Product Strategy Means Saying No

Pearltrees : la bibliothèque aux 100 milles curateurs Lorsqu’on lui demande quel est son parcours, il pousse un soupir “j’ai fait pas mal de choses” : ingénieur, chercheur en sociologie, consultant en stratégie dans les médias…. L’idée de Pearltrees lui serait venue alors qu’il publiait un papier dans la revue française de sciences politiques en 2006 sur la théorie des réseaux mais qui “n’avait rien à voir avec le web”. A l’époque, on se demandait si des initiatives comme Wikipedia et Youtube allaient fonctionner. Une bibliothèque augmentée Tout d’abord Pearltrees permet d’organiser le contenu que vous visitez sur le Web. Le pearltrees de TedX Paris Rajoutez y une pointe de curation et l’on obtient cette nouveauté qui fait mouche. « Organiser le contenu comme une bibliothèque, mais ouverte .» Comme le rappelle Patrice Lamothe, si le terme Curation fait couler beaucoup d’encre, ce n’es pas l’effet de mode sur un mot qu’il faut retenir mais bien une pratique des utilisateurs. L’évolution du web au service d’un business plan efficace.

A Product Manager’s Musings A Product Manager’s Musings A Product Manager is a strange occupation in Silicon Valley. You’re the mini CEO. But not really. You’re the jack of all trades but master of none. You’re the one with all the power and yet none at the very same time. You’re the one with all the responsibility and yet have none at the very same time. And truthfully, all of these are true, and none of them are true. Seriously, being a product manager sometimes feels like you’re in some awful Zen koan riddle that you think you found the answer to, but really never do. So I’ve been a SaaS product manager on the Enterprise side now for five years. And at the five year mark, I think I finally understand why. Don’t worry if Engineering hates you. I can’t imagine a relationship more setup from the start to be naturally antagonistic. Engineering automatically see you as the enemy. Why? If you have an Engineering background they see you as meddlesome and annoying. If you don’t, they see you as useless and incompetent.

Pearltrees plate-forme 5 millions d’euros : c’est la somme que vient de lever l’une des icônes françaises de la curation, Pearltrees, auprès du fonds d’investissement Accueil, nous révèle le site FrenchWeb. Un quatrième tour de table pour la jeune société démarrée en 2009 qui a récolté quelque 8,5 millions d’euros en levée de fonds depuis sa création. La société serait par ailleurs valorisé quelque 10 millions d’euros, et compte dans son actionnariat Pierre Kosciusko-Morizet, le fondateur de Priceminister. Pearltrees est un service de curation dite sociale à travers lequel les utilisateurs collectent, classent, hiérarchisent et partagent du contenu pioché sur le Web. Ces sources sont ainsi organisées par groupes thématiques que la société baptise des «pearltrees». Cet apport devrait permettre à la start-up de mettre en place son modèle économique. regroupés les documents et les fichiers de chacun. Plus d'actualités et de tutoriels

What Does Feature Creep Look Like? When you think about feature creep and bloated products what comes to mind? Endless tabs, toolbars, settings, and preferences, right? For a 5 year period you couldn’t sit through a UX talk without seeing some variation of this infamous Microsoft Word screenshot as example of the need for simplicity… Poor UI such as that above highlights the cost of feature creep. To solve feature creep you need to identify which features are being adopted by everyone, and which ones are struggling to gain traction. Analyse Adoption per feature The X axis is each feature in your product and the Y axis is the percentage of customers1 who are using2 the feature3. Customers: Which customers? Features struggle for adoption for lots of reasons, users don’t see the value in using it, they find it too complicated, it’s hidden somewhere clever in your product, they’re the wrong type of users, and dozens more.

Ergonomie : Pearltrees reçoit 320.000 euros d'Oséo Designing products for single and multiplayer modes The first million people who bought VCRs bought them before there were any movies available to watch on them. They just wanted to “time shift” TV shows – what we use DVRs for today. Once there were millions of VCR owners it became worthwhile for Hollywood to start selling and renting movies to watch on them. Eventually watching rented movies became the dominant use of VCRs, and time shifting a relatively niche use. Thus, a product that eventually had very strong network effects* got its initial traction from a “standalone use” – where no other VCR owners or complementary products needed to exist. I was talking to my friend Zach Klein recently who referred to products as having single player and multiplayer modes. Many products that we think of as strictly multiplayer also have single player modes. * Products with so-called networks effects get more valuable when more people use them.

Pearltrees: 3 years and €8.5 million later, there's finally talk of a business model In Europe, as many of you may already know, people tend to talk about business models much earlier in the game than they do in the US. In fact, it’s a widely-held belief that European investors don’t tend to invest in companies that aren’t generating cash (which many believe explains the French VCs’ love for e-commerce). While US companies like Instagram, Pinterest, Quora and the likes are busy amassing millions upon millions of non-paying users prior to even talking about their business models (oh wait, Pinterest actually does make money?), European companies are more often than not approaching things from the opposite end. In fact, it is so engrained into European startups’ brains to talk about business from the get-go that Ohai’s Susan Wu shocked the Paris tech scene at Le Camping’s Fest event last year when she told a startup that their business model wasn’t important at their current stage and they could worry about it later.

Rarely say yes to feature requests - Inside Intercom Here’s a simple set of Yes/No questions that you can quickly answer before you add another item to your product roadmap. Saying yes to a feature request – whether it’s a to an existing customer, a product enquiry, a teammate, or a manager – is immediately rewarding. It’s an unspoken transaction where you barter long term product focus in exchange for short term satisfaction. Buying short term joy for the cost of long term pain is the human condition. Previously we’ve written about how product strategy means saying no, but a list of reasons to reject a feature isn’t as immediately useful as a test that any new feature must pass. So here’s a list of questions your new feature must score straight yes’s on. More important than any metric, customer request, or sales target is your vision. Product decisions based on vision alone sometimes seem irrational, because they’re tough decisions. The more nuanced decisions are the ones where you meet resistance. Beware the “fre-cently” bias.

Les arbres de connaissances Publié par PedagoGeeks le 30 juin 2011 | Dans les catégories suivantes Compétences, Innovation, Innovation, Projet Professionnel Tout le monde sait quelque chose, personne sait tout ! C’est un postulat simple mais qui plaide pour les méthodes actives et collaboratives en apprentissage : la connaissance collective est supérieure à la somme de ses partie. Ce principe s’applique aussi à la compétence, et à la compétence collective en particulier. Une difficulté vient alors d’identifier, de visualiser et de valoriser les connaissances collectives d’un groupe de personnes, d’apprenants. En 1991, Edith Cresson alors premier ministre a chargé Michel Serrès de mener des travaux sur l’université en France et les compétences. Plus la couleur va vers le rouge et le marron plus la connaissance est partagée : ces zones constituent le socle commun de connaissances du groupe, donc le tronc. Webographie sélective pour aller plus loin et s’approprier les arbres de connaissances : Documents à télécharger