Understanding how to ask the whys & a when gets is essential for product managers to see past the junk food of outputs & into the satisfying banquet of outcomes.
Tag: Agile
Dean’s Semi-Definitive List of Product Management Podcasts & Books
Dean’s semi-definitive list of ProdMgmt Podcasts & Books “When you stop going to school, you’ve only given-up on formal education. When you stop learning, you given-up on living.” ~ George L. Peters, Sr. Not a week goes by now when I receive a request from an active or aspiring product person looking to up their product…
The High Costs of Unfunded Mandates in Product Management
“Shut up, be happy. Obey all orders without question. The happiness you have demanded is now mandatory” — Jello Biafra, 1987 Command & control-ism comes in many forms, one of its more frustrating manifestations for product managers is that of the unfunded mandate. The concept of the unfunded mandate comes from the politically-charged world of hierarchal…
Part of Being Agile means Charging Ground Balls
Baseball is a mesmerizing dance measured in increments of time & distance. In many ways, so is Agile. I’m truly enjoying watching the 2019 World Series. There are many reasons for my delight, but the biggest is watching the high-level of execution by both teams … while the players are having boatloads of fun. It makes…
JIRA-Slinging Ticket Monkey
I first penned JIRA-Slinging Ticket Monkey in a 2015 humor post. Little did I know how much it would resonate. Its intent was to reflect — in a very smart aleck way — the frustrations I was hearing from product owners who felt they were dancing to the monotonous tune of some organizational organ grinder. Over the past three-and-a-half-years…
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…