We all know the story about the emperor’s new clothes. I’ve been thinking about prioritization and scheduling, and as far as I know, no one is promoting that we maximize value – they (and we) have been promoting that we do the most valuable stuff first. Doing the most valuable things first does not result in getting value the fastest. In this article, we show why not.
Category Archives: Prioritization
Posted in Business Analysis, Expert systems, Prioritization, Product Management, Project Management, ROI, Requirements, Requirements Models, Use Cases
Tagged managing data, optimization, Prioritization, prioritizing use cases, time boxes, time boxing, timeboxes time-boxes, timeboxing, use cases, value maximization
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Gadgets And Goals
What makes the best gadgets great? An understanding of goals and attention to design details. When we take a step back from writing requirements about software, and think about gadgets and goals – the perspective can help us write better requirements and make better prioritization decisions.
Nexus – Third Alpha Release Prioritization
The second release of nexus went live today (build 127). It included the top features from our prioritized list published yesterday. This enabled the next use case from our first prioritized list of use cases – searching the articles. We also took this opportunity to refactor part of the user interface – adding pagination of articles and search results, and reworking the presentation of the article content based on user feedback.
In this article we look at the content of the third alpha release of nexus.
Posted in Agile, Agile Project: Ratings, Prioritization, Product Management, Requirements, Software development
Tagged agile case study, agile project, agile requirements management, agile software development, managing data, nexus, prioritizing requirements, requirements prioritization
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Nexus – Next Round of Prioritization
The next build of nexus starts today as our agile project continues. Let us know what stuff you think is most important for this release, as part of our prioritization.
APR: Process Deviation?
Rolf presented a valid critique and some questions on our previous article announcing the launch of nexus. I started writing a long response, and realized it would work well as an article for analysis of our process over the last month. Here it is.
APR: Scope and Vision – Vote On It
In the discussion on our article about understanding users as part of our agile software development case study, Rolf raised an interesting question about the scope and vision of having people rate articles:
I’m wondering what an ‘article’ is. Does it have characteristics? Is it just some piece of knowledge (I’d say: yes), or even just a reference to a piece of knowledge?
Is it important that an article is readily accessible from the site (that would exclude training courses, books, …)? My answer: no, even a hint for a good book or a reputed company would be of help to the personas.
This article has a poll asking for your inputs. Read the rest of the article …
Posted in Agile, Agile Project: Ratings, Prioritization, Product Management, Requirements, Software development
Tagged agile case study, agile project, agile requirements management, agile software development, example requirement prioritization, kano example, managing data, prioritization of requirements, requirements prioritization
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How To Start The Use Case Process For Agile Software Development
One of the goals of agile software development is to deliver value quickly and iteratively. One of the most effective ways to begin the software development process is with use cases. To deliver with agility, you start with the most valuable use case, bang it out, and then move on to the next most valuable use case. How do you know which use case is the most valuable if you haven’t defined all the use cases first?
Posted in Agile, Business Analysis, Prioritization, Product Management, Project Management, Requirements, Requirements Models, Requirements gathering, Software development, Use Cases
Tagged agile development, agile requirements, agile requirements process, agile software development, managing data, software development process, use case process, use cases, user centric design
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Prioritization With ROI and Utility
Prioritization with ROI is generally thought of as a quantitative analysis. For hard ROI, that is true. For soft ROI, it is anything but true. You have to make a prediction of the utility of the requirement or feature. That predicted utility is based on our expected utility, which is based on your past experiences. Your past experiences are reflected in remembered utility, which is a function of experienced utility. How can you know with certainty, and use that to prioritize requirements or features?
Posted in Business Analysis, Prioritization, Product Management, ROI, Requirements
Tagged agile software, calculating return on investment, calculating roi, expected value, fixed costs, managing data, measuring roi, net present value, NPV, Prioritization, return on investment, risk, ROI, software cost estimate, utility, variable costs
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Differentiate Your Product – Circumvent Comparisons
Look Ma! Me Too! The temptation to compete against a checklist can be overwhelming. When we have a competitor who provides 100 of this or 200 of that, it might seem smart to offer 200 of this and 300 of that. We’ll be better off if we focus instead on creating the other thing. The best way to compete is to valuably differentiate our product, not outdo our competition.
More is better features are just that – more is better. But more of the same old thing is worth a whole lot less than some of something else.
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