Google kills off seven more products including Wave

Google has announced that it is dropping seven more products in an effort to simplify its range of services.

The out-of-season "spring clean" brings an end to services including Google Wave, Knol and Google Gears.
It is the third time that the US firm has announced a cull of several of its products at the same time after they had failed to take off.

Experts said the strategy might put off users from signing up to new services.
Google announced the move in its official blog.

"We're in the process of shutting a number of products which haven't had the impact we'd hoped for, integrating others as features into our broader product efforts, and ending several which have shown us a different path forward," said Urs Holzle, Google's vice president of operations.

"Overall, our aim is to build a simpler, more intuitive, truly beautiful Google user experience," he added.

[Source]

Cleared PMP on 23rd May 2011

I was happy to clear PMP (Project Management Professional) Certification from PMI (Project Management Institute) on 23rd May 2011.

It was overall a fascinating journey while Preparing for PMP exam. It took almost 8-9 months. I will be writing more on what study process I followed under the guidance of Pradeep Dhanaraj. He is more of Mentor and close friend to me than a office colleague.

PMP Study process or the approach which we took will be published very soon.

Minimum Viable Product

Just saw one of the youTube videos of Marty Cagan on Product Management. This time his topic was on Minimum Viable Product. Based on his opinion it is smallest possible product that really meets 3 criteria:

1. VALUABLE - Users will choose to buy/use it...
   
2. USABLE - Assuming they want to use it, they should figure out HOW to use it...
   
3. FEASIBLE - If it meets above 2 criteria we/company should build and use it when it is needed...

Generally the evidence of Minimum Viable Product is collected using prototypes (user prototypes & live data prototypes) and user testing (face to face or split testing).