Product management leaders establish the broader context for building great products and services through a combination of processes, trust-building, hiring, mentoring and cross-functional communication. Here is a seven-point strategic framework for creating conditions that can unleash great product and technical work.
The evolving role of business analysis practitioners calls for an increased focus on visual modeling, communication, client collaboration and business value over documentation and project activities, according to a recent survey of senior executives.
If an estimate isn’t going to change team behavior, it’s probably not worth the bother, says Agile thought leader Mike Cohn. But most of the time we do need estimates, and they need to be created in “safe” environments that accept truth-telling and uncertainty. [19 min.]
Transformation consultant Kathryn Kuhn of Rally discusses her presentation at Agile 2015, which explored the concept of human-centered solutions using design thinking to solve Agile’s thorniest problems, from coordinating “feral” teams to communicating with unhappy customers. [27 min.]
Problems emerge when a company tries to create products for external customers using processes meant for internal technology development. Here’s an explanation of the vast differences between the IT and product organization models, from mindset to metrics.
Bimodal IT project portfolios, which balance efficiency and accuracy with agility and speed, require outcome-centered approaches. Gartner has identified three best practices to enable PMOs to better manage any type of IT project or program within the portfolio.
The rise of big data and analytics can greatly improve an organization’s decision making, from programs and portfolios to products and processes. Here is a comprehensive checklist to help PMOs develop a framework for structuring large analytics projects, ensuring they deliver the desired business insights and impact.
While it seems to make sense to create separate backlogs for the technical and business aspects of a project, it can do more harm than good. In addition to causing team friction and inefficiencies, it negates an essential Agile benefit: delivering value based on one prioritized vision.
Writing effective user stories on Agile projects requires collaboration between the product owner and team. The effort involves agreeing on the depth of technical detail in the story, ensuring that epics are appropriately broken down, and adding acceptance criteria. Let’s look at some helpful examples for each step.
In agile projects, most requirements start out as epics, which are too big to be addressed in a single sprint. Let’s look at some examples of how epics are broken down into manageable stories through team and user collaboration, and how acceptance criteria add important details.
