Not understanding the difference in addressing the cause vs. the symptoms is what leads to bad solutions, such as bloodletting for nosebleeds. Falling into the trap is easy. You get a call from a customer or an account executive where somebody needs a ‘red button’ on ‘screen 123’ because it’s slowing their ability to complete…
Tag: Scrum
Scrum Master, is your team merely singing the notes, or are they making music?
source: The Definitive Biography of P.D.Q. Bach © 1976, Prof. Peter Schickele TL;DR — Standards are important, but not so much that we shift our focus from the rapid & continuous delivery of value to merely getting Scrum right. It’s that time of year again. No, I’m not talking about the 10 pounds of ‘Christmas Cheer’ we’ll…
7 Things That Drive Your Product Manager Crazy
Here’s a list of 6 things your product person hates, 7 that drive them crazy. Please try and use this list for good rather than evil. Weather permitting, this weekend I am going to record a set of 12.25-minute podcasts for a series I’m calling “Software Product Therapy.” Topics I’m covering come from a list…
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)….
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…