7 Agility in product management

 

This chapter covers

  • How product managers play central roles in well run Agile projects
  • The value of simplicity
  • How to listen to customers
  • How to avoid the traps in incrementalism
  • How to do competitive analysis
  • How to position the product management role in a project
  • How to use product road maps
  • How to avoid product management failures

In parallel with the shortage of project managers that are trained beyond the level of an Agile boot camp, there is a shortage of product management expertise for software creation.

A product manager with experience in software product creation will be able to inform and shape how enterprise leadership organizes product priorities, and how product concepts can be organized into a coherent whole. Product managers also provide quantitative inputs to senior management decisions. They research how a product's capabilities compare, on a point-by-point basis, and as a whole, with competitors’ products.

Crucially, good product management will enable enterprise, product, and software development leaders to decide which features of competitors' more mature products are less important to competitiveness. Without deciding which features a product does not need to match, achieving agility will be much harder.

7.1 Great product management is a large part of Agility

Asking the right questions increases the odds of success in many contexts for projects managed using the Agile approach.

7.2 Start with simplicity

7.2.1 Simplicity seems easy, saying “no” is hard

7.2.2 Simplicity and the minimum viable product

7.3 The art of listening to the customer

7.3.1 Customers are often wrong

7.3.2 The best customers

7.3.3 Non-customers are sometimes wise

7.3.4 The lead user

7.4 Incrementalism is insufficient

7.4.1 The road to incrementalism

7.4.2 Local optimization

7.4.3 It takes vision to see the most valuable goals

7.5 The hard but necessary work of product management

7.5.1 Channels

7.5.2 Competitors and their products’ features

7.5.3 Regulation

7.6 Product management sits at the crossroads of influences

7.6.1 Coders don’t understand sales and vice versa

7.6.2 Product management captured by sales is weak

7.6.3 Product management dominated by software developers is unrealistic

7.7 No bad feature ideas

7.7.1 Road maps

7.7.2 Road maps in the planning stage

7.7.3 Deferred decisions and the making of a strong road map:

7.7.4 Goals and the road map