As the Manifesto for Agile Software Development celebrates its 20th anniversary, I take a look at how agile practices have influenced and changed product management. I discuss the benefits that have been achieved and the challenges that still remain.
Saying no is a firm part of our job as product people: Trying to please everyone and taking on board every idea is hardly a recipe for achieving product success. But saying no can be tough, especially when we are faced with a senior, assertive stakeholder. This episode offers five practical tips to help you say no in the right way.
OKRs—objectives and key results—have experienced a renewed popularity in recent years. Consequently, I am regularly asked if and how OKRs can be applied in product management. This episode shares my thoughts.
Despite its importance, product strategy is not always effectively practiced. One of the key issues I encounter in my work is that strategy and execution are not aligned but rather disjointed. To address this issue, I have developed an iterative process called the product strategy cycle. The cycle systematically connects strategy and execution so that the former guides the latter and insights gained from the tactical work help evolve the product strategy. In this episode, I explain how you can use the cycle to join up product strategy, product roadmap, KIPs, product backlog, and development work, and I discuss the role stakeholders and development team members play in making effective strategic product decisions.
The product roadmap is a powerful tool to describe how a product is likely to grow, to align the stakeholders, and to acquire a budget for developing the product. But creating an effective roadmap is not easy, particularly in an agile context where changes occur frequently and unexpectedly. In this episode, I share ten practical tips to helps you create an actionable agile product roadmap.
The product backlog is an essential product management tool: It captures detailed product decisions and directs the work of the development team. The latter requires it to be prioritised or ordered. But how can you prioritise a product backlog when everything seems equally important? In this episode shares my answer. It recommends taking four steps to get to an effective, prioritised product backlog.
The product vision board is a simple yet powerful tool to capture the product vision and the product strategy. Despite its simplicity, effectively using it can be challenging. I have seen many boards over the years that suffered from a number of shortcomings including poorly a defined target group, an unconvincing value proposition, and business goals that weren’t measurable. This episode helps you recognise and rectify common product vision board mistakes, thereby maximising the chances of creating an inspiring vision and a winning product strategy.
Whenever you require more than a single development team to progress your product, you have choice: You can organise the teams around features or components. This article explains why this decision matters for product people, and it shares my advice on when feature teams are right for your product and when component teams are better suited.
As product people, we rely on the stakeholders to successfully progress our product. But effective stakeholder management can be challenging. It can feel like herding cats with every stakeholder going off in a different direction pursuing her or his individual goal. This episode offers tips to help you succeed in aligning the stakeholders, involving them in the right way, and securing their support for important product decisions.
Nearly 20 years after the publication of the first Scrum book, the product owner role is still riddled with misunderstandings. It’s not uncommon for me to meet someone who refers to her- or himself as a product owner, only to discover that the person owns a feature or the product details but not the entire product. Other times, I meet people who say they are product owners but who manage a whole product portfolio. This episode helps you reflect on and improve the way the product owner role is applied at your workplace. It describes six common types of “product” owners. It shows how the roles differ and relate to each other, and it explains how you can effectively apply them.