People who already use Scrum will only find one new thing in this article – a way to communicate what happens inside a sprint that has proven effective for me. People who are new to Scrum who wonder “how do things work inside a sprint?” will see how things work […]
The One Idea of Your Product
“For what one idea do you want your product to stand in the mind of your customer?” I heard Roger Cauvin ask that question at the most recent ProductCamp Austin [correction – he said it here – thanks Roger], and the quote has been jumping to the front of my […]
Measuring Great Design – Mad Libs Input Form
I came across a really interesting article LukeW.com, showing how making changes to the way an input form on a website increased interaction by 25 to 40%. The changes reflect the value of thinking outside-in, investing in user experience, and performance measurement. Bonus: the idea is cool.
Most Engaging Articles of 2009
Engagement – that’s what this whole product management blogging thing is about. Check out what Tyner Blain readers found to be the most engaging articles in 2009.
Design-Free Requirements
Design-Free requirements are important for two reasons, and hard for two other reasons. Design-free requirements are hard because you “know what you want” when you should be documenting “why you want it.” Writing design-free requirements can be hard when you don’t trust your development team to “do the right thing” […]
Agile Prioritization: Which Widget?
Your company is building out a toolkit to support third-party developers. You’ll need a bunch of different types of widgets – combo-boxes, text entry fields, domain-specific controls, etc. You’ve got a long list of desired controls from your customers. You’re agile. What do you build first?
Modeling User Competency
Perpetually intermediate (competent) users. Users who briefly exist as novice users and never become experts. Most of your users are competent, and you should design for them. Competent users have different needs and different expectations than novice or expert users. How do you know your user’s competency levels, so you […]
Concise Requirements
Concise requirements give your team a useful, easy to read and easy to change understanding of what must be done. Great requirements exist to do three things: Identify the problems that need to be solved. Explain why those problems are worth solving. Define when those problems are solved.
Agile Maturity Model – What’s Next?
The maturity model approach to describing organizations and processes comes and goes out of fashion. It is a repeating framework de jour. In the game of agile jargon whack-a-mole, the agile maturity model is poking its head up again.