I keep seeing talks and arguments about how the portfolio team should manage the epics for a program. That conflates the issue of project portfolio management and product management. Several potential teams affect each project (or program). Starting at the right side of this image, the project portfolio team decides which projects to do and […]
Agile 2015 was the week of Aug 3-7 this year. It was a great week. Here are the links to my interviews and talks. Interview with Dave Prior. We spoke about agile programs, continuous planning, and how you might use certifications. I made a little joke about measurement. Interview with Paul DuPuy of SolutionsIQ. We
If you’ve read Reasons for Continuous Planning, you might be wondering, “How can we do this?” Here are some ideas. You have a couple of preconditions: The teams get to done on features often. I like small stories that the team can finish in a day or so. The teams continuously integrate their features. Frequent features
I’m working on the program management book, specifically on the release planning chapter. One of the problems I see in programs is that the organization/senior management/product manager wants a “commitment” for an entire quarter. Since they think in quarter-long roadmaps, that’s not unreasonable—from their perspective. There is a problem with commitments and the need for
In agile, we separate the Product Owner function from functional (development) management. The reason is that we want the people who can understand and evaluate the business value to articulate the business value to tell the people who understand the work’s value when to implement what. The technical folks determine how to implement the what.
The lovely folks at Thoughtworks interviewed me for a blog post, Embracing the Zen of Program Management. I hope you like the information there. If you want to know about agile and lean program management, see Agile and Lean Program Management: Scaling Collaboration Across the Organization. In beta now.
Ryan Ripley “highly recommends” Predicting the Unpredictable: Pragmatic Approaches to Estimating Cost or Schedule. See his post: Pragmatic Agile Estimation: Predicting the Unpredictable. He says this: This is a practical book about the work of creating software and providing estimates when needed. Her estimation troubleshooting guide highlights many of the hidden issues with estimating such as:
Many product owners have a tough problem. They need so many of the potential features in the roadmap, that they feel as if everything is #1 priority. They realize they can’t actually have everything as #1, and it’s quite difficult for them to rank the features. This is the same problem as ranking for the
Do you have a title such as product manager, product owner, or business analyst? We hear these titles all the time. What does each do? Here is how I have seen successful agile projects and programs use people in these positions. Note that I am discussing agile projects and programs. The product manager creates the
As I work with more clients on their programs, I see that what might work for a product owner for a team does not work for a program. In a program, if the product owner is shortsighted, does not take advantage of agile/lean for updates, and does not have small features, the program loses momentum.