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.
- Enthiosys in 2010
Although we’re nearly done with Q1 2010 I thought it was high time to share with our clients and the world the very exciting new journey we have started this year with some changes to the team, vision and structure of Enthiosys...
- What we’re all about…
I’m proud to be speaking at the Business of Software conference on Nov 11, 2009 on how Innovation Games® and collaborative play can create breakthrough products and services. I’m proud because I’ve long admired Joel Spolsky’s work...
- Ad Hoc Collaboration Is NOT Instantaneous Collaboration
I’ve been thinking quite a bit about many of the blogs and demos that I’ve seen over the years about ad hoc/unstructured collaboration. I’ve had to, because as we’ve moved from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 to the Collaborative Web, we’re being bombarded by an increasing number of these concept videos—and some pretty interesting, early stage product offerings...
- Market Problems or Just (Bad) Ideas You Want To Build?
Our partner Pragmatic Marketing recently released an updated version of the celebrated Product Marketing Framework. The change that I feel is most significant is the movement of Market Problems to the top left position in the framework—the most important spot (for English readers)...
- You Want Actionable, Not Final
We’ve just launched Innovation Games online at www.innovationgames.com. YEAH. It has been a labor of love. And while our fledgling software needs so many improvements in so many dimensions, we’re still amazed at the results our games can produce. One of the design principles that we used in creating innovationgames...
- Power Curves and User Generated Content
We know that UGC systems have a power curve—few users generate a lot of content. I suspect that the many simplist ideation submission systems that are currently flooding the market are creating a similar power curve of processing the ideas. That’s likely to be really dangerous...
- Really Bad is MUCH Better than Nothing and Really Great Isn’t Much Better than Bad
Product Managers, Agile or otherwise, are asked to create a fair number of documents. Even when we’ve replaced our “Big” MRDs with vision Statements, Roadmaps, and Backlogs, most of us are still expected to clearly document: Who we’re serving (e.g., target markets, market segments) Why they care (e.g., benefits of product often expressed in ROI) Why we care (e.g...
- Top Five Product Management Books
Many years ago I ran the Education group at ObjectSpace. I had an amazing group of instructors working for me, many of whom have gone on to very successful careers as developers, consultants, and educators. I’m grateful for all that I learned, and continue to learn, from that amazing crew...
- New Product, Upgrade Existing Product, or End-of-Life? Yes. Maybe.
One common misconception about roadmaps is that they’re all about the future. This perception is fortified by the use of roadmapping formats, including one of the formats that we prefer here at Enthiosys, that are indeed focused on the future...
- Executing on our Roadmap… Sharing our Agile Themes
(Scott Gilbert, guest blogger) Back in December, I wrote a post titled “We Roadmap and So Should You”. I talked about how Enthiosys uses a variant of our product roadmapping techniques to organize and coordinate the execution of our key processes, programs and projects...
- Agile CMMi or Agile Competing Competencies
In the early 1990’s, when I was at the Univ of Michigan, I had the good fortune to be selected to write the initial software that helped Bob Quinn and his team (including Dan Dennison) in the development of their Competing Values Model for assessing organizational effectiveness. The results of their research culminated in their book Becoming a Master Manager: A Competency Framework...
- Images Needed!
I need free images that meet the following criteria: Large Images: Resolution – 593 X 585 Background – White Borders – None Type – gif/ jpg Small Images (Apple, Orange, Banana, Circles, Dots, Squares, Dogs, Cats, Starts, Cows, animals, etc): Resolution – 25 X 25 Background – transparent Borders – None Type – gif Please send me images! Thanks! Luke
- Market problems are still THE problem — even when you’re Agile!
On Feb 18, 2009 I was the lead facilitator for a market research event run by Borland and Enthiosys on how Agile teams identify, express, organize, prioritize, and validate requirements in Agile projects.Quite naturally, the event was based on Innovation Games, which created a seriously fun and inviting context to explore these topics...
- Agile Sales and Marketing
In an earlier post I complained about the relatively myopic focus of proposals submitted to the Agile Product Management stage for the 2009 Agile Conference. I’m excited to report that Teicko Huber of www.focus2grow.com has responded to my challenge, posting a talk on how Scrum-influenced Agile can improve Sales and Marketing. I invite you to look at this talk, and comment...
- Important Lessons in Pairing – From a Designer’s Perspective
As part of our blossoming partnership with cooper, I had the good fortune to sit in one one full day of cooper’s Interaction Design Practicum. Kim Goodwin (recent author of _Designing for the Digital Age: How to Create Human-Centered Products and Services) was the instructor. Throughout the class, she emphasized the importance of pairing in design...
- How To Sound Smart (But Be Really Naive) About Dramatic Changes in Technology
Adam Bullied posted an apparently naïve question on his blog, inviting readers to take simplistic views of agile product management as identical to traditional product management, or as a completely different animal. Lots of folks piled on, creating a patchwork of comments and opinions that don’t address the interesting question of how product manage has evolved under Agile...
- Product Management Through The Eyes of a Product Owner
I’ve finally finished adding two submissions to the 2009 Agile Alliance conference. My first submission is my very popular “Prioritizing for Profit” talk on how a product manager should approach the prioritization of a backlog based on backlog items that drive profit and avoid ROI prioritization schemes...
- Special 2-Day Innovation Games Class at Cooper U, Mar 30/31, 2009
I’m very pleased to announce that Enthiosys is teaming up with Cooper to teach a special, two-day Innovation Games® class at Cooper U in San Francisco. I’m very honored – and excited – to be working with Alan Cooper and his team of talented designers. For those of you who attended Agile 2008, you know that Alan really “rocked the house” with his presentation...
- Aligning Compensation is Harder Than Aligning Goals
One of the well-known virtues of Agile development is the focus on frequently delivering valuable, working software to our customers. In practice, this results in the establishment of a variety of well-defined goals at all layers of the planning flame...
- I’m Vigilance, the superhero who…
I’m proud that Enthiosys has recently joined the Qualitative Research Consultants Association (QRCA). I’ve been selected for a “new member” interview. They sent me a list of pretty interesting questions, which they’ll post on their web site...
- Roadmaps and Feature Relationships
Our approach to developing agile product roadmaps emphasizes the evolution of products. Sometimes, this is best captured through a time-centric format, such as the format I first described in my book Beyond Software Architecture and described by Scott Gilbert and Jeff Brantley in their recent webinar...
- We Roadmap and So Should You
{Scott Gilbert, Enthiosys President} Here at Enthiosys World Headquarters, it’s time to start working on our 2009 corporate goals and plans. Like most companies we have a good idea of who we are and what we want to become, in other words “a vision”. Like most companies we have to pursue that vision one day, one week, month, quarter and year at a time...
- Distribute the team? Distribute the pain!
We’re seeing an increasing number of clients with distributed Agile development teams. Although this runs somewhat counter to simplistic views of Agile development practices, which focus on co-located teams, it is a much more realistic reflection of actual global development practices. Global, agile teams are here to stay...
- Prioritization and the Connected Leader
Project portfolio prioritization is a tough job. Even when times are good, you can’t undertake every project. When times are bad, you not only have to take on fewer new projects, you have to revaluate your portfolio and stop ongoing projects. Stopping projects, in turn, is a part of common sense portfolio management...
- Enthiosys Survey on Prioritization
Buy a Feature is an Innovation Game® designed to help you understand stakeholders preferences for prioritizing such things as product features and project portfolios. Enthiosys is in the process of developing an online version of this game at www.buyafeature.com...