AT&T Tilt - Big on Initial Satisfaction, It is downhill from there...

Now that I had AT&T Tilt for a couple of months, I feel I can offer some comments.

Overall View

1. Much better business phone than Treo 650 and some ways to go before I can be excited about it.

Rocks

1. Easy to setup Outlook interface
2. slide out keyboard to type good length emails.
3. I am a Microsoft Office OneNote fan. Having OneNote Mobile is a great boon for taking notes anywhere (especially when I am visiting customers and do not want to look distracted using Laptop).
4. IM works very well
5. Ability to navigate company directory.

Sucks

1. DO NOT DRIVE WHILE USING THIS PHONE. Since this is a touch screen phone, it is practically impossible to nagivate interactive phone systems while driving.
2. The phone interface is *the* lousiest I have ever seen. Really small "buttons" and unintuitive design.
3. Screen turns off as soon as a phone call starts. Annoying as heck.
4. The power button is somewhat recessed for reasons known only to the designers.
5. The GPS data expores every 7 days. There is no way to let it automatically download it.
6. BTW, GPS doesn't work most of the time. The directions have been wrong most often.
7. Recently, at the direction of this stupid device, I pulled into the gate of a US Military Base in NoVA staring at a couple of kick-ass Army soldiers instead of parking outside of an Indian restaurant.
8. This device is definitely not deisgned as a phone+. It is a kitchensink of functionality. Turning on speakerphone is actually a sequence of menu options rather than a single button. HLC Chose to have "IE" button instead of a speakerphone button!
9. Why can't I use the wheel to browse the contacts? Makes no sense!
10. Tip: Use "Stop All" under tasks to shutdown lingering apps, otherwise, you have a really slow phone, oops Windows device.

Recommendation: Wait for another update on this one.

Agile Product Management

Today, development managers and I had a great discussion on how to manage the migration process. Following were a few questions:

1. A few engineers are already on a Scrum team and the question was how to migrate the rest of the team. Since there are only 11 engineers in total, should we just do one team or break into 2 teams. Would one team be able to handle and manage 6 different products?

2. We have near constant interrupts from Client Services, Pre-Sales regarding existing products and issues. Every issue, for these guys, is always life & death issue. Would we able to help the teams focus on the sprint goals without getting interrupted?

Agile Product Management in SMB

As a product manager for a small software company, I don't have much stomach for long release cycles that our development team traditionally delivered. I also know that, as the process of product marketing feeds into product planning, the faster these cycles turns, the better for me.

So, if I can get my developers to migrate to agile development process (Scrum specifically) and really primed for faster turned around times, I will have more opportunities to understand and deliver what our customers are looking for.