Johanna Rothman, Management Consultant
Expert in Managing Product Development
I suggested ways to think about more agile budgeting in part 1. I didn’t tell you why. How do you budget your own money and time? If you’re like me, you have a plan for the year. I evaluate the plan—my products, services, and clients—on a regular basis. I always evaluate monthly. Sometimes, I evaluate …
Continue reading “Strategy Behind More Agile Budgeting, Part 2”
Too often, organizations want to budget for an entire year. The managers run around for two or three months in advance of that fiscal year, attempting to predict a ton of things: Estimates for not-well-defined projects or features, Capital equipment or tool needs, “Headcount” aka, people needed. Then, the organization doesn’t finalize the budget until …
Continue reading “Tactical Ideas for Agile Budgeting, Part 1”
Too many teams have overloaded Product Owners. The teams and PO have trouble connecting the organization’s strategy to what the teams deliver. The teams, PO, management, all think they need big planning. Too often, the POs don’t do small-enough replanning. They’re not living the principles of the agile manifesto. That insufficient collaboration means the PO …
Continue reading “Product Roles, Part 8: Summary: Collaborate at All Levels for the Product”
I started this series with the question: If we have teams for all other aspects of an agile approach, why wouldn’t we want the product owner to also work as part of a team? Could a team reduce the feedback loop durations? In Phase Gate or Other Serial Approaches… When projects use a phase gate …
Continue reading “Product Roles, Part 7: Collaboration Can Shorten Feedback Loops”
I started this series discussing the issue of the various product-based roles in an agile organization. I suggested a product value team because one person becomes a bottleneck. One person is unlikely to shepherd the strategy and the tactics for a product. And, batching the product planning in one-quarter chunks doesn’t encourage us to reduce …
Continue reading “Product Roles, Part 6: Shorten Feedback Loops”
As I’ve written these product role posts, a number of you have asked about how to use component teams. You might have a security team. Maybe a performance team. Regardless of my desire, you have component teams. You want a more agile approach to manage the interdependencies among the teams. You want to be able …
Continue reading “Product Roles, Part 5: Component Teams to Create Slices”
Many people in the agile community promote a product orientation over a project orientation. That’s possible because an organization has product or feature teams. That works until you have more products than teams. That’s when you might still need projects to accomplish everything. If you keep teams together, you can still use projects in a …
Continue reading “Product Roles, Part 4: Product Orientation and the Role of Projects”
An agile approach requires a cross-functional team. That means that everyone on the team focuses on the same intent. That intent might be an entire product. It might be a feature set as part of a larger program. But, the team focuses as a team. That cross-functional team is a product team or a feature …
Continue reading “Product Roles, Part 3: Product or Feature Teams vs Project Teams”
In an ideal agile world, the team would work directly with a customer. When you have a small product that serves maybe three types of customer (new, expert, admin for example), and that customer is down the figurative hall, you might not need any product people. You can create short feedback loops with your customer. …
Continue reading “Product Roles, Part 2: The Product Value Team”
We have many words for people who shepherd the business value of a product. The many words aren’t a problem, as long as we can all agree on what these various people are and they take responsibility for. When we don’t agree, we run the risk of not managing our strategy, not thinking in terms …
Continue reading “Product Roles, Part 1: Product Managers, Product Owners, Business Analysts”