Agile ProDUCT Management Essentials for ProJECT and ProGRAM Managers

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AGILE PRODUCT MANAGEMENT ESSENTIALS FOR PROJECT AND PROGRAM MANAGERS

Rich Mironov13 September 2012

PMI Agile Community of Practice

2W W W. M I R O N O V. C O M

• “Product guy” at 6 startups• Most recently as CEO/founder• Software as revenue

• Author• “The Art of Product Management” • Product Bytes blog• Business models, agile, organizing product teams

• Chaired first Agile product stages• Founded Product Camp

ABOUT ME


DISJOINT COMMUNITIES

ProductManagers

AgileCommunities

Not enough overlap

or shared thinking

• What does a product manager do?• Product vs. Project/Program Management• Agile, product managers and product

owners• Take-aways

AGENDA

• For commercial / revenue software…• Drives delivery and market acceptance of whole products• Targets market segments, not individual customers

• For strategic internal development…• Drives acceptance and adoption• Resolves inevitable competing priorities

WHAT DOES A PRODUCT MANAGER DO?


W W W. M I R O N O V. C O M

market information, priorities,requirements, roadmaps, epics,

user stories, backlogs, personas, MRDs…

product bits

strategy, forecasts, commitments, roadmaps, competitive intelligence

budgets, staff,targets

Field input,Market feedback

Segmentation, messages, benefits/features, pricing,

qualification, demos…

Markets & CustomersDevelopment

Marketing& Sales

Executives

ProductManagement

WHAT DOES A PRODUCT MANAGER DO?

7

PRAGMATIC MARKETING FRAMEWORK

Pricing

Buy, Build or Partner

BusinessPlan

Product Profitability

Win/Loss Analysis

Distinctive Competence

Market Problems

MarketingPlan

Customer Acquisition

Customer Retention

Program Effectiveness

BuyingProcess

Buyer Personas

UserPersonas

Positioning

Product Portfolio

Market Definition

Distribution Strategy

InnovationCompetitive Landscape

Technology Assessment

Lead Generation

Thought Leadership

Referrals & References

LaunchPlan

UseScenarios

Require- ments

Status Dashboard

Product Roadmap

Presentations & Demos

EventSupport

“Special”Calls

ChannelSupport

Channel Training

SalesProcess

Collateral

SalesTools

BusinessMarket ProgramsPlanningStrategy SupportReadinessBusinessMarket ProgramsPlanningStrategy SupportReadiness

ProductMarketingManager

Technical Product Manager

Director of Product Strategy

© 1993-2009 Pragmatic Marketing, Inc. All rights reserved

Good product managers drive customer-relevant

decisions (choices) despite uncertainty and

contradictory goals


• No natural sequence • Intensely interrupt driven• Bottom-up meets top-down

• Demands strategy, judgment andintegration as well as execution

PRODUCT MANAGEMENT RHYTHM


W W W. M I R O N O V. C O M 10

IDEAL CANDIDATE

• What does a product manager do?• Product vs. Project / Program

Management• Agile, product managers and product


AGENDA

Disclaimers• No role/title consistency• Unclear division of labor• Execs create novel organizations• Each tech company is

uniquely dysfunctional• Good teams make things work

in spite of titles and roles

PRODUCT, PROJECT, PROGRAM?

• Project/Program Managers tasked with how to deliver• Not-so-secretly worry about

market success

• Product Managers tasked with what to build (and when)• Not-so-secretly worry about delivery,

quality, completeness

ONE PROBLEM, TWO VIEWPOINTS

• Product Management: more outward-facing market-visible decisions• What FEATURES/BENEFITS are market segments

demanding?• How are we POSITIONED and PRICED versus competitors? • WHICH must-ship feature will we DROP first? • SALES impact of slipped dates? Commitments?

• Project/Program Management: more inward-facing resource allocation decisions• HOW should we get this done? WHO works on what?• WHEN will it actually ship?• Have we defined and met QUALITY goals?• What outside RESOURCES could speed things up?

IN A PERFECT ORGANIZATION…

Product managers sense the market by…• Helping close deals• Trading off conflicting

customer commitments• Sweating price/volume forecasts • Identifying novel (or terrible) user cases• Anchoring opinions with lots of

first person customer/field input

LIVING THE CUSTOMER’S REALITY

Source:Pragmatic Marketing

• What does a product manager do?• Product vs. Project / Program Management• Agile, product managers and product


AGENDA


We tend to mix…• Philosophy and religion• Process, tools, techniques, methods• Organizational design

DISCUSSIONS OF AGILE



AGILE METHODS

Extreme Program

ming (XP)

Crystal Methods

Scrum Feature Driven

Development (FDD)

Test Driven

Development (TDD)

Dynamic Systems

& Development Model (DSDM)

Lean & Lean Startup

Agile Project

Management

Framework (APM)

Rational Unified Process (RUP)

Rapid Applicatio

n Development (RAD)

• Why development teams want Agile• Focus more on developing, not SDLC• More quality, fewer peaks and valleys• Build what customers want• Move the bottleneck elsewhere

• What executives want from Agile• Get more done (more “ROI”)• Faster, more predictable• “More responsive to market” means

they can juggle the roadmap more often

DIFFERENT MOTIVATORS

20

WHY NOT WATERFALL?

Waterfall projects rarely

deliver according to

plan

Requirements and estimates

Coding and unit test

System integration &

QA

Operation and maintenance

Design


AGILE’S INNER LOOP

From Mike Cohn


AGILE’S STRATEGIC OUTER LOOP (PdM)

22

•Markets•Customers•Biz Models•Strategy•Portfolios•Funding

•Customers•Sales•Marketing•Support•Upgrades•EOL/EOS


PRODUCT MANAGER, PRODUCT OWNER

• Most agilists think about “product owners”• Formal part of agile team• Needs to be physically present• Driving user stories and sub-iteration decisions• Showcases are primary method of customer input

• Most product managers are not agilists• Majority of work to deliver products (revenue) happens outside

Engineering• Interacts with markets directly, not filtered through Sales or Marketing• Servicing multiple inbound and outbound queues


PRODUCT OWNER’S CALENDAR

Borrowed from Catherine Connor, Rally



market information, priorities, epics, user stories,

backlogs, personas…

product bits

Markets & CustomersDevelopment

Marketing& Sales

Executives

ProductManagement

‘Small p’ PRODUCT OWNER

26

ADAPTED PRAGMATIC FRAMEWORK

Pricing

Buy, Build or Partner

BusinessPlan

Product Profitability

Win/Loss Analysis

Distinctive Competence

Market Problems

MarketingPlan

Customer Acquisition

Customer Retention

Program Effectiveness

BuyingProcess

Buyer Personas

UserPersonas

Positioning

Product Portfolio

Market Definition

Distribution Strategy

InnovationCompetitive Landscape

Technology Assessment

Lead Generation

Thought Leadership

Referrals & References

LaunchPlan

UseScenarios

Require ments

Status Dashboard

Product Roadmap

Presentations & Demos

EventSupport

“Special”Calls

ChannelSupport

Channel Training

SalesProcess

Collateral

SalesTools

Business

MarketProgram

sPlannin

gStrateg

ySupport

Readiness

Business

MarketProgram

sPlannin

gStrateg

ySupport

Readiness

product owner

backlog,

accept work

epics & stories

burn down/up


PdM/PO FAILURE MODES

Product Manager fails agile team if• Part-time, disengaged• Stories lack detail• Stale backlog• Best of intentions, but pulled

in too many directions

• Not buffering team from customer/ sales interruptions

• “Build what I meant”

Product Owner fails marketplace if• Weak on market realities:

pricing, packaging, selling, upgrades, service models, discounting, competitive dynamics

• Disconnected from Marketing, Sales, Support

• Trading off company-wide strategy for product features

• Confuses showcase customers with broader market



ONE PdM/PO ORGANIZATIONAL MAP

ProductManagers

GM / VP Eng / VP Prod / CPO

ProductOwners

more technical more market-focused


• Product management struggles with market success, product sufficiency and inconsistent customer segments

• Project management struggles with resources, timelines and unreasonable commitments

• IMHO, simple product owner role fails to address market complexities

• We need to work together to ship great products!

TAKE-AWAYS


CONTACTMironov Consulting233 Franklin St, Suite #308San Francisco, CA 94102

RichMironov

@RichMironov

[email protected]

Agile ProDUCT Management Essentials for ProJECT and ProGRAM Managers

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