When solving complex problems at scale, we use epics, features, and stories to align, focus, and coordinate the work of multiple teams to achieve the objectives of our organizations. An epic represents the investment decision to solve a tangible problem; a collection of epics together represent a broader investment decision […]
Product Management
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Motivated Reasoning and Validating Hypotheses
In our continuing series on managing the risk in your backlog, we look at the risk of kidding ourselves. Specifically, we use cause and effect and hypotheses to identify the assumptions in our plans, but if we don’t do it the right way, we will lie to ourselves by validating […]
Product Management
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Cause & Effect and Product Risk
When deciding how to invest in your product, you need to take into account the risks that your investments will not return the outcomes you desire. One class of risks is business risk, and in product management we can influence the business risk of invalid intentionality – what I could […]
Business Analysis / Kano Analysis / Marketing / Prioritization / Product Management / Product Strategy / Requirements / Requirements gathering / Requirements Models
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Market Problem Framing Example
As Steven Haines first told me, “strategy first, roadmap second.” There is a step between the two – deciding which problems you will focus on solving with your product. Strategy defines the context for product strategy, and your product roadmap is a planning (and communication) tool for executing your product […]
Personas / Product Management / UX
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Progressively Elaborated Users
You may not need a persona right now. But you absolutely must be user-centric. Explore a pragmatic approach to understanding your users – particularly when scaling agile or transforming from waterfall.
Product Management / Product Strategy
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Product Management Synapses
A peek at the train of thought a product manager might pursue in response to a funny image, with nuggets of useful thinking in some of the passenger cars.
Agile / Product Management
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The Potential of Agile
The pop-culture concept of a silver bullet – a simple solution to a hard problem – is a dangerous idea. It can be used to over-promise, and doom a team to under-delivery. When an executive, too far removed from what makes creating products hard thinks of “agile” as a silver […]
Agile / Prioritization / Product Management / Product Strategy / Project Management / Requirements / Requirements Models / Software development / User Stories
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Agile at Scale – Outcome Driven (or Broken)
An organization attempting to use agile processes at scale must be outcome driven – without intentionality the system of delivery breaks down and operates no better than waterfall.
Product Management / Product Strategy
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Playing Whack-A-Mole With Risk
Assumptions are interesting things – we all make them all the time, and we rarely acknowledge that we’re doing it. When it comes to developing a product strategy – or even making decisions about how best to create a product, one of these assumptions is likely to be what causes […]