This post is the first in a series of posts (hopefully) aimed at helping those in an Internet product-related position - product manager, project manager, marketing manager, usability designer, interaction designer, qa tester, etc - do their daily jobs better. I'll be adding templates, advice, strategies and other gems on information that I've absorbed over my 12 years creating and managing online products to this blog.

The first challenge I'm hoping to help people address is this: what is an alternative way to easily and effectively communicate my requirements or needs around a certain idea I have? How can I more effectively convey to an engineer what the feature should do? My answer is the Use Case. 

Purpose For a Use Case

Use cases provide an excellent method of describing what a product, system, feature, etc is supposed to do. It is an effective alternative to the more traditional methods of documenting functional requirements and business rules and helps to provide software engineers with a clearer picture as to what the desired objective of a feature is.

Every good use case should try to convey the following:

• Goal - Have a goal in mind; a stated objective that should be met if the steps of the use case are successfully completed.
• Actors - Identify the users, systems and other actors involved in the use case.
• Preconditions - State the conditions that must be met for use case to start and end successfully.
• Related Use Cases - Reference other use cases that either use or follow the use case.
• Steps - List an ordered set of interactions the actors must perform to achieve the goal.
• Alternative Steps - List any variations in the steps of the use case.
• Business Rules - List the non-functional requirements or business rules that must be respected when achieving the desired result.
• Business Requirements (optional) - You may decide to enumerate specific business requirements in the use case also.

Often times I'm asked what it is I do. I usually answer with a short response like "I sit behind a computer most of the day and send emails" or "I help build Web sites and apps". You see, describing what a product manager does to someone not in technology isn't easy. You want to tell them in intricate detail what it is you do but you don't want to bore them or tell them something that will just go right over their heads, like "I write product specifications for RESTful APIs".

Recently, a VP of Engineering where I work reached out to me to help understand what I did, so that they could better identify a candidate for an API/SOA product role that they were looking to fill. The questions were:

• What are the responsibilities of this product manager?
• How do you define what is done by product and what is done by an engineer?
• What type of documentation is produced by this product manager?

Here is my response, which describes in intricate details what an API product manager is responsible for.

I just received an email from Songkick that outlines their intentions to take users' private profiles on their service and make them public. This seems like a logical next step for them, given that they already have a great hold on event and artist content. Folding in user-generated fan content and their favorites into the public mix opens up all kinds of money-making opportunities for the site - think targeted advertising, increased organic search engine traffic.

I couldn't find a blog post from them on this topic or any other news, so I'm posting the contents of the email here.

Hi Songkickers,

We're reaching out to let you know that as of 1st December, we will no longer be supporting private profiles on Songkick - which means that your user page will automatically become public.

Today, much to my dismay, I decided to stop using the Google Voice service for my mobile voicemail and start using the default AT&T service.

I decided to use Google Voice when I got my new smart phone, the Samsung Galaxy S. There are a lot of great features in the Google Voice product. My favorite features are the ability to “see” my voicemail and listen to messages directly from a toolbar widget in the browser. The option I chose was to forward my phone calls to Google so that they can provide the voicemail service when I missed a call. If you decide to use a Google Voice number, the features and options you have are even greater.

But like all Beta products, you cannot expect everything to be perfect. Unfortunately, when it comes to receiving phones calls, the quality and performance standards that I hold a product to are extremely high. And specifically, with the Google Voice service, it seems that sometimes, phone calls that were made just wouldn’t connect. I didn't believe this was happening until more than one person told me that my phone wasn't working. If you were the caller, you wouldn’t even get my voicemail box. Instead, it would appear as if the number wasn’t connected or a wrong number was dialed. This is unacceptable.

The other issue I had was with the quality of the audio file that was used for playback. Often, the volume was entirely too low to comprehend the entire voice message. Lastly, the transcription of the audio to text was hit and miss. If the caller spoke like a robot and the line was totally clear on their end, the transcription was great. If, however, the caller was not the clearest speaker or their connection (like from another mobile phone) was not clear, the transcription was either not useful or missing entirely.

Overall, I would rate the Google Voice product a C+. Again, I place significant weight on their ability to connect callers. The thought that I may have missed a critical call from someone was too much risk for me to live with and certainly was not off-set by the cool Google Voice features.

So it’s back to the regular AT&T voicemail for me. I’m hoping someday they’ll bring visual voicemail to my phone service. Until then, please leave a message!

So Jack and I walked out to the BMW 530i the other day, open the right rear door and then Jack says "whoa Dad, there's water in your car". We had had 3 consecutive days of rain (which is rare in Southern California) and a few inches of it decided to collect in the floor of the car. I thought to myself "how does this happen?" and "this is a nice car". A little research from my wife Kelly discovered that this is a typical problem with the e39. And after a little visual inspection and simple repair on my part, it was obvious that it was a quality control issue at the BMW assembly plant (either the adhesive was poor or the vapor barrier wasn't seated properly - see the pic below).

Learn how I fixed this issue after the jump.

No, but they make you look stupid. This has to be one of the worst atrocities I've ever seen committed to a classic American supercar (in this case the Ford GT)... blue denim and brown alcantara. What's worse is that the interior colors didn't even compliment the exterior finish (which was midnight blue like the one pictured below). The American flag is admirable but still over the top.

What hurts even more is that this is my dream car. So to see someone do this to such a beautiful, classic, high performance automobile... well, it would be like finding out that Cameron Diaz got breast implants. Not necessary and totally disappointing.  

My dream car - the Ford GT. 

• 0-60 in 3.3 seconds
• 1/4 mile in 11.2 seconds
• Top speed 205 mph
• Great racing heritage, exclusive and collectible
• Only a 2-year production run (2005-2006)
• 4038 total units built
• MSRP $149,995
• White with blue stripes
• Black leather interior