Entries from November 2009 ↓
November 26th, 2009 — Product Management, Strategy
I sometimes wonder what makes a person a ’strategic thinker’. What attributes does someone need to be considered a strategic thinker? I like to fashion myself as a strategic thinker. I know that in most situations, whether personal or professional, I will start to envision what the future will look like. I am not sure this is a distinguishing feature from anyone else. I suspect everyone, in some way, does mental scenario execution to gauge what the future might look like.
This page (link) provides some interesting attributes that assist in strategic thinking. These include using facts, working with boundaries, consequence and risk analysis and decision making.
There is no doubt that product management is a strategic role (or should be), but how do you put the right person in place when everyone will claim to be a strategic thinker. I am not sure there is magic recipe here, but having someone who has successful products in the past is a possible indicator they can repeat it. Not a guarantee though.
A lot of the work that product management should be doing helps one become a strategic thinker. All of those enhancements, win/loss reports, call reports are your facts. The boundaries are framed through your persona development and then consequence, risk analysis and decision making come out during roadmapping sessions and release planning.
Having all of these things doesn’t necessarily mean you will have a winning strategy, but it will give you some evidence to put in place a plan and allow you to think strategically.
November 2nd, 2009 — Book Review, Product Management, User Stories
by Jason Brett
As a <type of user> I want <some goal> so that <some reason>.
Whether you are new to story-driven software development or have been managing products or development with user stories for a decade, “User Stories Applied: For Agile Software Development” (Mike Cohn) is a great read.
I’m personally new to writing user stories, so I dove into Cohn’s book from a relatively fresh perspective, and found the entire book highly digestible. Mr. Cohn makes no assumptions about the readers level of expertise or familiarity with Agile methods. At the same time, he writes in a way that gives the reader credit for being intelligent and purposeful.
The book is broken into 3 parts:
Part 1 covers the basics of user stories and so much more. Cohn goes into a well paced discussion of the roles of each member of the agile team at each step of the process. Not only does he dissect the stories themselves, commenting on size and scope of stories, but Cohn pays a great deal of attention to cataloging and working with an appropriate variety of user roles, working with user proxies, acceptance tests, and an exceedingly valuable chapter discussing guidelines of good stories.
Part 2 continues the examination of the user story from the perspective of estimating and planning, stepping deftly from release to iteration, taking care to discuss monitoring and measurement of the release and iteration’s progress.
Finally, in Part 3, the Cohn ties everything together with an in-depth example and a well organized discussion of a variety of topics that naturally emerge in a business environment when applying user stories to an agile development framework. He spends a chapter specifically on user stories with Scrum, and another excellent chapter on “A Catalog of Story Smells.” This chapter provides a great reality check for anyone trying to detect and deal with potential team challenges when user stories may seem to be at the center of the discussion.
What stands out to me most about “User Stories Applied: For Agile Software Development” is not only it’s apparent status as the definitive work on User Stories, but it’s effective introduction to Agile software development from the Product Management perspective. This is a book that I think exceeds its purpose in that regard.
I read this book as an experienced product manager who is new to Agile and Scrum. It has been an invaluable resource to me in that role. What I appreciate even more about Cohn’s work is that after reviewing the table of contents for this review, I can see myself re-reading the book annually (for at least for the next couple of years) and gleaning new insights to help strengthen my process and products.
No matter what your role in an Agile organization, be it product manager, product owner, scrum master or marketing manager, I suspect this book will provide significant insights into your company’s development process that can do nothing but serve you well.
Jason Brett is a Product Manager at Silverpop Systems, Inc, Founder of ProductCamp Atlanta, and currently sits on the board of the TAG Product Management Society. Jason should blog at his own website http://www.jasonbrett.me, but rarely does. You can, however, follow him at http://www.twitter.com/jbrett. Be sure and leave an @ reply to say hi!
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November 1st, 2009 — Leadership, Personas, Pricing, Strategy
Next thing you know it has been 23 days since your last post. Oddly my subscribers have risen. Thanks for reading! There is lots going on in my life and reading and writing has sadly slipped below my capacity to process. I am hopeful that will change in November, but my travel schedule for the month is already pretty full. We shall see. Generally when I am lost for blog ideas I have a book review to do, but the current book (How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer) is a bit heavy and proving to be a slow read. The upside, I am learning lots about brain activity.
Random Bits:
1. I want to acknowledge a conversation I had a couple of weeks ago about authority vs. influence. His premise was that authority doesn’t exist. Authority alone is not enough to lead and that even in a position of leadership influence will still rule the day. I agree.
2. Regarding personas, I continue to see them not being used. You will lose the battle without them. Also try your best to ignore this post, except for the comments.
3. Regarding vision, I continue to see either no vision or poorly defined visions. You will lose the battle without a vision, largely because it is the key component to strategy. No vision, no strategy. Here is a good blog on product visions.
4. The price of your product is determined by the value it provides, not the cost.
5. Please visit my list of product management events. It is the most comprehensive list of events targeted towards product managers anywhere.
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