Director. He has worked on multiple product management teams for companies such as Ford Aerospace, Raytheon, Vitec, and FreeScale. He has been continuously engaged in this practice beginning in 1983. His 20+ years of experience helps turn academic theory into daily practice.
Val has lead the selection and installation of over 580 different software applications supporting product management activities. Val is one of the authors of the APM deployment methodology, which provides the encapsulation and modularization of the technology, culture, and processes required for a truly incremental deployment of change.
Recent Posts
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How to build a competitive advantage
I know that when you wake up in the morning, the first thing on your mind is how you can improve your organization's competitive advantage? What set of new features can I add? There are two things that cause competitive advantage, product differentiation and/or improved cost-position. Let's take a look. Product differentiation is more about percei ...May 18, 2012 -
An Elevator Pitch Template
As members of a product management team, you're constantly asked about the product-line, product, and even features of your product. Regardless of what's being asked about, you typically have 1-2 minutes (tops) to convey a meaningful value proposition to your listener. I don't believe the elevator pitch is used more often anywhere else, even ...May 16, 2012 -
The Optimal Level of Competitiveness
Ask any high school student; they know just how much they have to do, at least for the short term. Let me call this the optimal level of instinctive competitiveness, after which point increasing competitiveness can only be achieved by increasing amounts of formalized product management processes. The question is how competitive does your company ha ...May 15, 2012 -
Who's the Boss: Managing expectations
Let's say you've done your homework and in one way or another you’ve identified a market opportunity. You define a product feature that you believe the market is going to run with. In fact, you're sure your product will be seen as something disruptive in the market with this new feature. What do you do? Do you keep your cards close to your chest a ...May 14, 2012 -
Eight elements that all successful product management teams have in common
It would be fun to say that product management teams should be ranked by their ability to produce successful products. However, there's more to the success of a product than the product management team. So how do you rank the product management team? Perhaps more importantly, how do we nurture, grow and expand the abilities of a product manag ...May 11, 2012 -
Other entries by Val Workman
Michel Besner
Michel Besner is President and CEO of Ryma Technology Solutions, Inc. He has been successful for more than 15 years in bringing to market innovative products and solutions for the film, games, video, broadcast, web, mobile messaging and architectural market spaces.
As the co-founder and CEO of Kaydara, Besner helped pioneer the development of real-time 3D animation solutions that have been used in numerous blockbuster movies and video games. Following the acquisition of Kaydara by Alias Systems in 2004, Besner was named Alias' Vice-President of Business Development – Emerging Markets.
In 2006, Autodesk acquired Alias and named Besner as Senior Director, 3D Product Management for the Media & Entertainment division. Besner then joined OZ Communications as Senior Vice-President of Marketing in early 2008, prior to their acquisition by Nokia in November of the same year. For the past couple of years, Besner has worked primarily as a consultant, helping many small and medium-sized companies with their product portfolio, marketing strategy and business plans.
Michel has won several awards including Personality of the Year – 2003/2004 by the Québec Federation of IT (FIQ – Fédération de l'Informatique du Québec). Michel holds a bachelor degree in Computer Engineering from l'Ecole Polytechnique de Montréal and enjoys the good things in life such as collecting wine, playing golf and tennis as well as traveling. Michel is married and has 4 kids.
As the co-founder and CEO of Kaydara, Besner helped pioneer the development of real-time 3D animation solutions that have been used in numerous blockbuster movies and video games. Following the acquisition of Kaydara by Alias Systems in 2004, Besner was named Alias' Vice-President of Business Development – Emerging Markets.
In 2006, Autodesk acquired Alias and named Besner as Senior Director, 3D Product Management for the Media & Entertainment division. Besner then joined OZ Communications as Senior Vice-President of Marketing in early 2008, prior to their acquisition by Nokia in November of the same year. For the past couple of years, Besner has worked primarily as a consultant, helping many small and medium-sized companies with their product portfolio, marketing strategy and business plans.
Michel has won several awards including Personality of the Year – 2003/2004 by the Québec Federation of IT (FIQ – Fédération de l'Informatique du Québec). Michel holds a bachelor degree in Computer Engineering from l'Ecole Polytechnique de Montréal and enjoys the good things in life such as collecting wine, playing golf and tennis as well as traveling. Michel is married and has 4 kids.
Recent Posts
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Trying to identify your target customer? Here's three questions you should be asking.
It’s sometimes a lot easier to build great technology than it is to properly identify your target customer and ideal market. Sure you may have found a market that has great potential. However, once deployed, will your solution have a significant impact? When defining your target market, here are three questions that you should be asking: Who has ...May 17, 2012 -
How FeaturePlan 2012 will drive product management performance
I am happy to announce that today marks the release of FeaturePlan 2012, the latest version of Ryma's industry-leading product management solution. Designed to improve product managers’ efficiency and effectiveness, FeaturePlan 2012 serves as a central knowledge base that stores all product-related information and streamlines product management pr ...May 04, 2012 -
An easier way to define and manage requirements
Defining requirements is a critical step in product development that plays heavily on the success of any release. That’s why we’re happy to announce a partnership with Process Impact that will see the consultancy’s requirements engineering templates integrated into FeaturePlan. By using the integrated Process Impact templates in FeaturePlan’s Docu ...Apr 20, 2012 -
The Target Customer
It’s a lot easier to build great technology than it is to properly identify your target customer and ideal market. Sure you may have found a market that has great potential. Once deployed, your solution will have a significant impact on the industry – or will it? Who has the pain? Before getting a chance of successfully selling a product, you nee ...Apr 12, 2012 -
Introducing Reza Kazemipour – Ryma’s new Chief Revenue Officer
The past quarter has been an exciting one here at Ryma. Since I joined the company, we have worked hard in improving our business, product and our go-to-market strategy. With this, we have seen huge demand and interest for our FeaturePlan product. As our product team continues to develop new features such as Document Center, that will facilit ...Apr 03, 2012 -
Other entries by Michel Besner
Kelly Burroughs
Kelly Burroughs is a Product Management Consultant at Ryma Technology, where she works with clients to implement and adhere to product management best practices through integrated software solutions.
Prior to joining Ryma, Kelly worked in a number of technology-based positions across a number of different industries, including: structural engineering, marketing, communications, finance and insurance. She is an innovation enthusiast, and an active member of the product management community.
Kelly has a Bachelor of Commerce degree in Information Technology Management from Ryerson University, and a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Waterloo.
Prior to joining Ryma, Kelly worked in a number of technology-based positions across a number of different industries, including: structural engineering, marketing, communications, finance and insurance. She is an innovation enthusiast, and an active member of the product management community.
Kelly has a Bachelor of Commerce degree in Information Technology Management from Ryerson University, and a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Waterloo.
Recent Posts
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Hollywood's take on problem solving
If only there was an Oscar for best problem solving, Moneyball probably would have won. Have you seen it? Well, I finally got around to watching it last week – for some reason I had been hesitating because I can’t remember the last Brad Pitt movie I liked, and well, I am more of a basketball fan than baseball – but surprisingly, I quite liked i ...May 03, 2012 -
Go Ahead, Prove Yourself Wrong from Another Angle
I recently read an article on training the brain, which asked me to state what the next number the author was thinking of in the following set of numbers: 2, 4, 6, 8… What do you think? Well if you are like me, I figured it was a pattern increasing by 2, and guessed 10 straight away - turns out I was wrong. In fact the author was going to ...Apr 18, 2012 -
The Bandwagon, and Why Jumping On It Isn’t Always a Good Idea
It’s safe to say that everyone has jumped on a bandwagon at some point in their life. I can even say that, and I’m usually very leery of them, often times turning my back to them as they roll on by. But whether the bandwagon is for a person, sports team, a product, political movement, social movement or anything else really - we have all jumped on ...Mar 20, 2012 -
Customer Needs: Finding Out What Lies Beneath
‘What Men and Women Really Want’ - that was the question attempted to be answered by an article I was recently sent to read – and while the busy infographic hurt my eyes, and the answers themselves amused me, what I really found interesting was the means of getting the answers. Social media monitoring company NetBase had gathered up, t ...Mar 16, 2012 -
Why Knowing When to Retire your Product is Essential – Just ask Putin!
Vladimir Putin: the extreme-sports-loving, fly-fishing, recent Russian prime minister now re-elected into his third term of presidency by the Russian people, making this his 12th year of rule. And for many of those years, Russia loved their president, rewarding him with sky-high approval ratings (at one point the highest in the world) for effectiv ...Mar 09, 2012 -
Other entries by Kelly Burroughs
Brian Lawley
Brian Lawley is the CEO and Founder of the 280 Group. He is the author five best-selling books, The Phenomenal Product Manager, Expert Product Management, 42 Rules of Product Management, 42 Rules of Product Marketing and Optimal Product Process and is the former President of the Silicon Valley Product Management Association. He was awarded the Association of International Product Marketing Management award for Thought Leadership in Product Management, and has been featured on World Business Review, the Silicon Valley Business Report. He is the editor of the Product Management 2.0 blog and newsletter and also writes guest articles for publications such as the Software Development Forum newsletter, Softletter and the SVPMA newsletter.
Recent Posts
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Webinar Recap: The Seven Phase Standard Product Management Lifecycle
Here’s a recap for everyone who wasn’t able to attend today’s joint webinar between Ryma and the 280 Group (http://www.280group.com/blog ), presented by Brian Lawley. The video and audio can be accessed here: http://grandview.rymatech.com/2012/208-the-seven-phase-standard-product-management-lifecycle.html The slides can be accessed here: htt ...Mar 07, 2012 -
Other entries by Brian Lawley
