This article describes the continuous product improvement cycle: the foundational model I use in teaching product development. The article describes why products continuously improve and why there’s an expectation that tech products improve faster.
Category: Articles
Evaluating Product Managers
I’ve got 7 areas I think about when talking to and evaluating a product manager and here they are.
Five common story mapping mistakes
This article is really some of the common mistakes I see people and teams make when they create and work with story maps.
1. Losing the story
2. Getting lost in the details
3. Worrying too much about flow, branches, and what-abouts
4. Mapping the whole product when you’re trying to add a single feature
5. Not anchoring releases on an outcome
Underpants gnomes, Outcomes, and Intermittent Reinforcement
Organizations and the people in them irrationally and addictively build and release products that often have no real value. This article gives my best explanation why.
Product Vision is Science Fiction
This article describes my beliefs on what product vision is and isn’t.
Tension: why product development requires balancing conflicting goals
This article describes the simple language I use to describe product development: opportunity, output, outcome, and impact. But more importantly it describes the tensions and unexpected implications in the model:
- Customer problems aren’t business problems
- We can’t directly solve business problems
- On time delivery doesn’t lead to customer or business success
- Focusing on business success alone is harmful
- Focusing customer success alone is harmful
- Aligning your purpose with your organization’s purpose is really what motivates us.
Keep actual effort and outcome visible
Beam me up We all understand how a star trek transporter works. Which is surprising since it’s not real and I don’t even understand how my toaster oven works. But,…
The Mindset That Kills Product Thinking
The service provider antipattern baked into our thinking, processes, and culture. Here’s how it hurts us.
Dual Track Development is not Duel Track
If you’ve heard the term “dual-track development” before, this article explains where it comes from, and what it means.
Backlog Grooming Bugs Me
[et_pb_section bb_built=”1″][et_pb_row][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text _builder_version=”3.15″] I wrote this article, a rant really, in April 2014. It was lost in a website shuffle a couple years ago, and someone recently asked if…