agile PM blog
This blog captures Luke Hohmann’s freshest thoughts about Agile, product management, building great software, and the many events/meetings that he is invited to. For those who have not met Luke in person, here’s a sample of what you can expect. Or contract him at lhohmann (at) enthiosys (dot) com.
- Top Ten Signs That Your Product Manager Isn’t Agile
Here at Enthiosys we spend a lot of time helping Product Managers become Agile. In the process, we often run into developers who are really frustrated with their Product Managers’ lack of Agility...
- Enough Freeware — LET ME BUY! NOW!
OK Product Managers, listen up. The concept of freeware is great. I love freeware. I love trials. I love getting started. But stop taking this too far. When I want to buy, LET ME BUY! NOW! To illustrate the point, right now I’m working on a survey to help us better understand how our early customers are using our first online Innovation Game, Buy a Feature online...
- Enough With The Blades and Razors - Show Me Beard!
I’ve been meaning to write this blog for a long time. A conversation today finally pushed me over the edge. Hope you enjoy. I was working with a product manager, helping him better understand how to prioritize his backlog for profit. As we discussed internal and external stakeholders, he told me about some of the key problems his customers faced...
- Agile-08 Repeat Performance and Slides
The Enthiosys team just got back from the Agile conference. What an amazing conference! It was a whirlwind of activity of our company...
- Prioritizing for Profit (Part 3 of 3)
In my last two posts, I outlined many reasons why prioritizing a product backlog for ROI doesn’t work and suggested a core set of prioritization attributes that Agile Product Managers should use to prioritize their backlog...
- Developing Attributes for Product Backlog Prioritization (Part 2 of 3)
In my last post I outlined many reasons why prioritizing a product backlog for ROI doesn’t work. In this second post of a three part set, I’ll explain how experienced Agile Product Managers select prioritization attributes that enable them to efficiently prioritize their backlog to produce the best near and long-term results...
- Why Prioritizing Your Product Backlog for ROI Doesn’t Work (Part 1 of 3)
There is a problem in the Agile community. Pundits tell us to prioritize our backlogs to generate the best possible ROI. But no agile teams that I’ve ever worked for or with do this. So the pundits must be wrong, because Agile continues to provide stellar results for a lot of product teams...
- Do you want schwag or something You Can Actually Use?
A friend of mine, David Nunn, is coming to the Agile-08 conference in Toronto (are you?). In a lighthearted reply to asking David if he’s going to visit our booth, David pointed out that he’ll come by… if we have some fun schwag. Which got me thinking about schwag...
- Innovation in 3 Steps — Core Lessons from SAP
Innovation continues to be a hot topic in the business press. That’s not terribly surprising, because no matter how much cost you squeeze out of your processes, you’ve got to innovate to grow. Unfortunately, a lot of companies just flat out get Innovation wrong...
- I’m a persona!
One of my clients told me last week that I’ve become a persona in their development efforts (they’re building a really cool tool suite of tools—more on that as we get closer to the Agile conference). They actually say things like “Well, what would Luke want to do...
- Martha Amram is Coming to the Agile 2008 Conference
I know that many agilists are fan of Real Options theory. I know I’ve enjoyed discussing how mature agile teams create powerful options for the business...
- Unlike Size (of Firm), Experience (of Consultant) Matters
As Agile practices continue to be adopted by organizations, we’re seeing a substantial increase in the number of consulting firms providing services regarding Agile practices. That’s not surprising, as market demand motivates consulting firms to create supply. Unfortunately, what they’re supplying just isn’t all that helpful, and, in some cases, downright harmful...
- Purpose of the Agile Alliance
I’m sitting here in the Boston airport getting ready to fly home from a very productive Agile Alliance Board meeting. We ran most of the meeting as an open space, with all the of the virtues and some of the concerns that open space entails. One session for which the entire board had energy/passion is the purpose of the Agile Alliance...
- Don’t Let Discrete User Stories Hurt Overall Usability
I just logged into the Marriott rewards program web site to purchase some additional Marriott rewards points for my account. Unfortunately, I have to take a quick break from this task to write this blog. Now, stay with me and help me understand if this makes sense to you. I sign into the site using my Marriott rewards number and password...
- “Remember the Future” in Recruiting
Remember the Future is an Innovation Game® that enables to generate a rich and detailed understanding of what “success” looks like for products and services. But it can be used for more than just products and services...
- Top 10 Things an Architect Should Know
I’m fortunate enough to share thoughts and ideas with some of the world’s foremost software architects in a few private groups. Recently, Richard Monson-Haefel started a discussion about the top 10 things an architect should know. Of course, I contributed some ideas, and, I’m really honored that Richard thought enough of these ideas to include them in his final result...
- Entropy Reduction and Sustainable Agile Development
A recent post by Ryan Marten of Rally Software describes a “cool down” process for a team at the end of a release. In my book “Beyond Software Architecture: Creating and Sustaining Winning Solutions“ I refer to this as an entropy reduction episode...
- Some Answers to “What’s Collaboration?”
In my last post, I shared some questions I received about collaboration from Chad, a graduate student studying collaboration for his thesis. I had fun answering these questions, as I was able to revisit and reinterpret my thoughts from when I wrote “Journey of the Software Professional.” Looking forward to your thoughts and comments on this topic. 1...
- What’s Collaboration?
My friend and colleague Ken Collier introduced me to Chad, who is getting an advanced degree and is studying the concept of collaboration for his thesis. Chad’s going to interview me, and in advance of the interview sent me these questions. I’ll post my answers next, but, before reading my answers, I’m interested in hearing yours...
- Agile Alliance Dec-07 Board Meeting, Programs, Commitments
Last weekend I attended my second Agile Alliance Board meeting. The first was at the Agile Alliance conference, when I was elected, but we didn’t really cover a lot of “new ground”, as the goal of that first meeting was a hand-off from the previous Board (thank you to them for their hard work). Since then, our Board has been meeting monthly via a teleconference...
- The Agile Community
One of the most exciting and powerful aspects of Agile Software Development is the large and rich community of users that are driving its growth in so many diverse ways. To be honest, I was unaware of the size and breadth of the larger community, and the many smaller communities, until I became a member of the Agile Alliance Board...
- Do Agile Product Managers need to be experts in everything?
At last month’s BarCampBlock , several folks asked if agile product managers needed to be experts in UX (user experience, aka UI or UED) in order to get great products shipped. This questions comes up periodically, so here’s a long-ish story in response: Many years ago, I was interviewing for the job of VP, Engineering & Product Management...
- Do you you think your products are innovative?
There is a strong correlation between innovation and the enthusiasm that drives successful product managers. Product managers who perceive their products to be innovative simply produce better results...
- Business Goals Change — So Do Architectures
This month’s issue of IEEE Computer has an article “How Business Goals Drive Architectural Design”. While the authors seem to have something useful to say about how one might align a business goal with architectural design, they fail to address what I consider to be (arguably) the most important aspect of a business or an architecture: evolution over time...
- twitter
I’m at www.twitter.com/lukehohmann. Check it out