about 7 months ago - No comments
Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore is a classic reference book for marketers of technology products. As a review, there are a couple of key takeaways in the book that serve as reasons everyone marketing technology products should read it. First, this book’s central thesis is that in the technology adoption life cycle, the most
about 9 months ago - No comments
I recently read a copy of the book Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant. As many have observed previously, this is a great source of inspiration and food for thought, and well worth the investment of time from product managers. Blue Ocean strategy, in summary, involves examining the
about 10 months ago - 7 comments
Today’s Global Product Management Talk, a weekly realtime Twitter conversation among product management professionals, covered the topic “To Agile or Waterfall…Does it Matter?” featured John Mansour, CEO of Agile Bench. As an agile product manager, I looked forward to this conversation despite that its timing at 6pm Eastern prevented me from participating realtime. The first
about 11 months ago - 4 comments
A couple of thoughts/lessons about Agile product management were brought to my attention this week. First, a former coworker expressed that he spends time with his developers when possible to get their input when writing requirements. While technical team input is certainly warranted, some of the primary benefits of agile are harvested only when the
about 11 months ago - 3 comments
ProductCamps have been around several years now, and plenty of words have been written about the experience from all sorts of perspectives. ProductCamp Austin founder Paul Young wrote a frequently-referenced description of ProductCamp, so I won’t re-invent the wheel here. What I do want to touch on is the value ProductCamp provides to those attending
about 1 year ago - No comments
Agile Excellence for Product Managers by Greg Cohen is, in my view, the best introductory “how to and why” guide to Agile and Scrum for product managers available. There are other great resources touching on specific elements of methodology–such as Mike Cohn’s User Stories Applied–but Agile Excellence puts those techniques into context and explains the
about 1 year ago - No comments
A recent article by David Alfaro summarizes well the core competency of a product owner in scrum / agile development organizations — the ability to consume all the inputs, mix them together and design a cohesive, marketable product that will meet the needs expressed in the inputs. Not surprisingly, this sounds a lot like product
about 2 years ago - No comments
Product managers are the jacks-of-all-trades living behind the great and the ordinary products all around us. They are in charge of the product’s position in the market, its features, and ultimately its profitability. One of the biggest challenges is crafting a product that truly strikes a chord with an audience, immediately feeling comfortable. The authors
about 2 years ago - No comments
For those of us in product management, the drama unfolding in Congress with regard to the healthcare reform package is a too-familiar refrain. Without wading into the merits of the proposal on the table right now, we’ve watched a team set an initial objective to solve a specific problem (provide healthcare for the uninsured) which
about 2 years ago - 2 comments
Before I begin, I’ll issue a warning: What you are about to read is not advisable, though it is a first-hand account. (Also, I wish to credit Scott Sehlhorst for inspiring my commentary by his comment about this topic in this post about agile prioritization.) I’m currently running a large development project which is transitioning