As promised this time last year, after ingloriously delivering ‘I Am the Very Model of a Modern Product Manager’ at last years ALN lightening rounds, I’m adding to my repertoire yet another adaptation of a popular show tune on behalf of my product management peeps everywhere. This year’s victim is yet another (mis)appropriated Gilbert &…
Category: Product Management
My thoughts on all things product management I hope add value to your day.
Behold, the Product Management Prioritization Menagerie
TL;DR — Folks, it’s a zoo out there, especially when it comes to feature prioritization. Below is my own O’Rly bookshelf to prove my point … … each followed by at least one related blog post or news article on each of these 5 beasts that graze upon our prioritization process. QUICK UPDATE 01Dec20 — Thanks for the folks at…
Getting a grip on feature requests by loosening your grip
Is your organization still treating ideas for product enhancement leveraging the same pipeline you use for bug reports, service requests, and feature questions? Well then stop. There is a better way. Not sure? No problem. In the banner image is a relatively generic diagram of how such a customer service-centric approach to feature requests might…
Productorio — the Seven Deadly Sins of Product Management
In ‘Productorio’, a poem by Dante’s lesser-known younger brother Dino, we read the account of a well-meaning product manager at the shores of a large machine learning implementation. There, he meets with the poet Yourdon, who proceeds to walk Dino down Product Purgatory’s iteration roadmap, making sure to swerve into each of the seven infamous…
Dean’s Product Owner Prioritization Bingo Board
For those times product feature prioritization makes about as much sense as a game of bingo. TL;DR — I attend quite a few product manager meetups. Invariably someone kvetches about prioritization. Here are some of those gripes gamified in the form of “Dean P’s almost famous, nearly patented, PO Prioritization Bingo Board ™ v0.02.” (recently updated on 27Jun20)….
The Orange Quarrel: A Product Manager’s tale of Compromise over Collaboration
Photo Credit of Nick Jr. and Yorgos probably not wrestling over an orange: Wikipedia As product managers, we are sometimes confronted with “feature hostage negotiations.” Here are some conflict resolution tips for such times. You know what I’m talking about, those emotional instances where the tug between sales needing shiny objects and stakeholders seeking strategic…
Product Manager Exercise: Design a better Automated Teller Machine
Clearly, some ATM designs are better than others. Into the course of every product manager’s life falls a “design a better <whatever>” exercise. In fact, I recently stumbled on a site solely dedicated to this appropriately titled ‘Product Management Exercises.’ It was this site, along with a recent news story related ‘You no longer need a…
T is for Testable - Part 6 of 6 of why it pays to INVEST in your user stories
TL;DR — Equipping your PBIs with a clear and concise user acceptance criteria is the how you can ensure doneness across your team, stakeholders, & customers. I think it was Zig Ziglar who said “If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time.” While he made that comment in the context of personal development, it…
S is for Small - Part 5 of 6 of why it pays to INVEST in your user stories
TL;DR — While it’s good to think big, we need to act small, especially when we iteratively measure value in a CI/CD software release setting. Dang that Goofus and his IEEE 830–1998 SRS, why can’t he be more ‘Scrumtastic’ like Gallant? When I think of a small Product Backlog Item (PBI), I’m thinking of one that is reduced…
E is for Estimable - Part 4 of 6 of why it pays to INVEST in your user stories
TL;DR — A good user story can be estimated. We don’t need an exact estimate, but just enough to help the rank and schedule the story’s implementation. If the above TL;DR sounds familiar, it’s because it’s practically an exact quote from Bill Wake’s 2003 blog post that introduced the INVEST approach to product backlog items. And sure,…