Product Management *

We've developed a unified four-layer model for app promotion and added our recommendations.

Before we wrote this article we had our apps downloaded over two million times, ran about 50 large promotional campaigns, and made it onto the App Store top-lists in over 24 countries to finally combine all of it into a single workflow.

You won’t find almost any obvious stuff about keywords, nice-looking icons, screenshots, or ad campaigns in this article. We’ve tried to develop a unified model for a product-focused company based on our experience by answering the questions “What? When? Why?” and even “And what then?”

If you’re developing your own app, want to start developing one, or just have a friend who’s a developer or marketing professional at a product-focused company, you’ll find lots of useful information in this article.

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Working on a startup is always hard. Founders have to master multitasking skills and control everything. Very often, in such a situation, they can't correctly assess the technological development of their company. A couple of wrong tech-related decisions can lead to a massive fail.

How to avoid this? Get some advice from an experienced engineer! I had an opportunity to talk to Serhii Korniushov, a programmer, and IT manager with more than 10 years of experience.
Below, we will discuss his recommendations on building products that users need, and not wasting time and money.

5 options to choose from

I used to work as a translator. As I speak several foreign languages, friends, colleagues and “friend-of-a-friends” — heck, even total strangers — would often approach me asking to translate “just a few sentences”.

I have translated for clients, for friends and for my own needs. And I can tell you: there are several ways to get your text translated.

How do you choose the best one? Well, it boils down to the famous “time — cost — quality” triangle. And normally we get only two of these three at a time…

Let’s weigh up the pros and cons of each method. I hope to save you a headache next time you’re translating something into another language :)

Written by Alconost

Localizing your product can involve many pitfalls, and there are two of them that developers face AFTER the content has been localized: translating the product updates, and offering support for international users of the localized versions.

In this article, we will demonstrate how these issues can be solved with just a few clicks.

Written by Alconost

According to predictions of the analytical platform App Annie, interest in mobile apps will enjoy stable growth over the next four years. So, if you’re considering bringing your app to new markets, this is the time to do it.

During my two years as the localization manager, I came to understand that localization has its own rules, and knowing them can help you adapt any product for a new market quickly and competently. These principles will be useful for anyone who wants to localize an app but doesn’t know where to start.

1. Evaluate the potential

Start with the most important thing: figuring out which languages you need to localize your app into and determining whether or not localization is justified at all.

Here’s an example from my experience: Israel isn't a high-priority market for Badoo, but the app is localized into modern Hebrew. Moreover, only 6% of Israeli Badoo users actually run the app in Hebrew (as a comparison, 62.5% of Israeli users speak English). In this particular case, localization is justified even with these statistics, but a similar situation could represent a losing proposition for your app. So, study your market.

Scrum allows Agile teams working on complex projects and delivering winning products by solving problems adaptively. This popular straightforward method is widely used to handle projects and get things done. Scrum projects more accurately fulfill customers' needs because they encourage continuous feedback.

There is no need for detailed analytics to understand that Scrum continues to grow in popularity just because of its many benefits and general effectiveness. And the important merit in this belongs to a Scrum Master. In this post, we extol and praise the role of a Scrum Master, without which no Scrum project succeeds.

The increasingly competitive job market demonstrates that performing only based on hard skills alone is no longer sufficient. In project management reality, hard skills contain creating work breakdown structures, managing a project budget, earned value assessments and critical path charts. All these skills require technical background and applying professional knowledge and tools to perform well. What are the soft skills of leadership and how they help to uncover project managers' facilities?

Every manager knows what it is like to solve a problem. This is a daily activity for many people and it usually leads to the best outcomes. If you ignore or admit problems in your business, competitors can quickly pass you and your company will hang behind.

Any action that is aimed to solve a problem should identify this particular problem and its causes. Understanding the causes, you'll be able to set priorities and choose alternatives for the best solution, as well as directly implement this solution. The ability to solve internal and external problems timely and make responsible decisions is what managers should learn from the very start of their career. In this article, we’ll identify powerful problem-solving activities and analyze some effective techniques and exercises for teamwork.

Books with the word «Agile» in their titles began to appear on the shelves of IT experts and other industries' professionals after 2001. The term was used during the declaration of the Agile Software Development Manifesto. Agile describes a software development methodology that is characterized by short life cycles leading to frequent product releases.

Today this iterative or incremental method affects various aspects of development and business including project management. What are the best sources to learn Agile? This post covers 10 powerful books that may enhance the skills of project managers and their teams.

It is not always easy to find out the right path in development processes (as in other business activities). Various obstructions may disturb. The future life of any product or service depends on choosing an appropriate development methodology. As Kanban is often named as one of the current trends in project management, here we gathered the most essential benefits of Kanban software development and applying convenient Kanban boards and cards. Just to be trendy ;)

In any business, it’s not a good practice to constantly switch from one methodology to another. Most software development teams prefer to work with one-defined project management method. However, there are lots of companies who try to combine the best features and practices of different methods to create their own unique approach.

In this post, you will learn some basic facts about Scrumban and how to combine two popular Agile methodologies – Kanban and Scrum to make this hybrid approach perform better.

Scrum includes a series of special meetings, commonly referred to ceremonies, which assist to facilitate all the methodology’s processes.

Scrum strongly enforces the goals and time boxes for everything, including the ceremonies. This post covers these outstanding events and identifies the goals for each as well as their necessity. Take 7-8 minutes to figure them out.

When it comes to choosing between two options, there is always a risk to be influenced by opinions and dubious facts. Selecting any methodology or work approach, we strive to avoid mistakes and study as many facts and details about the subject as possible to make the right choice.

In Agile software development, this choice is also challenging, especially if it's about Scrum and Kanban.

One of the most effective factors for improving any business is the ability of its employees to perform together as a team. Managers should not only improve their professional skills, learn new methodologies, apply innovative growth hacks, but also try their best to build strong and effective teams. It's all about strong collaboration that is achieved not only through daily face-to-face communication but also through professional online collaboration tools.

Here's the list of tools' types, that you may need for your Agile team’s best performing. Take a look and see if you're missing anything.

Backlog prioritization requires simplification and weighting of tasks. Each one belongs to strategy like ads acquisition or CRO. We may consider turnover, operational costs, other metrics as input; profit margin, ROI — as output in case of retail. The perfect goal is to find 20/80 solution and focus resources on a single strategy at a time. Metrics tied to strategies gives the dimension of model. Sometimes unit economy relations are violated because of non-linearity. In practice it means low/insignificant correlation and poor regression. Example: it is impossible to separate acquisition and conversion — the quantity of acquisition affect its quality and vice versa. Decomposition of tasks/strategies assumes linear decomposition of nonlinear system. Besides nonlinear statistical evaluation of strategies is required when CJM can't be tracked or online/offline channels can't be separated.

Large companies and big teams always consist of various strategic departments and roles. Therefore, it's not a rare case when people face confusion in understanding some job positions.

Is it always clear to understand what the key responsibilities of different managers within one team are? For example, the roles of a product manager and a project manager have much in common. Supposedly, one of these PM’s have heard at least once in life the cheesy question «Is there any difference at all?" However, do not hurry to blame and shame the people who confuse their functionality. Product Manager and Project Manager are completely different roles. The goal of this post is to define clear differences between two strategic positions in software development companies to keep you out of all doubt.

The main objective of any product manager is to ensure the process of product management runs smoothly and flawlessly: from the concept to release. However, it's all about the ideal world.

In order to present a brilliant product to the world, it is important to learn how to use convenient and multifunctional online tools that facilitate management and open up new opportunities for managers, expanding their professional horizons. In this article, you will find 15 smart tools that contribute to the professional success of product managers in 2019.

A product manager is a key person who typically presents ready product solutions to the wide external world. To be considered a successful and professional product manager, you should have enough experience, enthusiasm and, of course, professional management skills, strong communication, and other essential abilities. Professional qualities help product management experts to competently manage, present, and bring the product to the market.

The Agile methodology consists of various mandatory concepts and artifacts. A product backlog is one of them. This is actually a set of requirements received from the business and formulated in the form of development tasks.

Backlog grooming is not a magic wand; it's a comprehensive activity aimed to ensure that all the tasks are always in clear order. How can the grooming process be improved? And what are the special things about it?

Whether you are a project management guru or just a beginner, you’ve definitely heard about Gantt charts. At first sight, these diagrams might seem chilling and complicated, however, they are not as mystifying as you may think.

Gantt Charts assist project managers and their teams to improve their productivity and efficiency of workflows and ensure timely tasks execution. The charts can be applied to small projects and the most complex ones. What are the secrets of the diagrams developed by Henry Gantt and what people in project management used before they were created?