Agile product management has been fashionable for some time. But different people associate different meanings with it – from simply using the product backlog to extending Scrum by employing complex new frameworks. I view agile product management as fundamentally different from traditional product management approaches. To better understand the differences, let’s see how agile and old-school product management compare. The following table–adapted from my book Agile Product Management with Scrum–summarises five key changes.
| Old School | New School |
| Several roles, such as product marketer, product manager, and project manager, share product decision-making. | One person—the product owner—is in charge of the product and leads the project. |
| Product managers are detached from the development teams, separated by process, department, and facility boundaries. | The product owner is a member of the Scrum team and works closely with the Scrum Master and team on an ongoing basis. |
| Extensive market research, product planning, and business analysis are carried out up front. | Minimum up-front work is expended to create a vision that describes what the product will roughly look like and do. |
| Up-front product discovery and definition: requirements are detailed and frozen early on. | Product discovery is an ongoing process; requirements emerge. There is no definition phase and no product requirements specification. The product backlog evolves based on customer and user feedback. |
| Customer feedback is received late, in market testing and after product launch. | Early and frequent releases together with sprint review meetings generate valuable customer and user feedback that maximises the chances of creating a successful product. |
Agile methods embrace an age-old truth: They see change as the only constant. If flux and unpredictability are dominant forces, then our ability to accurately forecast markets and predict customer behaviour is limited. Instead of employing a primarily analytical approach with big upfront market research and business analysis and detailed, frozen requirements, agile product management follows an empirical approach:
Gathering customer and user feedback on prototypes and early product increments facilitates inspecting the work results and adapting the product accordingly. The product evolves based on customer and user feedback. This not only saves time and money but it increases the likelihood of developing a great product.
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great post!
btw there`s a broken link in this sentence:
"The following table – taken from my book Agile Product Management with Scrum – summarizes five key changes"
Thank you for your feedback. The link is now fixed.
great post ..i am a scrum.org PSM and iwent through the Scrum guide extensively many times for passing the exam but it did not have anything on the old notion and new notion. this comparison chart really puts things in perspective