I just tried to join a virtual conference in a new-to-me distributed meeting product. It’s supposed to be “easy” and “smooth.” Not for me. I stumbled around for 15 minutes and then left, totally unsuccessful. All the participants are supposed to have avatars—but I never understood how to set mine. (I do have a Gravatar. […]
In Part 1, I said that product roadmaps are not like car roadmaps. But even car roadmaps showed places of interest—options—for the driver and passengers. If I stretch that analogy a little, managers need to see where we are predictable for the next bit of time, and the options we see for the future. We
In Part 1, I said that customers need a different kind of roadmap than teams do. Teams need the focusing details now and a way to look forward. But, depending on where your product is in the market, your customers might want or need different information. Let’s start there. One thing to remember: you might
As I said in Part 1, teams use backlogs and roadmaps to know what’s now and what’s next. Teams use backlogs for the day-to-day tactical decisions. And when teams can see what’s next, they can keep the strategic decisions in mind. What do teams need to know about the product now to focus their work?
Several of my clients have various roadmap problems. They want a single product roadmap to serve all these purposes: Focus the team’s work for this specific product for the short term. That includes some look-ahead to see the next bit of upcoming work when the team has more capacity. Show customers where the company thinks
Many product owners and customers believe they know the problem they want to solve. That fake certainty causes them to define solutions, instead of solving the problem at hand. John Le Drew and I pair-wrote an article describing this problem and how to solve it. See Eliminate Fake Certainty and Solve the Real Problem. Yes, I’ve
A number of my clients are attempting to use agile as they transition from a strict waterfall to a more adaptive approach to their projects. One problem the change artists have is this: The managers, product managers, and maybe even the customers want to define all the requirements up front. I have not found the
I see people measure all kinds of things in projects. Too often, they are single-point or single-dimension measurements. Those measurements don’t provide you with a good idea about the health of your project. They might be a start. However, they are insufficient. Imagine you, like me, would like to lose some weight. You weigh yourself
I read the Business Week opening remarks, How Optimism Strengthens Economies. See this quote at the end: the group of people who turn out to be most accurate about predicting how long it will take to complete tasks—and how likely they are to succeed—are the clinically depressed. Optimists underestimate how difficult it will be to succeed.
I was recently talking with an executive recruiter. “I’ve been recruiting managers for years, but in the last couple of years, it seems more tricky. My clients don’t exactly know what they want, and it seems as if everyone’s had an ‘untraditional’ career path. What’s going on?” Managers are people too—so why is recruiting managers