Product Management

"Product? Project?"

Estimation Alternatives, Part 2: Products vs. Projects

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"Product? Project?"“I don’t understand products vs. projects. What’s the difference?”

When I share some of my stories about working with product development teams, some people look at me as if I’m describing the impossible. They seem confused when I tell them about agile teams that didn’t have to provide story point estimates to management or normalize points across teams. What I’m talking about is so far outside of their experience, they can’t conceive of how it could work. One of the most challenging things for me to explain to people who haven’t experienced both is the difference between project- and product-based organizations.

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Antique key in a keyhole

The Secret to Backlog Refinement (and Five Bonus Tips)

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Antique key in a keyhole“What’s the secret to backlog refinement?”

Eighteen pairs of eyes turned to look at me, waiting for my answer to this product manager’s question. I’d spent the last two days with the group working through the challenges they faced using Scrum in their company. We discovered that most of their delivery problems stemmed from the teams not understanding what was needed. They’d identified with the story I’d told about the team that hated Sprint Planning and hit the reset button on their process. They knew they weren’t doing refinement and could see the effect. They wanted to know how to make it work for them.

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Five speech bubbles with question marks centered over a bright yellow background

What Customer Problem Are You Trying to Solve? (And Why?)

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Five speech bubbles with question marks centered over a bright yellow background
Asking the right questions can refocus a team on creating the right customer and business outcomes

Many product teams fall into the trap of fixating on the work they need to do and forgetting about the impact their work is supposed to have. When that happens, the work often doesn’t produce the desired result. When you work as part of a product team, five questions can help you to avoid this trap by re-focusing on the customer problem you are trying to solve – and why.

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Cursing Your Vision Statement

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I was coaching someone a while back and asked them to tell me what their vision statement: what motivated him? When I heard the answer, I was not moved. What I heard was boring. I knew this person had passion for what he did. What happened to it?

If I ask you to tell me why you do what you do, and you are not jumping up and down a bit, getting a bit fired up, I don’t buy your passion!  Here are some ideas to find the passion in your vision statement.  They may not be for everyone, but I know they have helped some people already, so I wanted to share.

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Stopping the Fake Subject Matter Expert (SME) from Derailing Your Project

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Read This If: You want to ensure you are basing your project’s value on input from a true subject matter expert (for any type of project).

A fake subject matter expert or SME can derail a project. Improvements to your business should be based on the best information you have access to, not outdated or incorrect information. The acronym “SME” seems to pop-up everywhere. I agree that saying “subject matter expert” does not flow as well as SME, but the phrase drives home that the person should be an expert (and in the right subject)!

Subject matter experts are used on projects from IT strategy, to business process improvement, to software development, to organizational change . . . to name a few. They are supposed to impart the wisdom of what is actually happening, and often, what is needed. But if they are NOT an expert, then what? Are you basing the success of your project on poor information?

So what exactly is a fake SME? The basic premise is that they are someone who appears or pretends to be a subject matter expert, but is not. There are many types, but let me outline some of the more common ones:

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