I’ve been thinking a lot about the intersection of product and finance given my new class on financial fluency. Product managers, whether an individual contributor or a head of product, get lots of advice on how to start a new job: The critical addition often missing is this: If you’re at a startup, you might talk to the CFO. At …
In my previous post, I said that teams need to stop shipping features and focus on creating value. I promised a tactical view of how an existing organization (i.e. not a ground-floor startup) could bring about that change. I will start with a little tl:dr summary: 10 Characteristics of a Lean* product team: you are composed of small, goal-driven, cross-functional …
Too many product teams are stuck in a mish-mash of waterfall and agile. And even amongst agile dev teams, it is time they leveled up from agile 1.0. A waterfall/agile mish-mash is where the dev team attempts to be agile, but the business thinks in waterfall terms with feature roadmaps, time-based estimates, and time-based deadlines. What do I mean by …
I just wound down a project where I spent 6 months working hand-in-hand with Pivotal Labs, the respected agile/XP dev shop. It was a fabulous experience that had a strong impact on how I think about product development (more on that later). It also has changed how I interview product and UX people. Pivotal helped our mutual client interview developer …