Product Management Archives - Page 2 of 3 - EBG Consulting

Am I a Product Manager or a Product Owner? Part 2

In part 1 of this blog, I outlined the confusion between what a Product Manager does and what a Product Owner does. The difference and overlaps between product management and product ownership work illustrated how activities span both strategic and tactical product management.

With confusion of roles and titles, a team can suffer with mixed product outcomes. I find this confusion to be widespread and I propose five ways to untangle the roles and responsibilities mess to move from confusion to clarity.

Am I a Product Manager or a Product Owner? Part 1

With the maturing of the software industry and with an overwhelming acceptance of agility, I am still surprised at the inconsistency and overall confusion between what product managers and product owners do.

On a panel I participated on this very topic, the presenters had different, sometimes contradictory perspectives. [1] Adding to the confusion, organizations struggling to make sense of the roles and job titles can’t rely on conflicting webinars, white papers, or blogs to clarify roles and responsibilities.

Structured Conversations to Discover Your MVP

Many product development teams talk about the wisdom of producing great products by iteratively exposing potential customers to small, cohesive product increments. [1] The concept of focusing effort on minimum viable product (MVP) delivery has gained momentum particularly in the agile world. MVPs deliver customer value through successive delivery of small product slices and drives teams to make smarter choices about their product’s future development.

The 7 Product Dimensions: A Guide to Asking the Right Questions

Upon embarking on my first stint as a product manager, I happened to run into an experienced product executive one day in passing. I asked him for advice and he obliged. He replied rather succinctly: “Ask questions, and then go add value.” He was never one to ramble on. Since then, I’ve taken his advice to heart, asking questions early and often. Now, a few years into my career in the product field, I find myself going a level deeper and asking a new question: Am I asking the right questions to all the right people?

Factors for Making Value-Based Product Decisions

Value

Making value-based decisions on what to deliver and when it needs to be delivered is one of the most important responsibilities of product ownership. What exactly is value? Value is fair return in goods, services, money, or some other benefit in exchange for something.

Value is what you get in exchange for what you give. In software development, we tend to identify value in terms of features. They are related to be sure, but quite different. Features as cohesive bundles of functionality that align with business goals and objectives. Features can come in various formats and levels of granularity, including user stories, minimum marketable features, minimum viable product, epics, and so on.

Value: The Lynchpin in Agile Product Management

Defining Value

You’d think the topic of value would be uncontroversial when it comes to agile product management and ownership. After all, early and continuous delivery of value is the first principle in the Agile Manifesto.

And yet, the idea is not always clear and consistent. Value is often not easily qualified or quantified, which makes the important task of conversing transparently about value difficult.

At the Agile Product Open last month, I proposed the topic “Value: The Whats, Whys, and Hows” in the morning marketplace of ideas.

Agile Product Open: An Illustrated Interview

Agile Product Open Illustraion

I spend a lot of time in my work sharing the value of visualization in agile discovery. What better way to share the value of the upcoming Agile Product Open event (May 21, 2016) than visually!

Here is an illustrated interview created by Iris Amelia Febres after interviewing Vanessa Ferranto and myself (we are co-producing the event). We shared the reasons why we started this new event and our passion for the conference theme: “Bringing Agile Principles to Product Management”.

Product Owner Survival Camp, USA

Product Owner Survival Camp USA

Product owners often find themselves alone in the organizational wilderness, straddling tactical with strategic product work. To succeed, they need to be inventive yet intensely focused; collaborative but decisive; and far-sighted but detail oriented.

The best product owners are strategic—envisioning the product, communicating upstream with business executives, researching the market, and continually planning for delivery of high-value product options. At the same time, they are also tactical—communicating downstream with the delivery team, running product demos, and discussing technical considerations.

Learning about Agile Requirements: “Voice of the Customer” Highlights

7ProductDimensions
Agile Requirements – Creative Collaborative and Colorful Discovery – was the title of a workshop held on March 16, 2015, at the RE Conf (Requirements Engineering Conference) in Munich. Coach Ellen Gottesdiener (founder of EBG Consulting) is a renowned pioneer in the field of collaborative partnerships for Requirements Engineering and Management. During this workshop we experienced her creative and colorful way of thinking – and were quite impressed by her “retro approach” based on flip charts and colored post-its.

What’s more, we were not allowed to forget the “mantra of value” during the one-day workshop! Every software application (or even hardware component) upgrade must add value for the various customer, business and technology stakeholders or partners involved. Otherwise the requirement should be disregarded.

Quick, Highly Effective Ideas for Writing Better Stories

50quick We’re big fans of the latest book from Gojko Adzic and David Evans, Fifty Quick Ideas to Improve Your User Stories. After all, who isn’t always looking for ways to improve? We encourage you to check it out.

Whether you’re looking for new ideas for creating stories, planning with stories, discussing stories, splitting stories, or managing iterative delivery, you’re sure to find a number of improvement ideas.