THE big difference between Product Management and Project Management

The Product Manager checking whether the Project Manager builds the castle he asked for. 

Here in France (maybe in your country too), product management is often confused with project management mainly because there is the word management in both. In addition to that, in software companies where the Agile Scrum methodology is used, the product owner is a kind of hybrid making the distinction even more complex.

Please note, that I am not saying that one is better than the other. We need both and it is important to really understand what they mean.

In France, management often implies managing a team (even if no hierarchical ties exists). The relationships involved in product management do not seem to be understood as managing a product team whereas a project team is often clearly identified.

As a reminder, the product manager is responsible for defining the right product to sell, at the right price, at the right time, at the right place and at the right cost to ensure his business is profitable.

On the other side, the project manager is responsible for producing the defined product, at the agreed time by using the agreed resources.

The main difference I see between product management and project management is that the first one is strategical while the latter is tactical.

That has several consequences:

• 1 Product can contain several projects. 1 Project is in one product (most of the time).
• Product is about outwards success (company vs rest of the world). Project is about inwards success (within the company)
• Product management is central. Project management is peripheral.
• Product manager conceive and plan. Project management execute that plan.

What do you think?

Day-to-day Product Management #1: 1 month after launching an iPhone game

Today, I want to share with you my day-to-day experiences on distributing an iphone app.

In my previous product management roles at HTC, distributing and advertising mobile apps was handled by dedicated marketing teams. Therefore I want to enhance this part of marketing skills , the P of promotion :).

In order to do that, I chose to do a very soft launch (almost secret one!) to have a reference point of what happens when you only share the link with your friends on Facebook and talk about it around a beer.

As you will see in a bit, there is no free lunch and miracle did not happen!

Firstly, I chose to do a copycat of the successful Flappy bird game because from a product perspective, millions of users have shown interest in it and copycats have been downloaded thousands of time. So why not use it as a basis and add a funny twist to it?

As a French, I have been amused by the affair our President had earlier this year and I used this funny story as a basis for the game.

So after developing the game, I pushed it in iTunes Connect, which is the tool you need for publishing your apps on the App Store. Once released officially on the 29th of May 2014, I shared the link on several channels (and did again after a minor update on the 13th of June 2014):

• 2nd of June 2014: 
• Twitter share:

Look! I scored 0 points in Flappy President! http://t.co/S80PZmoPDG pic.twitter.com/q39mmNWbNu
— PA Antonini (@pierreantoine) June 2, 2014

• Facebook share:

                                     

• 11th of June 2014: I posted a brief article on the game on this blog and shared the article on Google+ account (but who cares, no one uses Google+ ;))
• 13th of June 2014: I asked for help on Facebook for translating the game description for iTunes

• 16th of June 2014: I shared a score on Twitter

Look! I scored 11 points in Flappy Prez! http://t.co/S80PZmoPDG pic.twitter.com/5D5E950wUp
— PA Antonini (@pierreantoine) June 16, 2014

19th of June 2014: I share updated version on Twitter and Facebook

Iphone4 bug solved https://t.co/tlLuIIIXhX
— PA Antonini (@pierreantoine) June 19, 2014

To help you visualize my network, I mainly use Facebook (around 500 friends) and I am not a big fan of Twitter (around 150 followers and use it mainly as news feed for tech and entrepreneurship).

So what are the results? Wait for it.... a stunning 123 downloads in one month!!! Youhou!!!

As you can see on the graph, main downloads are around the 13th of June 2014 (when I asked for help on Facebook on this project).

It appears that sharing update on the new version had very low effect (if any) on the 19th of June and after. Since then I have not communicated at all on the app.

So with this, it appears that with no clear promotion strategy, nothing really happens!

From this point on, I need now to test several other channels to measure their ROIs and see whether I can reach the 10K target :)!

So the plan is (and you will soon see the reports):

• Facebook ads
• Google ads (since it's a mobile app, not sure it really makes sense)
• Links in newspapers and forums
• Landing page for the app with a well-formated SEO
• iAd campaigns
• Linkedin share

Stay tuned, more to come soon!!

--Pierre-Antoine Antonini

My HEC MBA interview presentation: "The Long Tail"

During the HEC MBA application process, I was asked to do a presentation on a topic I was interested in.
In this presentation, you will find a summary of the long tail concept coined by Chris Anderson and some contradictions to it (superstar effect for example).

My HEC MBA Interview presentation (2008): The Long Tail from Pierre-Antoine Antonini

Recruiting via Facebook: The Work4 business case

Hereafter is a small business case I recently did, hope you find it interesting.

Facebook case: Winner-Take-All or place for a new player?

Working today on an interesting Harvard case about Facebook for our class on Business Strategy in the Networked Economy by Prof Planbeck.

It is interesting to see how the network externalities (same-side and cross-side) and their bundling strategy (to increase the switching costs to another Social Network) advocate for a Winner-Take-All path but we could have thought the same of MySpace and that did not happen. For a new player to disloge Facebook, it would need to make a major technological/service breakthrough.

What do you think it could be?