Skip to main content

Agile Product Management

In the realm of software development, agile and iterative processes have been in vogue for a number of years. For those unfamiliar with the concept, agile processes contrast with waterfall processes. A waterfall process looks like:

1. Define the requirements the product must satisfy.
2. Analyze the requirements and produce models of the domain.
3. Design the product.
4. Implement the product.
5. Test the product.

The hope is that you perform each step so thoroughly that any retracing or repetition of steps in the process is minimal. Unfortunately, vast amounts of real-world experience shows that waterfall processes fail. It goes without saying that testing typically reveals mistakes developers make during the design and implementation steps, resulting in some redesigning, re-implementing, and retesting.

However, the most significant failure of the waterfall process stems from the fact that requirements are practically impossible to define adequately up front. Customers do not know exactly what they want, and even the most skilled product manager cannot elicit all of a product's requirements without trial and error. Implementing the product and demonstrating it to prospective customers almost always results in the discovery of new requirements or the recognition of errors in the original requirements.

Agile processes, in contrast, assume up front that retracing is inevitable, so they incorporate iterations in the process. With iterations, you perform the steps to yield a working version of the product for review. You then revisit the steps, incorporating the discoveries you've made and fleshing out further functionality. To help maintain discipline, you may time-box the iterations, meaning that you set a fixed amount of time to complete each iteration, and schedule the tasks to complete within each iteration accordingly.

Unfortunately, while product development teams have at least attempted to use agile processes, most companies do not formally include product management in the iteration cycle. Companies assume that the product manager's role in defining product requirements ends when he "throws them over the wall" to the designers and developers. This practice defeats a large part of the purpose of agile product development.

At Cauvin, Inc., we urge our clients to incorporate our product management and market research services in an agile product development process. Even if we can't integrate directly with a client's process, we at least produce our deliverables (product requirements, market segmentation, buyer profiles, messaging recommendations, etc.) iteratively, starting with templates and incrementally fleshing them out on a weekly basis. That way we can ensure that clients receive the information they need, in a format they can use.

Comments

Gaurav said…
Nice article, Roger.

I completely agree with you.

Even though product development is becoming agile in many organization, the consumers of these products (mostly internal) are not ready yet to cope up.

Agile Community needs to come up with guidelines for all other elements surrounding product development - product management, marketing, sales, support et all

Popular posts from this blog

Why Spreadsheets Suck for Prioritizing

The Goal As a company executive, you want confidence that your product team (which includes all the people, from all departments, responsible for product success) has a sound basis for deciding which items are on the product roadmap. You also want confidence the team is prioritizing the items in a smart way. What Should We Prioritize? The items the team prioritizes could be features, user stories, epics, market problems, themes, or experiments. Melissa Perri  makes an excellent case for a " problem roadmap ", and, in general, I recommend focusing on the latter types of items. However, the topic of what types of items you should prioritize - and in what situations - is interesting and important but beyond the scope of this blog entry. A Sad but Familiar Story If there is significant controversy about priorities, then almost inevitably, a product manager or other member of the team decides to put together The Spreadsheet. I've done it. Some of the mos

Interaction Design: the Neglected Skill

Your product development organization has a big, gaping hole in it. (Be prepared to feel defensive as you continue reading.) One of the most important roles in product development is the role of interaction designer. An interaction designer designs how the users will interact with the product and conceptualize the tasks they perform. He decides whether, for example, the user interface will be command driven, object oriented (clicking on objects then specifying what to do with them), or wizard based. The interaction designer decides the individual steps in the use cases. Every company has one or more people that play the interaction designer role. Usually, those people have little or no expertise in interaction design. Sadly, they typically don't even realize how unqualified they are. Let's see who typically plays the role at companies. Engineer . An engineer is an expert on building what is designed. Yes, an engineer may know how to design the internal structure of the hardware

Stop Validating and Start Falsifying

The product management and startup worlds are buzzing about the importance of "validation". In this entry, I'll explain how this idea originated and why it's leading organizations astray. Why Validate? In lean startup circles, you constantly hear about "validated learning" and "validating" product ideas: The assumption is that you have a great product idea and seek validation from customers before expending vast resources to build and bring it to market. Indeed, it makes sense to transcend conventional approaches to making product decisions . Intuition, sales anecdotes, feature requests from customers, backward industry thinking, and spreadsheets don't form the basis for sound product decisions. Incorporating lean startup concepts , and a more scientific approach to learning markets, is undoubtedly a sounder approach. Moreover, in larger organizations, sometimes further in the product life-cycle, everyone seems to have an opinio