We just launched Startups Ask Anything, a Youtube resource channel for MBA, MM, and other business grad students of USC. Our first video features Chime Bell Osabel, co-founder of Diet in a Box, one of the most successful food-delivery startups from Cebu, Philippines. 

In this relaxed, early evening conversation, Chime shared his thoughts about the pandemic, its impact on Diet in a Box and the food industry as a whole, the practices that made the shift to the "new normal" more seamless for Diet in a Box, and many other things.

In case you're looking for practical tips on how to get your food startup through during and after this pandemic, please feel free to check the video below. Bonus: he also shared some marketing and customer care tips that really worked for them.

​PS.
If you like the video, pls Like and/or Share it with your friends. Thank you!!! 

Nobody knows when this pandemic will end really. 2 months, 3 months, 1 year. Should we stop our lives and just wait for things to get back to the way they used to be? Or should we transform now and evolve according to the call of the times?

In this post I'd like to talk about creative ways to deliver learning without being bogged down by accessibility issues. Given the internet issues prevalent in the Philippines, I suggest we focus on programs that require only the lowest bandwidth from students. For example:

• Facebook-based classes
• Courses that can be accessible by txt (to be clear, am not referring to SMS here)
• Courses that can be viewed offline
• Instructional materials that are self paced

Educators can avoid streaming or Zoom-based classes if that's an issue. And students can do their work at any time they want. 

The above suggestions address the issue of accessibility, which has been put forward as one of the main arguments for ending the semester and mass promoting everyone. IMHO, if accessibility is an issue, data does not support it. If you check the link below:
https://datareportal.com/…/digital-2020-global-digital-over…

Internet users in the Philippines spend an average of 9 hours and 45 minutes per day online - even during a pandemic.

I see that people are spending more time now playing Mobile Legends or making Tiktok videos
https://cnnphilippines.com/…/30/tiktok-pandemic-content.html

If we have time for these things, why not dedicate some time each day too for education?

Disclaimer:
I teach grad school students. The suggestion of continuing classes may only work for them. The situation could be different for elementary, high school, or college students. I’m open for discussions.

The other week I had a long talk with Jen, a new friend of mine who I met recently when she visited Cebu for an event. She runs a grocery-store chain in Canada.
 
In mid-2017, she contracted a team in the Philippines to do a small web-based tool for managing their company’s employee-evaluation process. The team she chose was a small development studio that was recommended to her by a former work colleague.
 
Jen actually had a good impression of the team when she evaluated them. They had a nice portfolio and a good list of past clients. 
 
In the initial months, Jen’s discussions with them were smooth.After finalizing the project’s scope and specifications, they agreed to have the project launched within six months. However, just few weeks into the project, issues started to come out, starting with the delays in the delivery of the initial wireframes and mockups. 
 
The next deliveries after that took way longer than expected. There were also arguments over requests by Jen which the team insisted should be paid for separately as change requests.
 
Over a year has passed now, and Jen’s project is yet to launch.
 
Jen gave me access to an initial version so I could check it myself. The app’s UI is a confusing mess. Navigation is unclear. I was supposed to log in as evaluator, and I did see a name for me to evaluate and a form to fill. But after completing the form, I didn’t receive any confirmation. I wasn’t sure what to do next after that. 
 
Jen gave me her original project plan and I checked it against the app. It seems a lot changed in the implementation, especially the features.

Listening to Jen’s story was disheartening for me being a service provider myself. I can imagine how frustrating it can be, considering these things are very costly in terms of time and money. But I have to be honest, this isn’t the first time I’ve seen this kind of problem. Over the years working as both client and service provider, I’ve learned a few things that help in terms of avoiding situations like Jen’s.  
 

1. Draft a clear contract 
A lot of projects I know fail because developers and clients argue over things that should have been cleared out in the contract in the first place. For example, as client, when are you required to pay? What should the developer deliver? In what format? How do you treat requests for changes? What should you do when there are issues that can’t be resolved? What happens if there are failures? How do you get out of the contract? These things should be covered in the Contract. 
 
There are online templates which you can use as guide. You can also consult a lawyer so they can provide help in drafting one. 
 
2. Communicate clear specifications
To eliminate back and forth work, create a thorough, clear business requirements document (or product requirements document) that includes general to specific information about your project. This is a business document that includes project purpose, target audience, features, sitemap, design requirements, even design inspirations. Make your business specs as visual as possible to avoid misinterpretation. You can send links to competitor websites or apps. You can also send links to websites or apps that you like. Schedule meetings to go over the requirements and make sure everyone is on the same page. Note that the business requirements document is different from the Developer-produced project plan and technical specifications. This document doesn’t deal with how the project will be delivered. It deals with what you want to accomplish through the project.
 
3. Create a product roadmap 
You’d want the developers to be able to see the bigger picture and be fully aligned with your vision for the product. I recommend creating a  product roadmap with clear milestones every month. A product roadmap is a visual representation of how you see your product or application evolve through time. It helps to have this as guide for the development team when planning their execution strategy.
 
4. Be careful with requirements changes
Requirements changes, especially those that are made late, are very risky. They add to the cost too. Make sure to prototype your project early on so you can review and adjust the specifications as soon as possible. Prototypes can be in the form of wireframes, storyboards, and quick mockups. Also, it helps to show the prototype to sample end users (in Jen’s case, their employees) so they can provide feedback. The earlier feedback is communicated, the better.  
 
5. Allocate time for your project
As service provider, one of my main challenges before was getting decisions from clients. Some clients just don’t have time for their projects. Some clients also take time to respond to questions. Others provide feedback late, which makes it difficult to adjust in cases where there are corrections.
 
Always allocate time for your project. Or if this is difficult for you, assign someone in your team to be your project point of contact. This person will make sure all decisions are provided whenever needed and that questions are addressed immediately. This person will also take charge of acceptance testing and getting feedback to the developers.
 
Of course, do a careful due diligence prior to signing a contract with any developer. I also suggest reviewing the profiles of the team members that will work on your project, especially that of the project manager. There’s a likelihood that they will change team members during implementation, but the project manager will most likely be the same. If you see signs of trouble while the project is ongoing, raise it right away. Get it resolved before it becomes big.
 
Outsourcing web projects requires work and patience, but it can be fulfilling. I know of so many projects that succeeded, projects that led to even bigger ones. In fact, the company I work with right now started as a small project that later on became big. It led to the building of a development company in the Philippines.
 

Despite having been in IT for many years now, I spent a lot of time working in traditionally designed offices. The game studio I previously worked with had rooms and half-enclosed cubicles to isolate people. This setup seemed nice for our artists who liked custom designing their spaces, but it discouraged collaboration.  Everyone seemed to keep to themselves most of the time. Every meeting had to be scheduled in conference rooms. And people conversed more on instant messenger rather than face to face despite them sitting just very close to one another.  
​
The first time I got exposed to open spaces was at LegalMatch in 2014. We were still starting LM’s Cebu office back then, and since we were still testing things, we rented temporary seats  at The Tide, a co-working office in Cebu IT Park. 

At the Tide, they have long tables where people sit on opposite sides while working. Spaces are uniform for everyone regardless of position. And work tables function as conference room tables too. Anytime anyone wants to ask anyone anything, all they need to do is talk (or shout if they want to. 

This structure is perfect for agile teams as it fuels collaboration.
​
What’s with agile and open spaces?

Agile development is an iterative approach to software development that allows for incremental delivery of output based on value to customers. Agile places importance on adaptability to customer needs and constant interaction with customers and team members at every phase of the project. For agile development to work, there has to be constant collaboration.

Open spaces support agile as they encourage people to talk more freely and do ad hoc meetings with one another easily. In open spaces, people can ask questions or seek help from others without walls to restrict them. 

Tips for designing an agile open space

A few months ago, we decided on constructing our own office. We rented a space at the FLB Building, right in front of Ayala, Cebu Business Park.

We wanted the space to support agile development, thus we allowed our experience at Tide to influence much of our design decisions. We had two things in mind as focal point: design and practicality. 

​We wanted our space to feel nice, but we didn’t want anything superfluous and unreasonably excessive. 

After a couple of months of fitting out, our office was ready. The place was something industrial and modern looking, but not too expensive.  We had a few bumps in the early part due to usual construction issues, but eventually we came up with something that people in the office loved.

Here are few nice things we did which you might consider when designing your space.
​

• We considered future headcount to determine the physical size of the office space.
• Before starting, we created a design guide for architects to use when designing. It contains business requirements for the office space, including a profile of who will be using it, team size, required functions. 
• We made sure the entire space is well lighted. We used daylight LED bulbs in work areas and warm lights  in the reception area to make the space look cozy but welcoming.
• One of the conference rooms is located near the reception area so applicants can be routed there easily.
• Our office is designed for 70 people. We have 2 conference rooms, both of them enclosed and sound proofed.
• The Production (Development) area is facing East, and with only glass walls separating it from the outside world, we found ourselves with a lot of light. This is can be good or bad depending on time of the day.
• Roll-up blinds solved some the light problems. In the morning, we roll down the blinds; in the afternoon until night time, we roll the blinds up, exposing a beautiful view of the outside.
• Wires and cables can be an eyesore. We had our engineers route them underneath the tables so the space won’t look cluttered.
• Chairs are the same for everyone regardless of position. 
• We installed (and are still currently installing) lots of white boards. We want lots of space for story walls, diagrams, scrum boards, meeting notes, and etc.
• Table space for everyone is huge, about 1.5 meters wide per person, so people have enough room for double monitors. Spaces between the back of chairs are at 2 meters each so people can easily leave or go back to their seats without distracting their seatmates.
• The pantry area is overlooking Ayala area, so there’s a good view of the business district, the mall, and the trees around it. People can relax and unwind while drinking coffee.
• There’s a projector in every conference room as people in the office like to make presentations or do Lynda trainings on video.
• We’re using Rise internet with PLDT as backup. So far we haven't had any network downtimes. Yet. :D

We’re still planning to do more, like install cork boards for announcements and birthday greetings. I’m excited about the next phase. Every day, we see new things in the office, and people are motivated. I observe that a lot of people stay long in the office now. While we only require people to be physically in the office 6 hours a day (they work 2 hours from home), I see people now spending longer time in the office.

​We have lots of deadlines and bugs to resolve for our next sprint, but people are working with their teams to get them done. What’s important is that they’re relaxed and are comfortable brainstorming with one another.

​I just read this article at Thrive Leadership about feedback being an investment rather than a gift. Hmm...I understand the author wants to encourage feedback-giving by focusing on future returns. But I would argue that it is neither. 
 
How can it be a gift? A gift is optional and given only on certain occasions. How can it be investment? Some feedback may have to be given even if they guarantee negative returns in the future. 

Thinking of feedback in terms of future returns may discourage honesty.   People would have to think twice about giving feedback. What if it’s not good in the long run?  
 
Giving feedback should be thought of as an obligation in the same level as honesty, respect, and professionalism in the workplace. It should be part of the company’s minimum expectations of its people, especially its leaders.
 
The purpose of giving feedback is to improve performance. Thinking of feedback as either gift or investment focuses mainly on the intention of the giver. Isn’t it true that when we receive gifts, most of us often feel compelled to give back?  And isn’t it true that sometimes people give gifts in order to get gifts or favors in return? This makes giving feedback contrived and insincere.
 
Companies should build up a culture of growth by encouraging people to give the right feedback when needed.  In order to build a good workplace, one has to help others. By helping others, people learn and grow. 

This one's an extended post I made on my Facebook page.  Just thought to share it here as it seems the topic is relevant to the theme of this blog. ​

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I find it disheartening that some people here in Cebu don’t understand art at all, nor do they respect artists and exhibit organizers. :(

I've seen many people haggle on prices of artworks like it were just some random kitchen item in Colon they’re buying. Others deliberately bypass exhibit organizers' fee by refusing to talk to organizers, opting to contact artists themselves directly for a much cheaper price. This is really unprofessional.

But I'm not mad. Perhaps we all just need some education.

​Let me explain a few things to those who might be unfamiliar with how art exhibits work. 

There is this thing called organizers’ fee, which goes in the range of 30%-35% of sales price per artwork.
In the case of ArtCebu, this money goes to the following:

1. the owner of the exhibit area (they provide the space, the panels, the support, the lighting, electricity, etc)
2. the organizing team so they can cover all organizing costs related to the event, and if there is extra, 
3. funding for future events which will benefit all artists and the community

Now what constitutes organizing costs? Any or all of the below:

• mobilization fees 
• promotion expenses (posters, designer, etc)
• performers during exhibit opening (although sometimes we get lucky we find partners who help us by providing awesome talents to grace us during the event)
• food during exhibit opening (if we are unable to get sponsors to fund it)

What happens if no one buys?

• nothing happens to the artists. the artworks are returned to them
• ArtCebu and its partners lose some money but it doesn’t matter because we still get to achieve what we set out to achieve, which is to promote Cebuano art.

The team at Artcebu is not paid for all these work. In fact, we shell out our own money for this. We all have dayjobs and work at ArtCebu is just what we do on top of our other responsibilities.

This post is not intended to be a rant, so I will not elaborate any further.
​
Anyways, all I want is for everyone to be objective and to see things clearly. You can research online if you’re unsure of what I just said above. If you want more elaboration, PM me so we can talk.

I still keep receiving questions regarding my May 2015 blog post about writing and defending a StraMa (Strategic Management) paper.  I’m happy a few MBA students stumbled on that post, so I thought to continue part 2 of the entry. This time I’ll focus on some of the problems I and my classmates encountered while working on our papers.  Here we go. :)
 
1. Plagiarism
This issue was both frustrating and embarrassing for many in our group who submitted papers only during deadline day (which was like--ahem--all of us). At around 9 am, we went to the department office to submit our papers to the secretary, but we were told that we had to go through a plagiarism check first before they could accept our papers. At this point, we already had our papers printed and soft bound . So it was bad news, especially for those who failed in the plagiarism check and had to edit. That day, some of us were in near tears. (Good thing I was able to plagiarism-check my paper the night before. So I had the chance to rewrite and fix issues ahead. Some of my friends weren’t so lucky. )
 
Do be careful about this. Avoid outright copying of content. Cite your sources. And most of all, write as much as you can in your own words. Also, review APA’s writing style as this is the style being used in academic papers. They have specific guidelines on how to cite sources.
 
 
2. Conclusions that don’t make sense
This is funny. But it happens often to MBA students. When you’re working and taking MBA at the same time, your brain freezes sometimes. You become stupid. Try exchanging papers with your classmates. Encourage them to be critical about your work. This way someone gets to really check your work and send you honest feedback ahead.
 
I learned this the hard way, unfortunately. That day my friends were dealing with plagiarism issues, I was dealing with stupidity issues. Because I only wrote the conclusion the day before and was in a rush to do it, I didn’t get the chance to check previous chapters of my paper. I also didn’t review my financials to see if my strategies supported them and vice versa.
 
Good thing one of my friends brought a printer and a ream of bond paper during submission day. I was able to rewrite the last part of my paper, print, and bind it in with the rest of the pages just in time for deadline.  


3. Just trying to make the paper longer
Keeping up with required minimum number of pages pushes students to just write blindly anything that comes into their minds, even things that aren’t relevant.  Try to avoid this. Be careful with what you write. Everything has to have a point. Anything that’s not necessary should be deleted. Besides, your professors will judge you by the quality of your content,  not by its quantity.
 

4. Data gathering
As I mentioned in part 1 of this post, do be careful with the company you’re choosing.  Make sure you have access to internal and external data. I have a few friends who had to change companies halfway through the subject  because they had a hard time finding data. This turned out to be extremely stressful for them. 

 
5. Seek help, but don't ask others to do your work for you
It's okay to seek help from others, especially your classmates. But don't burden them too much by asking them to do your work for you. (This last part is actually something I rarely bring up because I really liked my classmates and they were all very nice to me. But there were some who demanded too much from others, which can be difficult sometimes as others have their own workload too).

 
Despite the hurdles, I still remember StraMa positively. It was there that I got to practice patience (which is something I lack) bigtime. I also gained really good friends as well. This I value very much.

To read Part 1 of this entry, click here.

​In the Philippines, companies are mandated by law to provide employees with 5 days service incentive leaves (SIL) for every year of service. This benefit can be used by employees when they’re sick or when they want to take vacations. Any other leave benefit outside of this is voluntary on the part of companies. However, many software companies here provide extra time off, depending on the tenure of employees or performance of projects or the business itself.
 
I’m writing this post because I’ve been asked by colleagues at work how much in terms of extra days off software companies should be giving their employees and whether or not giving extra vacation leaves actually translates to net benefit on the part of the company. Here’s what I think:
 
How much extra days off to provide?
 
In general, it depends on what you as the company want to achieve out of giving the extra benefit. If you’re doing it to be competitive, then it makes sense to look into what your top competitors are giving.  
 
Most companies I know of give 5-20 worth of extra days off. Bigger companies tend to give more as they have extra capacity to absorb workload when employees take leaves. Other companies provide paid time offs, which allows employees to accumulate extra days off by working extra hours/days under certain conditions.
 
 
Does it translate to net benefit on the part of the company?
 
Yes. Here’s a simple Benefits – Cost  = Net benefit calculation that supports this.

​Take note that the numbers above are arbitrary, although their relative difference to one another reflects their real-life value.  For instance, I place high value on new ideas and better decisions.  I think they’re directly related to company bottomline. Better decisions mean better output and less mistakes. More new ideas mean more new opportunities to grow and improve as a company.
 
As with the health part, there’s a lot of research published online pointing to the fact that taking time off improves people’s mental health and work attitude. You can Google them out if you want.
 
Here’s a few from what I found:

• “Vacation helps shrink stress and anxiety while boosting the mental and physical health of the entire family.” - Centerstone, a not-for-profit community-based behavioral health healthcare network
• Men who take frequent annual vacations were 32 percent less likely to die from heart disease than their counterparts who forwent vacations. – American Medical Association
• “Leisure, including vacations, contributed to more positive emotions and fewer negative feelings and depression.”  - Pittsburgh Mind-Body Center

In summary:
​
5 days SIL can cover flu, personal emergencies, and others but may not be enough to give employees an opportunity to really unwind and destress. Like cars, people need maintenance, and the way to do it is to go off the road for a while and allow the mind and body to heal and recover. The rewards in terms of long-term productivity and output are all worth it. 

These days, we’ve been talking a lot about growth hacking in my current company. I was skeptical about its implementation at first, since our company is a relatively old one, having been operating for more than 10 years already. This might be a case of “teaching an old dog new tricks”. ​

But since I’m part of the group that’s evangelising on it right now across various functional teams, I figured it might not hurt to look again and see it is about, what we can get from it.

​According to Andrew Chen, who wrote a popular article called "Growth Hacker is the new VP of Marketing":

“Growth hackers are a hybrid of marketer and coder, one who looks at the traditional question of “How do I get customers for my product?” and answers with A/B tests, landing pages, viral factor, email deliverability, and Open Graph. On top of this, they layer the discipline of direct marketing, with its emphasis on quantitative measurement, scenario modeling via spreadsheets, and a lot of database queries”.

I think Chen didn’t really mean it literally when he said “hybrid of marketer and coder”, because in truth, even a non-coder can be a Growth Hacker, as long as he/she is very familiar with lean and agile processes. 

In the case of my previous companies, I realized now that what we may have missed is real and relevant data. Not just old data, but also immediate data on user’s receptiveness about what we were doing. Also, many of our initiatives were rather long-term in duration and took a while to evaluate. 

One of the nice features of Growth Hacking is that it is anchored on realism, unlike traditional marketing which is based mostly on optimism and which may oftentimes be unfounded.

While Growth Hacking doesn't always mean success, it guarantees that if a company fails, they'd know about it sooner so they can still course correct. 

So how does an “old company” like ours hack growth? 

1. A requisite for growth hacking is iterative testing. If a company doesn't operate lean and agile, then it has to go through a “transformation” towards agile first before adopting the idea of Growth Hacking.

2. There has to be committed, passionate champions. Usually, people get excited about new concepts. But then after a while, they’d go back to old ways of doing things. Someone has to be there to keep the fire burning..

3. Old companies may need to reorganize to get rid of bureaucracies. I’m not sure about this part though, but I think that a large company with a very deep org structure and bureaucratic processes might not succeed in Growth Hacking because of inherent speed limitations. By the time ideas get approved, it’d be too late already. 

OK, I'll write more soon.
I’ll just keep this article short because I realize now my writing is too verbose and anti-lean now. Haha.

Wireframes (the mobile screen images above right) are quick mocks of each of your screens.  Designers look into them as reference for features and layout of the screen.

2. We always provide references/design inspirations
Part of our job as the client is to let the designer see what we’re seeing. We don’t just let the designer guess what's in our minds. We give them references so they know that if we say “create an awesome interface”, they know exactly what we mean by it. After all, “awesome” can mean so many things, right?

3. We do conference calls and meetings.
We try hard to make the designer understand what the business is all about. To me, it’s unfair to have a person design the interface for an application they know nothing about. What is the application for? How does it help people? How do people use it in their daily lives? Things like these are very important in shaping the designer's understanding about the project.  

4. We do kickoff calls to make sure the designer understands how we work
Kickoff meetings are necessary to make work easier for both the designer and the client. During our kickoff calls, we talk about file formats, iteration processes, schedule of reviews, etc.

5. We make ourselves available in case the designers have questions 
Lastly, we spare time for our designers. If we don’t give time to address questions or clarifications, it’s difficult for designers to move forward with their work.

To be honest, I feel for both client and designer. Having worked with design projects for a long time already, I’ve shared the frustrations of each. But I think it can be easily helped.

Processes like the above may take time to do, but they may save you from more work in the future. In addition, the artifacts I listed above may also be useful for your programmers and QA engineers when they do their part of the work.  So they're worth the effort.

I've had lots of successful projects with Pinoy UX/UI designers in the past. I credit all of them to the designer's design and problem-solving skills and, of course, clear direction on our part.  What I learned is that with Pinoy designers, if we give good inputs, we're sure to get awesome results.

​The ROI of meetings decline as their duration becomes longer. It is easy to explain why by looking at the ROI equation below:

ROI = (Benefits-Cost)/Cost

If you lengthen the duration of a meeting, you increase its cost. However, you don't necessarily increase its benefits. People get bored, their brains becoming less and less engaged over time.  They become exhausted by the minute. And exhaustion spreads like wildfire. Once you see one one or two people yawning or going out for coffee, expect to see all others doing the same too.

So how does one keep meetings short but productive?

One good practice we have at LegalMatch and Skimpl is to keep maximum meeting length at 30 minutes. 

Before starting meetings, we list topics to discuss. Our list is usually short and focused. Just enough for 30 minutes. If the meeting is all about priorities for the week, we talk of nothing else but priorities for the week. If there are specific issues to discuss that might take time, we take them out of the meeting. 

There are meetings which may take more time like those around proposal presentations or project reviews. We always advise people to follow a discussion outline to make the flow smoother. 

For presentations, we like to keep slides to a maximum of 10-12. This is particularly easy to do for IT people because they hate making presentations anyway.

Meeting organizer/leaders play a big role in keeping meetings organized. They have the responsibility to keep everyone focused on the meeting objectives. From time to time, people stray and talk too much. We encourage them to keep focused or request for another meeting with relevant people if they need more clarifications.

A few months ago, I was invited to join as co-author in this book about startups (and starting up) in the Philippines. Happy to share with you that the book is now out in the market and available for purchase!!! :)

The title of the book is Cyberpreneur: Online Business Start-Up Guide.
​I contributed two chapters here. One about business planning, the other about idea generation. 

My co-authors and editors are IT entrepreneurs themselves with lots of startup experience. The foreword was written by none other than Sen. Bam Aquino, the biggest supporter of IT and youth entrepreneurship in the country. 

If you're looking for practical tips to help you through startup life, feel free to check the book out. 

The price per copy is only P499. To order, go to Amazon or visit the publisher's Facebook page. 

​Thank you! :)

I’ve been brainstorming with a very good friend of mine who runs a shipping business. V is my climbmate, tentmate, drinking buddy (sometimes), Viber sounding board, and former classmate in MBA school. ​

V is now starting to work with a team who’s developing a web app for her. This may be her first software project as a client. I thought to give her a few tips that might help her get started quickly.  I've written those tips below too, for those of you who might be interested. 

1. When planning a software project, it helps to create the product specs/product plan first. 

This part you can do yourself, or you can do with the help of an IT person. The product specs is a business document detailing the high-level features of the product.  Among the questions that will be answered through this document are the following:

• What is the product about? Who is it for?
• What will users accomplish through your product?
• How will you make money out of it? What is the business model?
• Why are you developing the product?
• What platforms/devices will your customers be using to access your product?

To help communicate the product vision to your development team, you might wanna identify competitor products or products with similar feature sets. 


2. Review your development contract with your lawyer carefully

At this point you should already talk a bit with an IT person, but if you haven’t identified anyone yet, talk to a lawyer who has experience with software development contracts. Make sure that:

• You have milestones properly identified.
• Payments are tied up to milestones (if developers are paid on project basis) or certain achievements (if developers are paid hourly or monthly).
• You get to check who owns the in-progress code. I know of a lot of cases where clients and developers get into trouble with this part. As a client, you'd want ownership and access to the code as work progresses. This might not be achievable in project-based engagements, but make sure you schedule payments in such a way that you get to delay as much payment as possible after the final code has been turned over to you.
• There are certain consequences specified in the contract in case of delays or issues with quality.

3. Do a kickoff call to set expectations with developer team

If the developer team doesn’t request for a kickoff call, I think that’s a sign that they’re not organized enough. If they haven’t yet, make sure to schedule this with them. At a minimum, you should get the following from them:

• Single point of contact (POC) and contact details as well as availability
• High-level timeline
• Schedule of regular calls
• Milestones and expected output
• Reporting frequency and form (how often will they report to you and in what form)
• Collaboration approaches (email? project management tool?)
• Schedule of user-acceptance reviews

Calls or physical meetings can be done weekly to get you updated on what’s going on with the project. In case there are issues, you can easily address. 


4. Allot some time for your project or hire a PM if you’re too busy

Ideally, if you’re a top exec and busy with other things too, you’d need a PM who will liaise for you. But if you don’t have anyone yet, not a problem.  Just make sure you allot enough time to review progress and communicate project decisions needed of you. 


5. What you can expect of your POC

As a client, you should expect your POC to keep you updated on the project’s progress without waiting for you to follow up. They should follow the timeline you both agreed and inform you in case there are issues that will affect delivery schedules. They should suggest solutions when they present problems to you.


In addition, they should make reporting easy for you. You’re not expected to be the technical person. You’re the business person needing technical solutions to your business problems.


6. Always find a backup

Make sure that when choosing which programming language to use, you also consider resource availability for backups. For instance if your development team suggests PHP - check too if it will be easy for you to find another PHP team or resource that can continue to work for your project in case the current development team fails or leaves the project. 


7. You don’t want very long timelines

If your software is very large and complicated, I suggested breaking it into phases and starting the earlier phases with features core to customers. 2-3 months max or less are ideal in my opinion. You should identify with your developers the content of each phase. Perhaps you also can release to your test clients gradually so you can gather their feedback and make improvements based on these. 

I might still have a few more tips to share later. 
Meanwhile, I hope the above help. 

Cheers!

I love you and hate you at the same time. Actually, forget that. I hate you most of the time. 

I wonder why those Atlassian guys that made you  couldn’t make you look even just slightly better. To think you’re so popular along with your brother Jira.  =(

All I wanted was to improve our company’s Wiki so people would actually want to read documents posted in it. But it’s been hours now and your uncool, totally unfriendly . Why do you frustrate me this much?

Of course, we can shift to other tools. But we’re heavily invested in Atlassian (your) products already. I wanna see if you can do something about my problem. Because seriously, I'm feeling really sad now. 

Frustrated customer


Dear Basecamp,
I miss you terribly...

​Your lover for life

We all know that employee productivity is a big deal for businesses, especially in the service industry. Higher levels of productivity can lead to increased revenues, lower costs, reduced waste, and – ultimately – happier customers.

But how productive are companies these days really? 

The numbers may shock you. According to a recent study by Salary.com, 9 out of 10 employees waste an average of 2-3 hours at work per day. In the US alone, lost productivity is costing companies a staggering $750 billion annually. 

Why is productivity so low?
One can cite a myriad of factors such as social media use in the office, lack of motivation, low morale. But in general, according to a study by research firm PlanView, the No. 1 cause of wasted productivity is simply inefficiency.

A lot of companies are not monitoring productivity, while those that do are not doing it efficiently. Some may be tracking using only Excel or physical whiteboards, which is cumbersome and difficult to scale. 

In some companies, teams and departments are not coordinating with each other when it comes to priorities as well as resource allocation. As a result, managers are making resource decisions blindly without the benefit of correct information.

If these problems are left unresolved, they can cause major losses as well as disruption in operations. 

​One of the ways to address this is through web-based tools for team scheduling and productivity monitoring. These tools make it possible for managers to monitor resources’ schedules and distribute task assignments without any hassle. Resources, in turn, can easily view their assignments and update them when completed. 
Typically, these tools are available for subscription at costs ranging from $10-$100  or more, depending on the number of users or other factors. 
Below is a list of top 5 workforce management tools that have a really good set of features.

Skimpl - free
Resource Guru - paid with trial period 
When I Work - paid with trial period
Weekdone - paid with trial period
Toggl - paid with trial period


The results of having these tools in place are very high.
A good workforce management tool can address problems regarding resource allocation, task management, and productivity monitoring. With such a very low investment, this tool can reduce spending by as much as 40-50%.

In my previous work managing game studios, a perennial headache for me was maximizing utilization and people’s productivity. There was always too much waste and it was hard to control it.


As studio head, I was required to justify every single hire and make sure every penny spent was worth it. The only way to prove that was to study resource utilization data. What we’d normally do is gather reports from an internal time clocking software, put them all on Excel, and then come up with summaries. This whole process was always cumbersome and prone to errors. In addition it’d take us 3-5 days on average every month to clean up time clock data, get rid of nonessential information, and put together useful reports. ​
​

This was costing us too much in terms of time and money. Very frustrating yet sadly inescapable. I talked to friends who were also heads of game studios and I found out that they, too, had the same problems.


I looked online for some options. But I couldn’t find anything that’s easy to set up, available on the cloud, and had both the depth and simplicity that I wanted in a productivity software. So I decided to come up with my own instead.


As a manager, my ideal situation would have been to open a dashboard that would give me a high-level overview of what’s going on in the company. 

• Is my company productive or not?
• Are people properly utilized?
• Should I hire? Should I fire?
• Is my pipeline filled enough for the next months? 
• How many resources do I have now? Can my team still take in additional projects? 

I wanted easy answers to these questions. I figured that the way to do this is to start from people’s schedules. If we have data on people’s schedules as well as their planned and actual time spent on every task, we can generate all the data needed to answer the high-level questions I wrote above.


In addition, we can address problems being faced by other teams related to schedules. For instance:


Team Leaders
- need to account for the their team
- need to know what team member is doing at any given day or time
- need to know who is idle and who is not


HR Managers
- need to get closer to what is happening to the team if they are to be able to help improve people’s performances
- right now they’re an isolated group.  I figured that if they’d be able to access data on what people are doing, they’d be able to appreciate and help plan initiatives to motivate and tie good performance with rewards.

Below is a diagram listing all the stakeholders and what they'd need out of a resource management tool:

A friend of mine invited me to speak about Product Design and Skimpl in this meetup of UX designers in Cebu last month. 


During pizza break, a young woman approached me to ask a question in private. She seemed hesitating at first, as though torn between nagging curiosity and concern that I might find her question improper. 

"If Skimpl is for free, why are you doing it?" 

Then I told her about our subscription packages, which we plan to implement as soon as we've launched the final version of the product.  This one's not gonna be til October this year though. There's still some things to do, but that's where we're heading soon. We'll also be making and API available for developers to use. 

There's still a lot of other ways to make money out of SAAS. Some may not be applicable to Skimpl, but they could work for SAAS products. I've listed some of them below along with some examples:

Subscription

Most all SAAS businesses charge subscription fees for the use of their product. The pricing could be fixed monthly or yearly. Pricing could also be tiered based on certain criteria such as number of users/seats (Jira), amount of space being consumed (Dropbox, Amazon AWS), number of projects entered (Basecamp), and others. Below is an example of tiered pricing. I got it from the pricing page of Basecamp.

Referrals and affiliate sells

If Skimpl were to partner with third-party affiliate providers or other companies on an affiliate program—say, for example, we refer our customers to them, every referral that we make could be a point towards us. If we get to refer 1 million people and every referral is equivalent to $10, then that means we get richer by $10m. 

We could also be the other party in an affiliate agreement, where for every customer referrals sent to us, we pay the referrer a certain percentage of the revenue.

Below is a referral form from Yesware.

Add ons or upsells

In addition to subscriptions, SAAS businesses could charge for related services, products, or features that may not be part of their core offering but could be valuable to their existing users. These are called add ons or upsells. You’ll find this in mobile games where game providers sell to their existing players more lives or more power or ammunition or others. Below is an example of an upsell screen from Zynga's Farmville. 

APIs

One way to grow beyond proportions is to take advantage of this phenomenon they call “network effect”. Wikipedia defines "network effect" as the effect that one user of a good or service has on the value of that product to other people. The more people that come to use your product, the more valuable your product becomes. 

One of the ways to achieve network effect is to position your product as some sort of ecosystem where other products can also reside, make money, and bring in new customers.

If you look at Facebook, for example—there are so many applications that are now sitting on top of it, including games. Statista published a report on top-performing games from Facebook based on number of daiy active users. Candy Crush tops the list at 11.61 million users. 

Top Selling Facebook Games as of May 2015

These game companies make use of Facebook’s application programming interface (API) so they can have their apps “reside” within the Facebook ecosystem. 

Some companies charge for the use of their APIs, others don’t. But regardless if they charge or not, having APIs that can be available to the public is still one of the best ways to expand your product.




There are other tools worth considering but may not be applicable for Skimpl. Example:

White Label Licensing

White label licensing is partnering with another party and allowing that other party to brand and sell your product as their own. In exchange you get to share in their revenue, at the same time you get to charge them license fees. We used to do this when I was working in a gaming company. We operated a software platform. Our customers were licensees of our product. Our customers get to “custom clothe” the product and sell it as their own. We make money out of fixed license fees as well as share in the revenue of our licensees. 

Selling white papers, books, and reports

Distimo, Basecamp, Salesforce have all made millions out of selling books and industry reports. In the case of industry reports, what they do is compile customer data from their database and come up with market research based on those. Am not sure if we can do this for Skimpl. Perhaps when we’re big enough have zillions of customers already. But sure, this is a really huge income stream. In fact, for Basecamp, this is what’s making their founders billionaires. 

Customer service

To me, this sucks. Why companies charge for customer service is beyond me. But true, some SAAS companies charge additional fees for extra customer service. 

The first SAAS product I remember using with total seriousness was SAP.  We were integrating accounting systems with offices from our other locations outside of the country and were asked to adopt to what the central office was using. 

They paid one  SAP guy to go to the office to “onboard” everyone. He made a presentation about the product and lectured us on how to do accounting things with the product. Which really made everyone in the conference room sleepy despite the abundance of coffee. 

In the days that followed, we had additional dry runs and conference calls with our head office to get everyone in synch. But,  a few months already after the implementation and everyone still struggled with the tool. I suppose SAP may have made money out of customer service, but that to me, was stupid.  We didn’t need to ask for customer service if their product was clearer in the first place.

Anyways, that was 10 years ago. I’ve now gotten over the trauma. And I’ve learned to love SAAS. 

Now am also venturing into my own SAAS and I’ve discovered how profitable this venture can be if done right. 

Startup book project

Well, it turns out someone noticed one of my business articles online and actually invited me to contribute 2 chapters in their book on Philippine startups. How cool is that. :D I've never written any book ever. I'm also unsure if I can do 2 chapters within 3 weeks given that there's too much happening now, but well -- how can I decline? :) 

Am gonna write about writing business plans for startups and designing an online product. My two favorite things! Argh. Well, actually, I don't like writing business plans. It's messy work and it entails a lot of research. But it's not too bad. I think the challenge is how to make the process more fun. :)

Silly debate

I hate writing about my thought processes, but everything's silent these days and there's no one around to talk to. So allow me to be silly here for a while. 

Am torn right now...

Should I make a new blog or not? 

Am supposed to write blog posts about Skimpl and my product design experience and all the things we've been doing so far. Since the app is already underway, we need to start talking about it online. We don't have a writer yet, so I'll take a first stab at it. 

But am not sure if it's a good idea to lump everything here. This is all MBA stuff and am not sure if people will appreciate having to weed through all these information. 

On the other hand, I can easily get distracted. I might not be able to handle having to manage 2 blogs at the same time. Hmm...

Strama refers to Strategic Management. In Ateneo GSB, it is the last subject an MBA student needs to take before graduation. 

Strama is an application of all learnings at MBA school. A student is required to have passed all other core subjects before he/she is allowed to enroll in it. Strama is unique in that it involves the top 2 things that could possibly kill a student's MBA ambition: the Strama paper and the panel defense.  

The Strama paper is a 100-plus-page paper on a subject company describing that company's problems and the student's offered solutions. It's like a science investigative project, only that it's for business. 

Before starting your paper, you need to find a company that has at least 50M pesos in yearly revenue and has at least 3 years worth of financial statements. Ateneo is very strict with these requirements. If your chosen company doesn't pass any one of these 2 criteria, they will not let you proceed. The sooner you get this part cleared, the earlier you get to start with your actual Strama work. 

May I also add that before deciding on your company, it helps to do a quick Google check first on the industry where it operates. For instance, if you've chosen Jollibee, check out the quick-service restaurant industry first. If you can find data on market size, competitors, etc, then you're good. 


The defense happens a few weeks after your paper has been accepted. During the defense, you get to present your paper to 3 panelists for 30 minutes. But then they also get to grill you for 30 minutes. So make sure to prepare thoroughly. 


Before I took my Strama, I used to ask MBA grads about their Strama experience. I'd feel uncomfortable whenever they talk about being “grilled” by professors. They make it sound so awful I could really visualize them being barbequed while presenting. This image haunted me the entire time I was preparing my Strama paper.  

Perhaps this also helped me, in a way, since it made me more attentive to advises. I took notes of what everyone had to say. 

But now that I’ve finished my Strama, I could very well tell you that the defense wasn't really as bad as others portray it to be. 

My defense started with me going through my keynote sides with the panelists.  I had 20 slides all in all. Since I only had 30 minutes, I just went through the most important part. After that, the panelists started asking questions. Each of them had printed copies of my paper, complete with notes and highlighting. They seemed to have read everything prior to the presentation, so they came in with all sorts of questions already. They also asked about the presentation. And they compared my presentation to my paper.  If you practice ahead, then there's no need to worry.

The panelists had positive comments. They had not-so-positive comments too. At first I felt intimidated by their seemingly endless questions and comments. It seemed to me that they'd never run out of things to say about every slide I presented. It was one versus three, so somehow it felt like the inquisition. But then I decided to make it sound like I was just brainstorming and gathering ideas with them. This worked for me.  I took note of all their comments and feedback and promised to “update my paper” based on this. 

After the defense, they asked me to go out of the room so they could deliberate. Then they called me and told me I passed and that it’s now ok to take photos. We took a groupie and that was it. :)

Update: Here's part 2 of this post in case you want additional tips. 

Before anything else, let me define "good grades" for the sake of this blog post.  
Good grades mean grades 3.5 and above (at AGSB, the highest is 4.0. They don’t give grades in between, so the next best grade after 4.0 is 3.5).  


There are many tricks to achieving good grades. I’ll let you in on some things I know =):

Be friends with people who also obsess about grades. 

People who obsess about grades put you on your toes all the time.  Make sure you have their phone numbers as they have all the information about deadlines and where to get solutions to class cases. 


Be very engaging with professors in class.

Remember that it’s the professors who give grades. So it helps if your professor knows you exist. One way to do this is by being very responsive in class. Whenever the professor says something, nod in agreement. Make comments. Ask questions. Of course, this advise doesn't work if your comments or questions are not smart. The moment you start with nonsense, your professor will put an invisible x mark on your name. You're doomed for life.

Be on guard with certain “evil" professors

There are professors that are simply evil incarnated. They won’t give 4.0 because they think mortals like you don’t deserve it. So no matter how much you study, the highest you can get is only whatever ceiling they set. Always be on guard with these professors. Before enrolling, make sure to know who the assigned professor will be. If you know these devils are there, don’t enrol. Wait 'til someone more human will be assigned.

Don’t go absent

Being absent in class is one of the worst things one can ever do while taking MBA. If you’re taking Exec MBA, you only have 4 whole-day meetings or 8 sessions per subject. Missing one of these sessions is like missing one month worth of classes. 

Remember, you are more important

There are times when group assignments and team assignments happen at the same time. When you need to prioritize, make sure to prioritize yourself. Who cares about teamwork? :P

During a budget meeting in the office 2 years ago, our company's management team tackled an HR proposal for new employee additions. Our HR Head's proposal was to add 5-6 more resources for the next quarter. He presented us a list of projects along with resource requirements for each.


To evaluate, we reviewed monthly resource utilization data from our internal tool. What we saw was disheartening. Hours and hours spent on non-core tasks (internal initiatives, non project-related tasks), people with allocations that were way less than regular of 7 hours per day. And yet there were people rendering overtime almost every day. Why was this so?


We held another meeting, this time with Project Managers/Producers, to learn more about the problem. At the meeting, everyone agreed that we needed to hire. Everyone seemed overly stressed and tired. There was too much work.  Quality was declining. And clients were feeling the pinch.

In the days that followed I spoke with a few friends from other studios. I learned that they too were going through the same resource issues.  It seemed like this was already the norm for everyone. Was it the industry? Was it us? 


It took us a while to resolve the issue, and not with lots of additional stress as well. Now two years later, I look back and analyze the problem academically. I write this post to share my insights on it.


Causes

What's causing scheduling problems?

One cause is insufficiency in number of resources that can handle the workload. When there's very little trained people and you have work that's more than you can handle, then surely you'll have problems. Another is employee absences/tardiness. You may have enough employees, but if they're not around, then you’ll have no one to assign tasks to.  Lastly, poor planning practices. This happens when prioritization is unclear, when planning is not done regularly, and when no one is accountable. I realize this last one was the most controllable of all causes.

How to achieve better scheduling

First, determine what you really want for your firm. 

An ideal production pipe is one that has the right amount of employees at the right time. Load scheduling is balanced, resources are available to do work whenever they’re needed, scheduling conflicts don't exist, and employees don’t have to "cram" to death during deadlines. I call this workplace utopia. But how to achieve this, here are some steps:

1. Assign someone to oversee planning and monitoring

Assign someone who can own production planning and monitoring. This could be the Head of the Project Management Office, Production Director, or Studio Manager. 

He/she may use as planning input the Sales Forecast.  Production planning can be done on a yearly, quarterly, monthly basis. The plan can serve as guide, however it may still need to be adjusted based on priority changes as well as actual progress. In addition, it should be communicated to the team on a regular basis through email or some other means.

2. Use an automated scheduling tool to manage conflicts

There are tools like Skimpl (this is our own tool. I'll talk more about it later), Toggle, and Resource Guru, which allow managers to schedule resources easily and simultaneously. This helps resolve scheduling conflicts as managers now have a way to check if a resource has already been “booked” by other managers. 

3. Clear out scheduling issues during weekly meetings with PMs

Make sure to address scheduling issues during weekly meetings with PMs. Encourage PMs to be more attentive to schedules and to ensure issues that exist are resolved immediately.

 4. Establish efficiency statistics and monitor them. 

Efficiency statistics may include idleness, utilization, overtime, and timeliness in terms of project delivery. Implement rewards systems around this. This will encourage improvements and will make people more motivated.

5. Train PMs/producers on resource scheduling

Organize trainings to improve PMs/producers’ knowledge in terms of resource scheduling. You can do orientations, or you can also rotate the coordination role among PMs. 

 6. Gather baselines in terms of estimating lead times for typical activities. 

This can be gathered from actual performance on past projects and collated through a document that can be discussed with PMs. This will help you create better estimates for future tasks.

7. Ensure individuals routinely manage their time

Nothing beats self-discipline when it comes to time management.  Make time management part of the organization's culture, and encourage everyone to self-monitor. 

Lastly, consult with other personnel so you can gather their inputs too. Am sure they'll have other improvement suggestions that you might wanna look at.  You can also check with other firms and see if they can share best practices too.

----------
This post is an abridged version of a paper I wrote for Operations Management under Prof. Arturo Zamora. 

The project's requirement was to analyze a real-world problem using principles from Heizer and Render’s Operations Management book and to identify techniques that might resolve it.  

If you’re taking Strategic Management (Strama), you’ll most likely be required to present an EFE Matrix for your chosen business. 

An EFE (External Factor Evaluation) matrix is a strategic tool you can use to analyze and evaluate your business’s strategies in relation to the market and external environment. It is a component of the SWOT analysis and is often paired with an IFE (Internal Factor Evaluation).

An EFE helps you analyze how your business is responding to the changing world around it. 

When evaluating the surrounding world, you look at it through various perspectives: economic, social, technological, governmental, political, legal, and competitive.  Just as you would when deciding whether to buy a house or not. Is it nice? Is the location good? Is the price ok? Is the neighborhood peaceful? Etc etc.

One of the cases our class got to work on was about a hotel called Mandarin Oriental. The hotel was based in Makati but was recently closed because its long-term lease with Ayala Land already expired. The goal was to create an EFE Matrix for Mandarin. As input, we were given a few points about Mandarin. We were also given the profile of its target market, and a few economic high-level data about the Philippines. 

Once we got all the available information assessed, we proceeded with creating an EFE Matrix. Below I’ve posted our team’s matrix. 

A typical EFE Matrix looks like the table shown above.  You may color it up a bit, make it sexier, but overall it should be similar. Your matrix should include the specific opportunities and threats that are relevant to your industry, weight, your rating, and weighted score.

Below are the steps in creating an EFE Matrix.

1. Start by listing down external factors affecting your market and industry. Categorize them as either opportunities or threats. (See Column 1)
   
2. Assign weights to each factor. The weights (column 2) indicate how important a factor is in relation to the industry. In our case we indicated Philippine industry growth and development as the factor with highest rank.
   
3. Write down your company’s rating. The rating (column 3) represents how responsive your firm is toward the opportunities and threats indicated. Ratings range from 1.0 to 4.0. Rate 1.0 if your firm's responsiveness is poor, 4.0 if your firm's responsiveness is high. 
4. Calculate the weighted score per factor. The weighted score (column 3) is equal to the weight multiplied by your ratings. If you add all of them together, you’ll have your total weighted score. If your weighted score is below 2.5, that means your firm’s not responsive enough. If above 2.5, then you’re responsiveness is strong.  Still, you have to check what else you can do to improve further.

We gave Mandarin Hotel a weighted score of 2.15, way below average. This means their current strategies were not working well enough. We think there were opportunities they didn’t fully maximize. For instance, their revenue growth was only 6% compared to the overall industry growth of 15%. 

The numbers you put on your matrix can be subjective. You can write anything  but they should be accompanied by good, intuitive judgment. When you do your Strama presentation, panelists will ask you to explain your EFE Matrix. Make sure to be able to defend your matrix with facts. Most importantly, remember to go through the process consciously and meticulously. Creating your Strama paper begins with this first basic step.


Disclaimer:

I haven't defended yet. Most of what I know about the actual defense process I got from the grapevine. And of course, from my Professors.