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Praise for Agile Excellence for Product Managers"If making the move to Agile seems daunting, then read this book. Greg Cohen lays out the necessary steps to succeed with Agile."
Anar Taori, Senior Product Manager, VMware
"This book is invaluable for any product manager looking to learn how to fully leverage Agile development to create better products faster."
Bob Hsiung, Development Manager at MIT Media Lab
"There are plenty of books that explain Agile but they are mostly from the development point of view. 'Agile Excellence' provides the unique perspective of how product management professionals fit into the Agile framework and describes how Agile and product management fit together. Cohen provides a comprehensive treatise on being an Agile product manager."
Ivan Chalif, Director of Product Marketing at Alterian and Chief Blogger at TheProductologist.com
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| The Story Behind The Book |
My Darkest Hours
I have been dealt some interesting cards throughout my product
management career. Multiple times, I have been tasked with delivering a
contractually committed product on a deadline that no one in the
company believed could be met. I was once assigned to create a new
product that had no market. Last, and on more than one occasion, I
have experienced that sinking feeling when I realized I had missed a
major usage scenario well into the development of the product.
During
these times, I have thought there has to be a better way . . .
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A Better Way to Create Products
Winning products solve real problems and create real value for the customer. Product management is about uncovering these problems, determining if a large enough market exists to justify investing in in it, and working with a cross-functional product team to create a solution that can be attractively priced for the customer and deliver a healthy margin for the company.
- What do unrealistic timelines do to a team? Unrealistic timelines are one of the most pervasive problems in software development. Ambitious goals are set and sometimes customer commitments are made. Everyone wants to be the "can do" employee. Team members may raise concern once or twice. But when faced with a manager who insists that the team must make it so, they will eventually get down to work, hard work even, but never truly commit to the goal. The stress will bring the worst out in everyone, tensions will grow, and productivity will drop when it most needs to be rising. In the end, features and quality are compromised, the schedule slips, and after delivery another two to three months is needed to clean-up the release.
The true cost of unrealistic timelines: customer dissatisfaction, low employee moral, and a major loss of development capacity for the year.
- How did I know the proposed product had no market? I'm a little embarrassed to say that it didn't take much to figure this out. I spent two hours on customer calls and quickly learned the product I was asked to build would not address the needs of our larger customers and would not be affordable to our smaller customers. I then spent another two hours with customers to identify two other solutions that would cost the company less to develop and actually meet the needs of our customer base.
Total investment to avoid spending hundreds of thousands of dollars building the wrong product: 4 hours!
- What's the best way to plan for emergent requirements? Traditional serial or "waterfall" development assumes a defined process, where we work in a linear path from problem definition (i.e. requirements) to the solution (working software that solves the customer's problem.) Requirements gathering and software development, however, is more akin to new product development. It does not follow a linear path. The team cycles between problem definition and solution. Each new cycle generates new learning and better answers. In traditional development, change is disruptive and expensive. But with Agile process, change is welcome and results in a more successful solution. By working in short iterations, performing frequent inspection, validation, and adjustment, learning accelerates and new requirements are easy to incorporate.
Net result: Change is now welcome and accommodating change delivers competitive advantage.
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Agile Excellence
Agile excellence frees teams and organizations to solve their toughest problems. It is about working in short cycles, learning to see where process or product are misaligned, and adjusting accordingly. It combines many disciplines including product management, agile software development, contextual inquiry, interaction design, and lean product development. Teams focus on metrics like "Time to Value" and removing bottlenecks that delay value realization. Achieving agile excellence requires discipline but very little overhead. Productivity, quality, customer satisfaction, and employee morale all rise in lockstep.
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I wrote Agile Excellence for Product Managers as an
introduction to collaborating with Agile development teams. Adopting
these practices will solve some of the most immediate pains and is the
first step in an entirely new way to create winning products. I later
wrote Lean Product Management to explore my own personal mission to develop the techniques that will allow product managers to double their effectiveness.
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The Next Step
If you would like to discuss whether your team can benefit from these techniques to achieve new levels of success, contact us.
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