Join Accept Software and Shawn O’Leary tomorrow at Product Camp Minnesota for a Q&A Session with Jamie Vander Hagen, Director Software Management for Consumer Lending at Wolters Kluwer Financial Services.

Q&A forum: Runaway Product Requirements: Taming the Chaos of Product Management

ProductCamp Minnesota 3
Saturday, November 12, 2011 from 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM (CT)
University of St Thomas - Minneapolis
Schulze Hall
1000 Lasalle Ave
Minneapolis, MN 55403

I recently came across a Wall Street Journal article about the growing number of companies that are turning to their employees for new and innovative ideas. The article cites research that states that the average employee's ideas are implemented just once every six years. In a world where companies prize product feedback, I find this statistic surprising. Couldn't some of the most transformational business ideas come from the people within the organization itself?

Accept Software is a Gold Sponsor of the 35th Annual Product Innovation Management Global Conference October 29 - November 2

We're proud to be a sponsor at this year's PDMA conference - and we invite you to visit us in Frank Lloyd Wright Ballroom at the Arizona Biltmore - We're in booth 401 - stop by and learn about our unique Enterprise Product Strategy and Planning solution, see it in action, and learn how you can be eligible for an Apple® iPad 2 or one of two Bose® in-ear headphone sets! 

Designing Products that Customers Want to Buy

Join us on Wednesday, September 21st, 10:00 a.m. PDT / 1:00 p.m. EDT, for a free webinar featuring Patrina Mack, Managing Partner of Vision & Execution, as she addresses the product design and the operational complexities of organizations, highlighting the hidden pitfalls that cause high-risk ventures to fail so readily. Learn new processes and new skills to build a fully integrated product development process and team.

Fantastic online session today with with Tom Grant from Forrester Research. If you ever wanted to learn why organizations are overturning the way they craft and execute on product strategy as a result of changing global dynamics, this was the place to be. We've posted the correct slide from today's webinar, as it is supposed to work before it got munged on upload.

At the Agile2011 Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah this week, SearchSoftwareQuality.com Site Editor Yvette Francino spoke with Accept Software VP of Products, John Haniotis about our announcement with Tasktop Technologies about Accept360 IDE integration for Visual Studio. Accept and Tasktop also announced a collaboration to provide visibility and reporting across diverse ALM systems via the Tasktop Sync ALM integration server.

Please join us in welcoming Paula Gray, Anthropologist in residence, AIPMM as she shares her thoughts on recent Product Innovation Portfolio research conducted by AIPMM and Accept.

A recent study conducted by Accept Corporation and the AIPMM (Association of International Product Marketing & Management) found that though industry executives view innovation as a key to success, they aren't happy about how they manage the process. The study found that even though companies may be at the cutting edge of technology, 85% of them are stuck back in the 90's using manual tools like MS Excel and MS Power Point to manage the innovation process. They also note that they struggle making decision about what to keep or toss and reconciling bottom up and top down plans. What's wrong with this picture?

I have not had this much fun in years! We are in the midst of a pivotal shift in how companies manage their product portfolios and a new approach is emerging that finally links rapid top-down executive modeling with detailed bottom-up planning.

The company and product executives I meet with all agree that the old Project Portfolio Management (PPM) approaches are dead. The fact that they are only 10-15 years old show how fast things have changed.