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…
Tag: Agile
A 33 year retrospective of Agile-driven Product Management.
A quasi-representative time line of Agile-minded events influencing Product Management Behold, a quasi-representative list of Agile-minded events, products, & ideas that influenced or map the evolution of Product Management over the past 33 years. WHY? I created this list as I thought it might create some conversations of value in the area of where Product…
When Consistency becomes Tyranny
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson Let me ask you a question: As a product manager or scrum master, do you feel there is a tipping point where consistency devolves into tyranny? I posed this question to some poor unsuspecting peeps at…
Product Owners, why aren’t you talking about how much your team costs?
TL;DR — Not knowing your team cost is like the difference between riding into a debate atop the elephant vs. standing behind it with a shovel. Consider the Cost How much money does your team burn per sprint? Why do I ask? I posed this question a few weeks back on both Twitter and LinkedIn in response to…
Please, let’s not toss the PO baby out with the bathwater
TL;DR — The role of the product owner is not to come up with the best ideas, but to create an environment where the best ideas can be surfaced and measured. I read with no small amount of interest Joshua Kerievsky’s “Eliminating the Product Owner Role” after being directed to it via Bob Galen’s response in “Here…
I Am the Product King — (mis)Appropriated Song Tunes For Product Managers
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 &…
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)….