I have always loved the General George Patton quote: “Don’t tell people what to do; tell them what you need accomplished, and you’ll be amazed at the results.” Unfortunately, typical roadmaps do just what the General warned against – they...
NOTE: This article is a narrative version of a talk I’ve given for developers at the Craft Conference and for product managers and designers at Mind The Product. In this article I’d like to discuss the root causes of so many...
Virtually every leading tech company has jumped on the empowered, dedicated/durable, cross-functional, collaborative product team bandwagon, and I think things are much better for it. I don’t see very many companies that are still using the old models (primarily the pool...
The role of the product organization is to consistently deliver significant new value to the business through continuous product innovation. At a startup, the product team either innovates and provides real value or the startup dies. However, in larger, more...
I have always been interested in taking the holistic view of product teams and understanding and appreciating each and every critical role. In a recent article I wrote about the dynamics of strong teams versus weak teams, and judging from...
NOTE: My friend and colleague Jeff Patton is the author of a book on the general topic of User Stories and especially the technique of Story Mapping. I was asked to write a foreword for this new book, and this...
In my last article, I discussed the power of milestones and I promised I’d talk about one of my favorite techniques for rapidly delivering on milestones. First, as a reminder, by milestone I mean delivering on some significant achievement for your business....
In this article I wanted to talk about a concept that seems to be increasingly missing in product teams. I find too many product teams just pounding away on the product backlog, story by story. Too many members of the...
Much has been written about waste at startups. I started writing about this as far back as 2005 (see Startup Product Management), and this concept is at the core of the Lean Startup movement. Lately there’s been much talk and ink...
This article is a little bit different, but if you make it to the last paragraph, I’m hoping it will help better explain where I’m coming from. In the spirit of the inspirational This I Believe project, I thought I would share...
In my last article, I discussed how we manage public commitments in an Agile, Dual-Track environment. In that article I talked about those public commitments that are needed to run a business, such as when a customer can count on...
The past several articles have discussed the nature of Continuous Discovery. In this article I’d like to discuss another dimension of working effectively in an Agile environment, which is how we manage commitments. In most Agile teams, when you mention...
I have written recently about how product teams do product discovery in parallel with product delivery. I have also written about how teams sometimes like to time-box their product discovery work. What I’d like to write about in this article...
Recently I was with my friend Jeff Patton, one of the pioneers in applying Agile to product organizations, and he told that he has been advocating the term “Opportunity Backlog” as an alternative to the product roadmap. I have written...
One thing I love to do when I visit with companies is collect their favorite quotes and mantras. It helps me to understand their culture and their values. We all deal with certain truths about building technology products, and I...
