You’ve got a giant backlog of user stories and product capabilities. How do you determine which stories to implement right now? By the estimated value of each story? Pick the ones the developers want to build next? How about picking the stories that maximize the ROI of the sprint? To […]
The Impact of a Hidden Decision
Business rules are often hidden in processes as hidden decisions. Once you discover that hidden decision, how do you communicate the impact of exposing and managing the decision?
Market Driven Competitive Advantage
Your strategy should be driven by the needs of the market. Becoming market-driven is critical to intentional product success. But it is not enough to understand your market. You have to sustain your understanding, and take advantage of it, competitively.
Successful Products: Lucky or Intentional?
Is your product successful because you were lucky, or because you were methodical and intentional? Do you want to build a plan where you are dependent on good fortune, or do you want to make your own “luck?” Both approaches work, but only one makes sense as an intention. Slide […]
Use Case Management is a Tough Balancing Act
Learning how to write use cases can be tough, but it is simple compared to the balancing act of determining which use cases to write and how to manage the expectations of all the stakeholders that are involved. It can be a difficult balancing act to prioritize use cases to […]
User Adoption ROI
You want your software to be used, not to sit on the shelf. You can’t achieve the ROI of your software if people don’t use it. And you can’t achieve the ROI of your software by forcing people to use it either. Some will fail to achieve the benefits, and […]
Why Prioritization Matters
I am a big fan of boxes and arrows, but this time, Jeffrey Davidson found a great article by Dan Willis before I did, and told me about it. Thanks Jeffrey! The article is about how to deal with the what and how of requirements and design – and it […]
Prioritization and Value Maximization
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 […]
Measuring the ROI of Design
Measuring the return on investments in design may be the hardest ROI calculation you can do. It certainly is one of the rarest. To measure ROI, you have to be able to determine what would happen without the investment, and what happens with the investment. The difference between them is […]