Inside Product
Just in time product management resources
If you are a product manager, product owner, or business analyst, you’ll find this list of books helpful. I know I have. User Story Mapping: Discover The Whole Story, Build the Right Product by Jeff Patton and Peter Economyhttps://bookshop.org/widgets.jsNot only is this book a great resource for Story Mapping, but it provides a meaningful description …
A recent series of blog posts on KBP.media described different product ownership models. It occurred to me that I made a big assumption throughout the entire series – that everyone reading it was familiar with the roles that I mentioned. I also realized that I left out a role quite prevalent in digital product development …
“What is the Role of a Business Analyst in Agile?”I see this question asked quite a bit. I’d like to suggest that rewording the question may be a bit more instructive. Instead of wondering what is the role of a business analyst in agile, you may want to ask the question “how can people who …
About a month ago I was honored to talk with Dave Saboe on his Mastering Business Analysis Podcast. We talked about my forthcoming (for a while now) book Beyond Requirements: Analysis with an Agile Mindset and other things analysis and agile. Thanks to Dave for having me on his podcast. Here are a variety of …
Feature Injection is a very helpful process framework created by Chris Matts that is not explicitly used as much as it probably should. I suspect the main reason it is not adopted more is because people don’t really understand what it’s all about. There are several articles and blog posts that explain feature injection, but …
At the start of 2014, I joined a common trend and made a series of predictions about the upcoming year (2014) in the business analysis world. Unlike most others, I reflected back on those predictions to see how I did. The verdict? Meh. Even with my less than inspiring predictive abilities, I’ve been asked to …
The Five Whys Technique (also known as “Popping the Why Stack”) has long been suggested as a way to get to the ultimate reason for a project. But when you ask why repeatedly, you run the risk of looking quite pedantic and annoying stakeholders. With that in mind, I thought I’d provide a list of …
In a recent blog post I predicated that within the year PMI would come out with a Requirements Management Certification. In the interest of full disclosure and learning from our mistakes, I’m writing here to acknowledge I was wrong (how many other people making predictions do you see do that?) Well, I was sort of …
This morning (November 22, 2013) I had the opportunity to be involved in a very unique discussion. SkillsMatter hosted the Agile Testing & BDD Exchange in London. The format of this particular conference was to have a series of sessions that featured two or more presenters teaming up to cover a particular topic. Chris Matts …
I am proud to be a part of a new program in the Agile Alliance – Analysis and Product Management in Agile that was formed with the purpose of providing a way for practitioners in the business analysis and product management communities to share stories, questions, and puzzles about using those skills in an agile …
I keep a casual eye on a variety of LinkedIn Discussion groups. A couple of years ago, I chimed in on a discussion on the Business Analyst Times Linked In Group posing the question “Why do very good Business Analysts NOT want to become Project Managers ? Let’s discuss the reasons for this.“ My first …
I like to think of myself as an entrepreneur. My business mostly consists of some form of consulting, and when I consult it usually has something to do with business analysis. That combination of perspectives certainly colors my thinking and causes me to see connections between those different domains. For example, I have often thought …
A recent conversation with a friend got me thinking of the reason why many organizations are choosing to adopt agile, and how they may be setting themselves up disappointment. When organizations approach me for help adopting agile software development, one of the first things I do is ask “Why?” The usual answer is that they …
I’m in the midst of a two week stretch of conferencing. The week of October 29 – November 2nd I was at the Building Business Capability Conference in Fort Lauderdale. The conference markets itself as 5 different conferences for the price of 1 and even goes to the trouble of creating the concept of five …
These days I deliver more training classes than I attend. That’s not because I think I can’t learn anything new – I’m probably at a higher state of enlightened ignorance than I have ever been – It’s because that’s a big part of how I make a living. Thankfully, I am able to learn things …
Analysts are inherently problem solvers. A couple of days ago, I came across a resource that appears, at first blush at least, to be indispensable for analysts when solving problems related to organizations and groups of people. Chris McGoff identified a set of patterns about group behavior that help to address team or organizational problems. …
I ran across a blog post today entitled Be a meeting whisperer: Conflict Management 101 that I found to be particularly relevant for analysts. It’s about using one of many ideas called PRIMEs to help manage change. While I find the PRIMES concept interesting and will dig more into them later, I wanted to share …
The end of one year and the beginning of the next brought with it a slew of posts covering the top trends for just about every field. I’ve run across three so far, all of them providing a different perspective, some I agree with, some I don’t. Regardless of my thoughts, they deserve reading: Glenn …
One of my guiding principles is Reflect and Adapt, which is another way of saying learn from your experiences. Those experiences can be good or bad, and they could be based on things you did or things that you weren’t even involved in. As a result of the experience I relate below, I learned a …
On June 15th, I had the opportunity to speak to a group of business analysts who had a lot of questions about agile. I had been asked to give a 45 minute overview of agile and was provided a sample list of questions for the presentation would cover. I quickly realized that I would never come close …
Question: Have you seen vendor driven agile working well in traditional waterfall companies? I have to date not seen a situation where a vendor was using an agile approach, and the customer was a traditional waterfall company. I’m not saying that it does not happen, just that I have not seen it. I think the …
The role of Scrum Master is specific to Scrum. Since Scrum has become the most widely known of the agile approaches, the term Scrum Master has become a common term for the person who is acting as process guardian and facilitator for agile teams. Question: How do you feel about the BA being the daily …
Question: How do offshore resources fit into agile? Agile is heavily reliant on team communication and collaboration. The most effective means of communication is face to face, at a white board because you have the most means of transmitting information – the words, the nonverbals, and tone of voice. An ideal situation is for all …
Question: What is agile? There are as many different definitions of agile as there are practitioners. Not to be outdone, here is mine: Agile is collaboration among stakeholders to deliver value to customers in frequent increments with consistent reflection and adaptation. Question: In your experience, what are the core trends of agile? That is, what …
