Michael on High-Tech Product Management and Marketing has a fantastic “wish I wrote that” post about the importance of having the right number of features. He has several references, the best of which is Kathy Sierra’s Featuritis vs. the Happy User Peak post from June 2005. The two posts combined provide great insight into why having too many features is bad, while acknowledging that too few is just as bad. In this post we will look at what we can do to apply these insights and also change the rules some, making our software more desireable than our competition.
Consulting / Process Improvement / Product Management / Project Management / Requirements / Software development
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How To Use Timeboxes for Scheduling Software Delivery
Roger had a great suggestion in the comments to our previous two-part post on scheduling requirements changes based on complexity. Roger pointed out that we had not explained what timeboxing is, but implicitly used the principles of timeboxing in our proposed process. In this post, we explain timeboxes and how they are used.
Agile / Communication / Consulting / Process Improvement / Project Management / Requirements / Software development
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Scheduling requirements changes – part 2
This process goes against agile principles on paper, but makes teams more agile in practice. Scheduling delivery of a project is an exercise in managing complexity. Scheduling changes to the requirements on the fly is really only marginally more difficult. The key to managing changes is to set expectations with our stakeholders. By defining rational deadlines for change requests, we assure ourselves that we can manage the changes. We also demonstrate responsiveness to our stakeholders. Rational deadlines are not arbitrary deadlines nor are they unreasonable deadlines. Deadlines that vary with the complexity of the changes are rational, easy to communicate, and easy to manage.
Agile / Communication / Consulting / Process Improvement / Project Management / Requirements / Software development / Use Cases
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Scheduling requirements changes – part 1
Software product success requires timely delivery. There are many factors that influence our ability to properly scope, schedule, and deliver software. When we propose changes in requirements we introduce risk to the schedule. We can set reasonable expectations for our stakeholders while maintaining a realistic work environment and schedule. In part 1 of this post we detail a requirements triage process that organizes requirements by complexity and allows us to set and meet expectations of delivery.
Product Management / Requirements / Requirements gathering
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Product Manager Role Definition
Michael has posted a great definition of the product manager role on his blog, Product Management and Product Marketing – A Definition. He covers a whole host of activities in six seperate areas. Some of the responsibilities, while not product management, are often the responsibility of the product manager. It’s a good real-world assessment of what product managers are often asked to do.
Prioritization / Product Management / Requirements
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Epicenter software design – 37signals applies Kano
Jason at 37signals has started a discussion about feature prioritization with his recent post. He describes the epicenter of software as the most important, must-have feature. He argues that this feature should always be the one that is built first, since without it you don’t have an application. This is the same approach we reccommended in our recent post about prioritizing requirements with Kano analysis. The epicenter, while critically important, isn’t sufficient to drive success for the software.
Communication / Process Improvement / Requirements / Software development / Software requirements specification / Testing
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Passing the Wrong Whitebox Tests
We’ve talked about the value of using whitebox testing in our Software testing series post on whitebox testing. What we haven’t explored is how to make sure we are creating the right tests. We have to validate our tests against the requirements. This post shows where the flaw is in the typical whitebox testing process, and how to fix it.
A reader emailed us with the comment, “It’s been my experience that developers can’t test their own code.” Their problem was that they were missing a link in the software development chain (missing a step in the process).
Communication / Product Management / Requirements / Requirements gathering / Software requirements specification
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Product management success in the conceptual age
The information age is ending and the conceptual age is beginning. In A Whole New Mind, Daniel Pink proposes that six characteristics of right-brain thinking are key to success in the new economy. Nils Davis realizes that these characteristics are embodied by good product managers today. We will define the conceptual age, review the six characteristics, and see how this applies to product management.
Requirements / Slightly off-topic
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Magic square of innovation
Marcus Ting-A-Kee has a post on his blog with a great magic square diagram describing a perspective on innovation. This framework provides us with an easy way to assess the potential impact of an innovation. We will…
* show how to use the square
* look at some example innovations
* and use the square to prioritize requirements