Writing valuable requirements is important. It doesn’t matter how well your teams execute if they are off building the wrong products / capabilities / features. The right products and capabilities are the ones that have relevant value. Valuable requirements solve problems in your market. Valuable requirements support your business strategy. […]
ProductCamp Austin Summer 2009
Austin’s 3rd UnConference for product managers and product marketing managers is coming up on August 15t. If you’re in Austin or can come to Austin, you should definitely plan on participating – it’s free, and a great opportunity to network, share, and learn.
Writing Complete User Stories
User stories can make requirements management a lot easier. They shift some of the communication from up-front documentation to ongoing dialog. That’s the main reason they work so well for agile teams. And agile teams focus on “what’s next?” instead of an ever-changing “what’s everything?” The problem is, when those […]
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.
User Goals and Corporate Goals
When defining requirements, you always start in the context of a goal – either a user goal or a corporate goal. You need to be aware of both. Having a positive user experience is important, and requires a user-centered understanding. Achieving your corporate goals might be in conflict with some […]
Advanced PERT Estimation
Creating a PERT estimate for a single task is both easy and straightforward. Creating an estimate for a set of tasks is still easy, but requires a little bit of math. Combining PERT estimates for tasks is easy, but not as obvious. Roll up your sleeves and dive in.
ProductCamps and Class Diagrams
For you product managers out there – here are a couple upcoming productcamp unconferences. For you business analysts, here’s an excuse to do a little domain modeling and practice your UML class diagram skills.
Foundation Series: Price Elasticity
When prices go up, demand goes down. But how much does it go down? Price elasticity of demand is the term economists use for the math that describes this behavior.
Pictures and Ideas for Powerful Whitepapers
Pictures can convey messages much more powerfully than words. In a recent discussion about writing whitepapers, I suggested combining the idea-creation advice from Made To Stick with the image-creation advice from Back of The Napkin. Check out this article to see some concrete examples.