Looking for answers

Mind the Product has been doing an awesome job these years. Follow them, watch their contents, the best Product Management ideas are there. Each time someone new in our PM field ask me about where to start, I have too many things in my mind to propose a simple answer. Each time, I tell me, if I tell them the truth, they may say: this is a too difficult position. So, the best way, may be to show them a funny video with the PM core principles: 20 Years of Product Management in 25 Minutes by Dave Wascha. Enjoy Thanks Dave, Thanks Mind the Product.

Happy new year 2015. After 10 years inside the walls, I’m moving outside!! Time is running and I have been working in the software world for 13 years and promoting the “software agile thing” in my area, for 6 years. Today, I need to step back. As my professional life has moved from R&D management to Product Marketing Management, my professional focus has shifted and I need  to improve my skills in this area. I’m writing this article because I would like to thank my growing network and  make sure you won’t be surprised by my new area of interest, that could be outside of your own. I imagine a few of you, shaking your heads, uttering a pfff of disappointment and saying: Franck and his books, his constant learning curve. For what? This is really simple: Without a sense of progress, I get bored in my professional activity. In 2009, for the first time since beginning in this sofware development world, I had a sense of accomplishment. As Agile was the main change we ...

I used to believe the age of creativity in business, was the wave of new products based on the Internet and the future wave following the expiry of 3D printer patents (2014) . When I read Niels’s paper , I understood the collapse of craftsman-age creativity at the beginning of the industrial era, but I didn’t connect it to the different objects I saw, touched and used in my life. Last week, I visited a West African Museum in Lyon and I would not have expected this tour to open my mind to the different building ages. While we were walking in the museum, the guide explained the objects exhibited and we understood most of the collection was composed of pieces bought from the end of 19th century to the mid 20th. The objects created by one tribe were totally different from objects sculpted by another. Also, the signification could be totally different from one tribe to another and also us. Those objects were considered as art by Western people at this time, but in fact were day-to-day o...

I wish you a wonderful new year 2013, filled with a lots of great products developed in a healthy and agile environment. Please find below, a video from Bassett & Partners.   "The 18 minute "Connecting" documentary is an exploration of the future of Interaction Design and User Experience from some of the industry's thought leaders. As the role of software is catapulting forward, Interaction Design is seen to be not only increasing in importance dramatically, but also expected to play a leading role in shaping the coming "Internet of things." Ultimately, when the digital and physical worlds become one, humans along with technology are potentially on the path to becoming a "super organism" capable of influencing and enabling a broad spectrum of new behaviors in the world." Source: nickfinck : Connecting - interaction design and the user experience

In 2011, while agile methodologies are more than mainstream, the Product Owner position is still not well understood or defined. While I’m convinced the “Team engagement in a stream of value creation” is one key factor of agile principles, I can’t find a slogan for the Product Owner. When you want to learn about agile, you browse the Internet, find the best books to read , find a local community or an active mailing list. If you want to understand the agile Product Owner thing, you have a few ways to learn about this position. To be efficient, the first step is to understand your current context: Do you work in a project world with: A unique customer who knows his end users and pays for what he specified years ago? Your customer is inside or outside of your company, but the project’s health is yours and your customer’s problem. A customer who defined several bunches of requirements and wants to implement them step by step? Your customer is inside or outside your company and h...

The lean startup idea is moving forward, and Eric Ries is about to launch a book called "The Lean Startup". Eric is currently promoting this book by giving some talks. Please find below the one he gave to Google New York. If you don’t know him yet, check his blog or have a look at the previous post I made last year.

Communities dominate is one of my favorite blogs for improving my knowledge about mobility. I already referred to it , but they have posted one more amazing article that shows the astonishing penetration of mobile phones today: 50% in Africa, more than 200% in United Arab Emirates. There are more phone subscribers than those with permanent access to electricity or water. And again the main tool is SMS with 4.2 billion users compare to the 5.2 billion phone subscribers. As discussed in the article comments , the number of sold phones is composed of new users and replacements. The replacement rate is between 18 and 32 months, according to the sources available on the Internet. We could believed that we are in front of another planned obsolescence , but this is only a permanent race for new features in the phone industry. Three years ago, when I started to work in the mobile phone industry, I was trying to have an opinion about what would be the next step and where the enterprise ...

A few months ago, I prepared with my CARA colleagues, a session named: How to sell agile to my customers and my executive management. During the preparation, we defined some typical profiles, not related to their position, but their personality (e.g. a person with a sales behaviour). Then, for each one, we tried to define the significant factors that make their lives easier and also those that may be seen as detrimental to them. Of those who see some interest in the results, some people, smart people, will ask for references to move forward. Most of the literature about agile, focuses on software development. We can find books about agile business, but these are generally a second step in the understanding of this culture. So we need a book that is not too technical and lightweight. I proposed Agile Excellence to my colleagues and friends and considering their feedback, I highly recommend it. I bought this book for myself because I was looking for a handbook focusing on my...

Last November, we, the Cara Lyon team , met the JUG guys to talk about organising a day of sharing.  After a two hour conversation, we decided to have a conference at the beginning of April, where speakers will discuss Agile, Java/EE new trends (Devops, NoSQL, HTML5). Mix-IT was born. I must admit that even though my current professional life is overwhelming, I find a real pleasure spending a few hours a week, working with the Mix-IT team.  Up to now, the CARA Lyon organisation was based on a "go it alone" strategy. The JUG guys, even though they are young, work more on an “invite a specialist and find sponsorship” strategy. I definitely can't decide between both strategies today, because I do not know the impact of the size of both communities and their attractiveness to companies. Here we go : Mix-IT will occur on the 5th of April 2011 in Lyon at the Epitech Computer School located 5 minutes walking distance from the Lapardieu train station. Mixity or mixité ...

In a world where human knowledge doubles every 5-10 years, product managers fight to reduce their product/service complexity from an end user perspective. Lean experts will straightaway think about a product's internal complexity or externalising the complexity from the product. But I mainly refer here to the end user, who doesn't care about the development/production phase, but only his own experience. Since I read this communities dominates post in August, I understood that my Internet blogger's mind, was still in 2005 when the Internet was still something hype. Today 1.4 billion users have an email (400 000 corporate ones) and 4 billion have an active SMS account. Today, even if I was blind, I wouldn't be able to escape hearing the teens' phone buttons clicking all day long. Definitively, the user experience from a product interface and/or the user efficiency point of view, is not a static science. The design principles like the golden ratio seem to be anc...

I don't use an eTablet yet and do not know if, like current IPad users, I will spend 20 percent of my time with it in bed. Today, paper books are still prevalent for learning subjects in depth, and the Internet is becoming a community TV platform using a short length format. For example have a look at Chris Moody's Channel "5in5 Interviews". 5 minutes, 5 questions around marketing and product management. Sources : Npdgroup Blog : NPD Group Blog » I Own An iPad, So What Do I do With It? YouToube :  Chris Moody Channel

Six months ago, I felt like I needed to step back from my current activity. It was time for me to ask others what they felt were the basic and reference books about product management. The result of the thread I initiated showed two books. One for a newbie and one as reference which receptively are: The Phenomenal Product Manager The Product Manager's Desk Reference After opening the delivery carton, I pulled out the books and held one in each hand. Their respected weight confirmed to me the one, I would read first. After reading the third chapter of the Phenomenal Product Manager, I told myself: "My god this is another book about leadership". By reading this book, I was looking for product management knowledge but here I found something that described how to collaborate with people. But I continued up to the end, because it is well written and also because its end was not so far. Despite my disappointment, I was astonished by the quality of each tip and I ...

As a product guy, working on mobile devices, I'm pretty impressed by this demo. Simple, with what you need in your day to day life. Microsoft is back on track. Thanks to Chris Pirillo for the video.

Adopt Social media, don't buy but earn attention. Why do you still invest money in marketing areas where you are sure to get nothing in return? Fear of change? While I agree with the presentation "Social media marketing explained in 61 words" by David Meerman Scott, I still do not get how I could apply these concepts to niche markets, like the one I currently work in. Enjoy the show where you'll be explained what is introduced on David Meerman Scott's own blog : " You can buy attention (advertising) You can beg for attention from the media (PR) You can bug people one at a time to get attention (sales) Or you can earn attention by creating something interesting and valuable and then publishing it online for free: a YouTube video, a blog, a research report, photos, a Twitter stream, an ebook, a Facebook page. " David builds his argurment with real examples (links in sources) he has met these last years and jokes about the Gobbledygook you can fi...

Among the technical list given by Mikael Boman in his post dedicated to product owners, "Practice #4: Refactoring " is for sure, the most difficult to agree with. Version control system, Continuous integration, Automated testing are concepts around tools, consequently their deployment has a visual, understandable, palpable result, so there is no worry justifying their costs. If you don't get the Practice #6: Collective code ownership, wait for a few years until developers leave your company and then you will get it. Simple design: While the indicated article focuses on product owners, the simple design concept is obvious to many of us, but developers could feel it as a bridling of their creativity. While we all need to establish a software knowledge culture, where ideas around code design and patterns are understood, we face a dilemma when it comes to asking for simple creation. I didn't find a good way to recommend, but practices like pair programming and cod...