Inside Product

Photo Credit: https://unsplash.com/@providence Shared understanding. It’s about communication and it’s about agreement. Not necessarily agreement that what we’re doing is the right thing, although that can be extremely helpful. I’m talking agreement that when someone mentions a term, everyone has the same picture in their head about what that term means and why it’s relevant …

I’m excited to speak at the Southwestern Ohio Business Analysis Regional Conference (SOBARC) 2017 this week in Cincinnati, Ohio. While there, I’ll examine the product owner role, and talk about socratic questioning. If you’re going to be at SOBARC, stop by and say hi. If not, I’ll be at IBADD May 19 and Agile2017 in …

Photo Credit: https://unsplash.com/@punttim I’ve noted previously that business analysis and product management are similar activities that exist in different contexts. Business analysis (as described by IIBA) tends to be used in internal product settings whereas product management tends to be used external product settings. The two practices use different techniques. Business analysis makes much greater …

Photo Credit: https://unsplash.com/@benchaccounting Last week we took a look at some things you could do to start work on a product. Once you’ve established a good rapport with your key sponsor and built a shared understanding with your team, you’re going to want to know more about the people who are going to use your …

Photo Credit: https://unsplash.com/@matthewhenry In the past few KBPUpdates I explored various product ownership models that exist in the wild. Starting with this issue, I wanted to explore what it looks like to be a product person working on an internal product. This issue takes a look at getting started on an internal product. I share …

Photo Credit: Martin Erickson http://www.mindtheproduct.com/2011/10/what-exactly-is-a-product-manager/ I’m back home after a week in India speaking at Agile India 2017. While there I had some great conversations about various roles in product development, especially those that play some part in determining the right thing to deliver. That inspired the theme for this issue of the KBPUpdate – …

Photo Credit: https://unsplash.com/@dnevozhai Welcome to another edition of the KBP Update. This week I’m getting some things wrapped up before I head to Bangaluru next week to speak at AgileIndia 2017. I’m presenting three sessions there:Agile Leadership: Accelerating Business AgilityI’m honored to co present this full day workshop with Niel Nickolaisen and Todd Little. We’re …

Photo Credit: https://unsplash.com/@jdsimcoe “Ask the right questions!” is advice that product people, especially business analysts, get quite often. I know because I’ve been known to hand out that advice quite frequently myself. Except no one seems to follow that rallying cry with any helpful information such as what the right questions might be. I know… …

Photo Credit: https://unsplash.com/@punttim In this week’s newsletter, we take a look at the fourth product ownership model – one that includes a product manager, product owner and business analyst. As I mentioned in the post that described it, this is a variation on a couple of other product ownership models that separate the responsibility for …

Photo Credit: https://unsplash.com/@punttim This week’s newsletter takes a look at what happens when you split the responsibilities of product management and product ownership, and two models of accomplishing that split. I chose to describe two models this week (each model still gets its own post) because they are very similar, but they have a key …

I’m trying a little bit different format for the newsletter this week. Instead of sharing separate posts in each of the main topics I cover on the site, I thought I’d share five posts all about the same topic. The topic for this newsletter is the product ownership model where the product manager and product …

When I put together the posts for this week’s newsletter, I picked posts that take a bit of a contrarian view point. Although in some cases, the contrarian view point is the perspective that teams should have. The Outcome over Output section has two articles that highlight the disturbing trend among many organizations to loudly …

The start of 2017 seems like a good time to get into the swing of things with a weekly newsletter. Don’t consider it a new year’s resolution – that increases the chance that I won’t keep it up. Think of it instead as my way of getting more done by doing less. In this case …