As product people, we all deal with a lot of data. Here are some questions I’ve learned to ask based on my work in full-text search products; regardless of whether I’m dealing with a search implementation, adoption analytics, or setting up statistical experimentation on a new feature of value. Six Questions to Ask Is it clean?…
Month: January 2019
The 4-isms of Agile Failures
There are three anti-patterns Agile hates, a fourth that is detestable. Below I describe each, and their telltale signs. I’ve observed no small amount of digital ink this past year fuming with frustration about the failure of Agile. 18 part Twitter threads, ranting podcasts, and War & Peace sized blog posts lead me to hypothesize…
I come to bury Scrum, not praise it
Is Scrum dead? I don’t think so, but others do. So for those announcing its demise on blogs and Twitter, I offer this over-dramatic eulogy. A parting panegyric that is a snarky mixture of inspiration from Shakespeare’s play ‘Julius Caesar’ and Ron Jefferies’ blog post titled ‘Dark Scrum.’ Friends, product owners, scrummasters, lend me your…
The Many Hats Product Managers Wear — a semi-definitive list
If you’re an aspiring product owner or product manager, get ready to wear a lot of hats. TL;DR — Behold, 16 hats that product owners & product managers wear as part of their ongoing quest to continuously deliver valuable software. Last Friday, we had some fun with our 15 McCoy’isms. However, along with said silly sarcasm, I emphasized…
15 McCoy’isms for Product Managers
The “I’m a doctor, not a …” meme has been a running gag across all generations of Star Trek. I’ve extended this to product management. As any experienced product manager or product owner will tell you, we wear a lot of hats … A LOT OF HATS. This is the norm, and in most contexts perfectly acceptable…
Scaling the Consolidation of Product Owner & Product Manager
TL;DR —So let’s say we go ahead and reunify the Scrum-imposed separation of Product Owner and Product Manager, what then? How does this scale? The Topic One of my predictions for 2019 asserts a continued consolidation of product ownership and product management. In response to this Ed Roshitsh, CEO at Dude Solutions posed this excellent…
The Song of the Retrospective
Come Komrads & Agile-istas! Let us collaborate together on value and sing in a strong voice the Song of the Retrospective! This is the fourth lyric in “Dean’s Songs of the Product Owner” and the first based on a traditional Russian folk song, in this instance the “Song of the Volga Boatman.” Known in Russian…