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[Pages:60]The Leading Reference for technology-based products

Product M anagement Journal

Volume 7 ?10 / 10/ $14 Updated

Contents

Agile Everything you need to know about Agile p04

Scrum What it is and how it works p11

Focus How to survive and prosper with Agile p20

Discovery Tools to build market insight and customer empathy p23

Agile has to scale We explain the different approaches p30

Tools Software to help you manage requirements p39

A guide to Zen Agile A guest blog with bite p40

Product Management / Agile fit How does product management fit with Agile? p49

Insight: What's the point of Product Management in Agile? You still need product leadership p58

Agile

And its impact on product people

product

Product Management Journal Volume 7

1

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Product Management Journal Volumew7 ww.

INTRODUCTION

W elcome Leading the way for Product Managers

So what does Agile and Scrum mean for product people? You may be working in a software company that has always used Agile development approaches like Scrum. You might be encountering Agile for the first time and wondering what value it can bring to your business. Maybe you've been asked to take on the Product Owner role. Our aim in this journal is to give you a basic understanding of what it's all about and importantly, what it means to you as someone managing products. Agile is now established as the dominant approach when developing software products. Whilst there has been widespread adoption and undoubted benefits, the traditional Waterfall approach is still used in a vast number of organizations. We want to sift the hype from the reality and help you talk sensibly about Agile.

Who's who? The Product Management Journal is published by Product Focus as an independent publication for Product Managers with technology-based products. Product Focus was founded and is run by Ian Lunn (top) and Andrew Dickenson.

The founders continue to deliver many of Product Focus's training courses and reviews alongside their team of senior consultants.

To get all our previous journals, and receive the latest copy, sign-up at

The Leading Reference for technology-based products

Product Management Journal

volume 1 ?10 / 10

Contents

Go-to-market checklist How to make your launch successful p04

Good timing Dates to chooce and avoid for launch p07

Relaunching A golden opportunitiy for you p11

Taking the lead Ge ing the most from lead customers p14

Insight: Post launch The hidden challenge of maintaining momentum p22

Launching

Hit the ground running and what not to do

product

The Leading Reference for technology-based products

Product Management Journal

volume 2 ?10 / 10

Contents

Developing a proposition The importance of unearthing what customers value p04

Persona profiling Ge ing into your customers shoes p08

Thinking big Propositions for big so ware products p12

Listen and learn Customer feedback need not cost the earth p14

Insight: The power Why product managers need propositions p22

Propositions

How to build sharper propositions that really work

product

The Leading Reference for technology-based products

Product Management Journal

volume 3 ?10 / 10

Contents

Succeeding in a downturn How to stay ahead when the market is going down p04

Tools for managing requirements Cut time to market, reduce errors andimprove communications p09

Outsourcing The pros and cons for product management p10

Job searching What to do if the worst happens p16

Insight: Voice of the market Do you have your finger on the pulse? p22

Recession

Staying ahead in a downturn The product managers guide

product

The Leading Reference for technology-based products

Product Management Journal

volume 4 ?10 / 10

Contents

How to build a business case Step-by-step guide plus Top 10 Excel tips p04

7 common mistakes How to spot the warning signs p06

Scenario planning and sensitivty analysis Separating fact from fiction p10

An idiot's guide to finance Key financial jargon and terminology explained p18

Insight: Lies, damn lies and business cases Is being objective really rewarded? p22

Business Cases

How to create outstanding business cases that deliver results

product

The Leading Reference for technology-based products

Product Management Journal

volume 5 ?10 / 10

Contents

How to price The key to effective pricing p04

The psychology of pricing How to get inside your customer's mind p07

Pricing structures What are they and which ones work best? p11

So ware pricing Options and terminology p14

Insight: Take control of pricing Why it's vital to get involved p22

Pricing

Se ing the optimum price Tips, tactics and theory

product

The Leading Reference for technology-based products

Product Management Journal

volume 6 ?10 / 10

Contents

The role What does a product manager do anyway? p04

Leadership tools Product manager personas and 20 things to make you great p08

Starting up How to introduce product management for the first time p10

How are we doing? Measuring product management p15

Carve-up Spli ing responsibilitiies across multi-nationals p18

Insight: Motivation How happy is your donkey? p22

Leading

Product management and product marketing teams

product

The Leading Reference for technology-based products

Product Management

Journal

volume 7 ?10 / 10

Contents

Agile Everything you need to know about Agile p04 Scrum What it is and how it works p11 Focus How to survive and prosper with Agile p20 Discovery Tools to build market insight and customer empathy p23 Agile has to scale We explain the different approaches p30 Tools So ware to help you manage requirements p31 A guide to Zen Agile A guest blog with bite p40 Product Management / Agile fit How does product management fit with Agile? p49 Insight: What's the point of Product Management in Agile? You still need product leadership p58

Agile

And its impact on product managers

product

The Leading Reference for technology-based products

Product Management Journal

volume 8 ?10 / 10

Contents

Market analysis How to research and analyse your market p04

Talking to customers What are they really thinking? p06

Research A how-to guide p10

Understanding competitors Who are they and how to compete p16

Insight: The analyst racket Conflicts of interest - a risky game p22

Market Analysis

Understanding markets, customers and the competition

product

The Leading Reference for technology-based products

Product Management Journal

volume 9 ?10 / 10

Contents

Roadmaps How to build the perfect roadmap P04

Masterclass Advanced ideas and strategy p06

Ideas Sounrces and how to prioritise p10

Tools To help you roadmap p18

Insight: Roadkill Do agile and roadmaps conflicr? p22

Roadmaps

Compelling roadmaps that align everyone to your vision

product

The Leading Reference for technology-based products

Product Management Journal

volume 10 ?10 / 10

Contents

Requirements The big picture p04

Marketing Requirements Document (MRD) Se ing the scene p07

User stories How to write user-centred requirements p11

Demanding? Tools to help you prioritise p15

Be prepared 6 things to sort out before you start p18

Insight: Go deeper The problem is the problem p22

Requirements

How to make sure they deliver

product

The Leading Reference for technology-based products

Product Management Journal

volume 11 ?10 / 10

Contents

Training The options p04

Review Pre-trianing assessment and analysis p08

Product management tube-map The things product managers should know about p12

Performance! Making training stick p14

Justificaiton ROI and other models p17

Insight: Professional Are you a well-intenionted amateur? p22

Training

...why it's needed and how to make sure it delivers

product

The Leading Reference for technology-based products

Product Management Journal

volume 12 ?10 / 10

Contents

Product strategy What is product strategy and why is it important p04

10 excuses Why not do a product strategy p9

Tools for strategy development Playing to win, Blue Ocean strategy and other tools p10

Portfolio analysis Managing the whole product set p16

Insight: Strategic failure More than a vision - it has to deliver p22

Strategy

Se in g the foundation for effective product plans

product

The Leading Reference for technology-based products

Product Management Journal

volume 13 ?10 / 10

Contents

Product management Explained in a nutshell p04

The big issues What are the big issues that come up time and time again? p06

Smart businesses The 7 things smart product managers and teams do p10

Insight: But I'm only a product manager Take a lead to improve performance p22

Take control

Pu ing product management in the driving seat

product

The Leading Reference for technology-based products

Product Management Journal

volume 14 ?10 / 10

Contents

Product Marketing What is it? p04

The basics Right message, right people, right place, right time p08

Planning The delivery of marketing materials p14

Personas Ge inng `under the skin' of our customers p16

Inbound marketing Going digital to a ract and convert leads p18

Insight: Artist and expert Never underestimate the value of product marketing p22

Product Marketing

Ge ing products in front of customers and making sure they sell

product

The Leading Reference for technology-based products

Product Management Journal

volume 15 ?10 / 10

Contents

What is in-life? An explanation p04 Measure what ma ers In-life metrics and reporting p08

Documentation Top tips and what you should have in place p12

Time well spent Focus on what's important p14

End-of-life How to successfully withdraw a product p18

Insight: Where the rubber hits the road The importance of in-life vs new product development p22

In-Life

Making sure your product delivers when it ma ers

product

Product Management Journal Volume 7

3

OVERVIEW

Agile

Everything you need to know about Agile

"When you have an Agile mindset you accept the fact that you face uncertainty. You approach things in a way that allows you to continuously learn and adapt. You seek to remove that uncertainty."

Kent McDonald, Product Manager & Founder, KBPMedia

Agile was born in the world of software development, where you can build the first version and keep adding to it or changing it to make improvements. You get to see results more quickly and because you can check and change what you do in each iteration, it lowers the risk of getting it wrong. It is an approach that accepts uncertainty and promotes experimentation and close collaboration with customers. The Agile approach is often contrasted with Waterfall methodologies where development flows through a series of phases that can take months, if not years to deliver.

The challenges of Waterfall The challenges of Waterfall come from the need to define

specifications in detail up-front (when there is often uncertainty about exactly what's needed) as well as the time it takes to get from concept to delivery.

Stakeholders, including customers, don't get to see what's being built until the very end of the process. There's a significant risk that resources get wasted building requirements that were misunderstood, `gold-plating' (over-engineering what's built), or delivering something that simply doesn't work for the stakeholders.

Also, during the long build phase, customers evolve their thinking, competitors launch products and the market can change. These change what the new product needs to be. Some requirements may no longer be needed or new requirements may need to be squeezed in so the product won't fail when launched. It's easy to get things wrong.

The attraction of Agile Agile approaches address these challenges by minimizing upfront

planning and documentation, shortening the delivery cycle and

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Product Management Journal Volume 7

WATERFALL

engaging customers (or customer proxies) frequently during the development process. These make it possible to quickly release product versions and validate that they deliver what's needed. If successful, then the initial release can be extended with small iterations. But, if the initial product doesn't fit the market need, then the decision can be made to stop investment or `pivot' to a better solution. Even if the first product is a failure, the cost to the business is low because of the short release cycle.

The mantra is... if you're going to fail, then fail fast, so you can learn quickly and either stop investing or change to something better.

Is Waterfall dead?

Waterfall or stage-gate processes still have their place. Waterfall

may still be the best option when requirements are well defined (such

as when building a standard API) or when there are projects with

complex and interconnected hardware and software components.

Even in these cases, most companies that use Waterfall are pushing

for shorter

release cycles. It's not uncommon for

Analyze

Specify

Design

companies who previously

Build Test

released every

Version 1

2-3 years to

shorten their

cycle to every 6

months ? 1 year. This gives

Version 1

Version 2

Version 3

Version 4

Version X

some of the

benefits of an

Agile approach

as there is the possibility of releasing smaller, less costly increments to

validate that the product meets market needs.

It's also frequently the case that organizations that do Agile

development have governance that uses a gated process. This enables

Changing Highly modular

Requirements Technology

Stable Interdependent

Fig. 1 Agile vs Waterfall development approaches

Product Management Journal Volume 7

5

AGILE MANIFESTO

The Manifesto for Agile Software Development

In February 2001, seventeen leading software developers got together to discuss an alternative to the heavy, documentation driven software development processes of the time. Their output was the Manifesto for Agile Software Development ? . If you read through the manifesto and particularly the 12 principles that underpin it, you will get a pretty good idea of what Agile software development is all about.

The Manifesto for Agile Software Development

We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through

this work we have come to value:

? Individuals and interactions

over processes and tools

? Working software

over comprehensive documentation

? Customer collaboration

over contract negotiation

? Responding to change

over following a plan

That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.

The 12 principles behind the Agile Manifesto are listed below: 1. Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early, continuous delivery of valuable software. 2. Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the

customer's competitive advantage. 3. Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to

the shorter timescale. 4. Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project. 5. Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust

them to get the job done. 6. The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is

face-to-face conversation. 7. Working software is the primary measure of progress. 8. Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers and users should be able to

maintain a constant pace indefinitely. 9. Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility. 10. Simplicity ? the art of maximizing the amount of work not done ? is essential. 11. The best architectures, requirements and designs emerge from self-organizing teams. 12. At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its

behavior accordingly.

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Product Management Journal Volume 7

SCRUM BUT...

senior stakeholders to validate whether planned outcomes are being achieved before committing further funding.

Agile adoption There are very few product people who are unfamiliar with the

concepts in Agile; however, its adoption is not universal. From our 2020 annual survey, we know that 35% of companies use pure Agile, 30% use a hybrid approach, 24% use Agile or Waterfall depending on their product and 11% use Waterfall only.

We're Agile but...

When product

people are asked

about which approach

11%

is used, they often say

35%

`I'm using Scrum, but...'

24%

This is because most,

Agile only Agile - Waterfall hybrid Agile on some, Waterfall on others

correctly, customize

Waterfall only

and adapt Agile

30%

practices such as

Scrum to fit with their organization's existing

Fig. 2 Approaches to development

processes and the type

of projects they are working on (and in some cases, various

organizational and behavioral malaises mean that they're really Agile in

name only).

The hybrid approaches have colorful names, for example, ScrumBan is a mix of Scrum and Kanban. Scrum-fall, WAgile or Water-Scrum-fall are where Scrum is used during development, but the surrounding business processes for market analysis, business cases, launch, etc. are Waterfall.

A 2020 survey of Agile methods by VersionOne identified the most common Agile approaches ? these are shown in the pie-chart on the

"We considered all the Agile methods as a single `toolbox' from which to select an approach that best suited our context (combining Scrum ceremonies with practices from Kanban, XP. etc.)."

next page. They affect, for example, how requirements are identified,

Paul Gibson, Ordnance Survey

prioritized and communicated. The frequency with which what's been

Product Management Journal Volume 7

7

AGILE

built will be shared and approved, as well as the processes for releasing to a live environment ready for customers to use.

Making Agile work in a business

Agile software development techniques

Scrum

have been around since the 1970's and the Agile manifesto was first

created in 2001 . With this long

58%

history, many organizations

have grown up using an Agile

development approach.

However, if a company does

Extreme Programming (XP)

1% 1%

Lean startup

3%

Don't know

4%

Iterative Development

7% 8%

10% 9%

ScrumBan

move from Waterfall to Agile, it is usually initiated by the development team

Kanban Scrum / XP hybrid

Other/Hybrid/ Multiple methodologies

Fig 3. Source: Agile methodologies. VersionOne 14th Annual State of Agile Report 2020 Note that numbers don't add up to 100% because of rounding errors

and they typically go through major re-tooling and process improvements to enable

the shift. In either case, to make Agile work, the

"Ask anyone to describe Agile, and inevitably they'll use terms like sprint, product backlog, product owner, and sprint planning.

Notice a trend?

development team need close collaboration with customers (or customer proxies) to write and prioritize requirements and to validate that what's built meets the market requirement. This is where

Those are all terms specific to Scrum that have become, for better or worse, part of the ubiquitous language of Agile. The reason for that is simple. The Scrum framework has won the market share wars as the most commonly used framework when organizations adopt Agile. That popularity leads many people to conclude that Agile = Scrum. In reality, Scrum is one of many frameworks that you can use as a starting point to approach work in an Agile fashion."

Kent McDonald, Product Manager & Founder, KBPMedia

Product Owners and Product Managers play their part ? managing requirements, signing off on work done and answering questions about customers.

But, there is a fundamental clash in many businesses. Agile by its very nature means adapting to change. It is therefore difficult to predict where you'll get to and by when.

In contrast, to run a business, senior management want to know when a product will be ready, how much it will cost and how much it will sell. In addition, there

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Product Management Journal Volume 7

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