This presentation discusses product management challenges and opportunities presented by Agile development process. Presented at Product Camp 2011 in Vancouver

1. Product Camp Vancouver 2011 Product Management in Agile EnvironmentMichael Vax Founder of OnMaaS Software – www.onmaas.comPresident of Agile Vancouver – www.agilevancouver.ca

2. Topics for Today How the role of PM is different in Agile Environment? Do PMs have more or less control? Can we use the same process for all types of products and markets? Are new features done faster / better or the same? What is the role of product management in ensuring quality? Is product manager involved in allocating resources for technical tasks? Speaking the same language - you need to define domain model Ready Ready to be Done Done What I can tell customers about release dates?

3. Not all features are the same

4. Paths to code ready stories User Story Minor Feature User Story User Story Small Feature User Story User Story User Story User Story User Story User Story User Story User Story Medium Feature Epic Epic Epic User Story User Story User Story Large Feature User Story User Story User Story Legend Ready Ready for Review Initial Definition

5. Agile Product Management Collaborative decision process Wisdom of crowds No decisions are made in isolation Involving people from different parts of organization and customers Minimalistic approach Less is better Don’s rush with polishing feature that may not be needed Value of the feature should justify every minute spend on its development and maintenance Focus on quality and ask: What does user really care about? Expedient Solutions Better to get it out . .a good (rather than best) solution soon. Be ready to release on a short notice Iterative Make product better over time from feedback Constant reprioritization based on feedback

6. Release Scope

7. Ready-Ready to be Done-Done The Product Owner is asked, “Are you ready-ready?” and the team is asked “Are you done-done?”. “When teams concurrently make work ready for next iterations during development, we find quite often they can cut the iteration length in half”

8. Estimation ready Epic Domain questions are identified and answered UI approach is defined Core technical decisions are made and validated

9. Code ready story Can be estimated by team in no more that 15 minutes Is unlikely to be stopped or canceled due to unclear requirements or technical challenges Tests are defined Domain Changes are understood, reviewed, and consensus reached UI mockups are reviewed by both end-users and designers

10. Metric to measure Ready-Ready Flow in implementation of a story: Is story implemented without breaks in calendar time and context shift? Example: Assume a story is 3 points story. However, for various reasons it becomes 9 points story. The flow in this case is defined as 3/9 or 33% Optimize the flow!

12. Rishi Dean: The New Rules of Early-Stage Product Development

13. Ash Maurya: Instrumenting for Speed, Learning, and Focus

14. Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits: It’s the end of the (startup) world as we know it.

15. Rob Walling: Lessons Learned Moving From Developer to Entrepreneur

17. Rob Walling: From Zero to Launch: A Step by Step Blueprint

18. Brant Cooper: The Art of the Customer Development interview and other Customer Development Hacks.