/services
sijjio is a boutique consultancy for product management and product development. sijjio works with courageous clients to discover, validate, build, and manage digital products. sijjio helps product teams know what to build, when, and for whom.
In every case sijjio is at least one person: Mike Faulhaber. sijjio is a “we” because it can be (and has been) a multidisciplinary product team comprised of contributors from all over the world.
How might we work together?
Which describes your business?
What about costs?
What about process / methodologies?
How might we work together?
sijjio provides product management and product development services, but its purpose isn’t to do either in isolation. Its purpose is to grow or improve your business by helping you know what to build, when, and for whom. Because of that, there’s a variety of ways that we might work together:
- on-call sijjio product manager
- sijjio augments your existing team
- sijjio joins your team as (a) fully-fledged member(s)
- we build a team together
Which describes your business?
a startup
You have an idea and want to launch a novel business that can scale.
A startup is a human institution designed to deliver a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty. - Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup
Services for you
sijjio can work with founders like you at any stage. Here are just a few of the ways:
-
product
- pursuing product-market fit
- customer development (searching for and validating a business model)
- setting up and curating innovation accounting (quantitative proof of meaningful progress)
-
team
- blended business development and product management (which includes founders)
- assembling a product development team
- succession planning to a later-stage product team
- whole-enterprise agile coaching (not a specific methodology)
-
operations
- selecting and setting up back and front office tools and processes
- selecting and setting up collaboration tools and processes
- selecting and setting up marketing and app analytics
- selecting and setting up customer support/success processes
a new business, but not a startup
You want to launch and run a business that doesn’t (necessarily) need to scale or will be in an existing market.
You’re an entrepreneur, but the startup route isn’t a fit. You believe that you can build a successful and sustainable business in an existing market, but you’re just getting started. You may also need to be especially careful with spending - you and your friends/family may be the sole investors - so you must mitigate risk.
Services for you
Many services seem similar to those for startups. Why? Even though you may not be in search of a business model, you still need to validate your choice - and possibly your execution. Given that, the context and approach might be significantly different for your business.
-
product
- pursuing product-market fit (yes, even for an existing market)
- customer development (validating your choice of business model)
- rapid prototyping in collaboration with founders and early adopters
-
team
- blended business development, product management, and product development
- assembling or transitioning to a product development team
- whole-enterprise agile coaching (not a specific methodology)
-
operations
- selecting and setting up back and front office tools and processes
- selecting and setting up collaboration tools and processes
- selecting and setting up marketing and app analytics
- selecting and setting up customer support/success processes
an established business
Though you may not be in search of a sustainable business model, complacency is death.
Services for you
You may have an existing product portfolio and an existing product team, but you still need some help.
-
product
- close-to-customer facilitation (a “get out of the building” approach for mature products)
- auditing of product roadmaps and how they align with product vision and organization goals and strategy
- transitioning from traditional roadmapping to using learning roadmaps, GIST planning, etc.
-
team
- drop-in mode: you ‘just’ need another product manager in order to execute
- product team reboot - restructuring your product management team and its processes
- whole-enterprise agile coaching (not a specific methodology)
-
operations
- auditing marketing and app analytics and their effectiveness
- selecting and setting up customer support/success processes
What about costs?
The emphasis is on providing value for fees. Let’s work together to achieve maximum mutual benefit.
- flat fees
- hourly rates
- daily rates
- weekly rates
- monthly rates
- retainer
What about process / methodologies?
Process has one purpose: to make it easier for teams to work together so that they can quickly and consistently create value for customers. Unless you’re in the business of selling or supporting given methodologies, process is never your product. It’s not dogma that brings salvation.
Be suspicious of anyone who offers a “proven” product framework. As with product development methodologies a set of practices isn’t often transferrable from one team to the next. What’s listed among sijjio services are practices that are adapted to suit as needed.
What about “Agile”? Agile doesn’t mean a particular methodology (like Scrum, SaFE, etc.); it’s a way to enable an enterprise to be flexible so that its customers can benefit. And, despite the best efforts by some, agility is most certainly not just for software development teams; it’s a way of sharing values and principles - and working together from that foundation - for the whole enterprise.
[Communication, simplicity, courage] - all these values and principles - inform … the practices. The practices exist because the principles exist. And the principles exist because the values exist. So unless you have those principles and values in place, the practices that you come up with are not going to be functional. … The culture is more important than anything, and the principles are more important than the practices. - Allen Holub, The Death of Agile (on YouTube)
sijjio typically advocates lean methods (overall) of which agility is a core element. Each enterprise has the opportunity to craft a process that is itself agile; it must be steady enough to be practiced, but agile enough to adapt when warranted. The ‘right way’ is whatever works for your team(s), your business and your customers.
sijjio also advocates Continuous Discovery.
(linked from ‘Product Talk’ by Teresa Torres)