Most people and teams conflate prioritizing and sequencing of work. Prioritization is the process of deciding what is important to do, and sequencing is deciding what order to do it in. Shaping a product strategy involves both. First you decide which problems are important to solve. Then you decide which […]
Requirements / Requirements Models / Uncategorized / User Stories
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Shifting from Tasks to User Stories
Helping teams to shift from a task-focus to writing user stories requires a different approach than simply introducing user stories as a new tool. You have to adapt the existing practices, by changing how teams think about and discuss the work they do. “Change from…” is different for people than […]
Agile / Product Management / User Stories
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How To Make Your Product Special
When evaluating a product, a customer may see the product as special, adequate, inadequate, or awful. What is uncomfortable for product teams is they have no control over how the customer sees the product. They only have influence. What teams need to learn is how to approach creating the product […]
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.
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.
Business Analysis / Product Management / Requirements / Requirements Models / User Stories
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Outside-In User Story Example
Being “outside-in”, “outcome-based”, and “market-driven” is particularly important for creating successful products. The problem is that just saying the words is not enough to help someone shift their thinking. For those of us who are already thinking this way, the phrases become touchstones or short-hand. For folks who are not […]
Business Analysis / Communication / Product Management / Requirements / Requirements gathering
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Minimum Valuable Problem
Defining and building a good minimum viable product is much harder than it sounds. Finding that “one thing” you can do, which people want, is really about a lot more than picking one thing. It is a combination of solving the minimum valuable problem and all of the other things […]
Business Analysis / Interviews / Product Management / Requirements / Requirements gathering
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Professional Services and Improving Your Product
How do you work with professional services, consulting, field engineers, etc. to make your product better? Do you just treat their inputs as yet another channel for feature requests, or do you engage them as an incredibly potent market-sensing capability?