The infamous moment when Donald Rumsfeld tried to explain the missing WMDs with the “unknown”, while delivering the Whitehouse defense news briefing on 12th February 2002. Rumsfeld was using the Johari Window — a technique developed by cognitive psychologists in the 50s to help people better understand their relationship with themselves and others.
The Trouble with Software and Estimates
Ask the question “Why can’t developers estimate time?” and you get a lot of answers. In fact it’s a topic, with a history going back to the ’60s, that’s bred a whole industry of methodologies, solutions and consultants.
The evidence on differences in estimation accuracy of different…
It’s a question that gets asked again and again and again.
So I’m one of those product managers who’s “been there, done that”. I’ve had about 10 years of professional programming experience in various roles, and even a couple of technical books and a few talks, if we really travel back in time. I switched to software product management about 5 years ago, which reduced the coding I do to evenings and weekends only (i.e. just a hobby).
IMHO, if you have professional experience developing software, that’s a big plus to have as a software product manager. …
Logging in with a username and password is dead; Mobile killed it.
Why is it dead? Because you and your phone are one thing; a single organism. You get extremely nervous when you’re parted from it. It is your precious; once you get past the lock screen, you are intimately connected to it. And 83% of young people go to bed with their phone. Some older ones too. This is not a shared device or even that thing you leave lying around on your desk unattended. If you happen to catch someone fiddling around with it, you’re liable to get…
a last-minute survival guide for stressed mobile PMs
You’ve read the WWDC announcements of all the cool stuff coming in iOS 9. As a mobile PM or tech lead, now is the last change to ask yourself if your app needs any updates to be “iOS 9 ready”?
Based on past history Apple tends to push major iOS version updates around the middle of September, often aligned with their Autumn special event. …
Inspired by this BBC article.
INT. MEETING ROOM — MORNING
WILL enters room where JANET, TOM, DAVE and LUCY are already seated round table.
WILL
Thanks for coming everyone. So The Deadline is approaching. We’ve got to nail the mobile navigation once and for all. That’s the goal of this meeting…
JANET
So let’s use a tab bar. The Interface Guidelines recommend it…
TOM
Sounds good. Of course for our Paying Advertisers it’s very important we have menus A, B, C as well as X, Y, Z
DAVE
That’s more than 5 items guys! If we want to use the…
App Store Optimisation (ASO) like SEO is a dark art; second guessing a black box. Luckily it is slightly more deterministic than SEO as the search results — the apps — are better defined.
So here’s the 11 factors I’m aware of that can influence your position in store search results and the all important “Discovery Lists”. This is based my own experiences from being involved with two apps, among others, with downloads in the millions plus a bunch of reading, experimenting and verifying. The order of the list below is what I believe their relative value is. …
The Real Release Notes
The greatest joy in App Development comes from seeing all that effort you and your team poured into some shiny new feature finally live on the store. Crafting the Best Release Notes Ever is part of the pride you take.
But sometimes … actually quite often … the new version of your app contains changes that you’re not too proud of and have no idea how to communicate to your users. What then? …
We just released version 2.0 of HOI — the Swiss alternative to Yo — including the ability to send pictures and locations. But how to make users aware of these new features?
While splash screens and in-app tutorials can be OK, most mobile users are ADHD so won’t read.
Instead wanted to experiment with something more like the “scaffolding” approach common in games like Hitman GO ( which was covered in the WWDC 2014 Onboarding Session ), making an interactive experience where users “learn by doing” rather than having to pay attention to a tutorial.
“Tell me and I forget…
Recovering privacy by abandoning identity?
Being anonymous is hard. Yesterday was reading “How to start an anonymous blog” and aside from the lengths the author has to go to to set up their blog, maintaining it will be even harder; just one slip is all it takes… But it got me wondering; what if we’re approaching the problem from the wrong direction?
Getting Lost in the Crowd
Instead of going to great lengths to keep our identity hidden, why not drown our identity in noise instead?
For example instead of everyone having an individual, unique email address, why not have shared email accounts with many hundreds of thousands of…
Preferable to humans?
At a recent geeky dinner party we were discussing intelligent personal assistants like Google Now and I posed the question “Would you prefer an algorithm as your boss?”
The ability of human beings to behave rationally is notoriously subject to a whole host of preconditions; the drive to work, flakiness of memory, hunger, the weather or even the current phase of the moon. As an employee, why then would you want to chance that yearly review and salary discussion with your boss to this lottery of uncontrollable factors?
If it was possible to design a perfect algorithm capable of being…
harry fuecks
things about leading software engineering, product management and stuff
