Just in time resources for internal products
A question that I see often is: How do you (Should you | Can you) use user stories to properly document requirements for a product? There are some people nodding in agreement “yes, I’ve often wondered that myself.” There are others who are cringing. User stories weren’t intended to be requirements. Kent Beck originally came …
What Is System Documentation System documentation is information about an as-built solution and acts as a reference for future maintenance or update efforts. It is organized based on system functionality rather than when changes were made to the system, making it easier for people who maintain the solution to find the information they need quickly. …
What Is An Internal Product? An internal product is software that your organization does not offer for sale to others, but is used to support its various business activities. These products can be things your organization built in house or purchased to then customize and configure. Internal products generally satisfy the needs of users internal …
What Is a Discovery Board Discovery boards are ways for teams to visualize their backlog refinement process. The best discovery boards consist of a whiteboard or wall divided into columns that reflect the various steps a team takes to get product backlog items ready to be delivered (developed and tested) in an iteration. The backlog …
What Is Story Mapping A story map is a visual representation of a backlog that provides additional context regarding how backlog items are related to each other and when the team is planning to deliver them. This context is typically presented in terms of the personas that will use specific features, and the particular user …
Examples are concrete descriptions of the expected behavior of an aspect of a solution using real-life data.
What Is the Internal Product Opportunity Assessment Marty Cagan in his book Inspired suggests a product opportunity assessment. Cagan’s assessment consists of ten questions to ask when examining a product opportunity to elicit more information about it and determine whether it is worth pursuing. I’ve compiled a similar list of questions for people working on …
What Is The Context Leadership Model The Context Leadership Model, created by Todd Little, was introduced in Stand Back and Deliver as a tool for determining the appropriate leadership style given a product’s uncertainty and complexity. The Context Leadership Model can also be used to understand the risks inherent in a product and determine how …
What are the Six Questions? The six questions listed below help guide your discussion about your organization’s differentiating activities. These six questions represent two different perspectives. You can use the first four questions to identify differentiating activities in your organization: 1) Whom do we serve?2) What do they want and need most?3) What do we …
Agile2017 happened a couple of weeks ago. Now that I’ve had time to get back in the swing of things, and get the videos published from the conference, I wanted to share some sessions of interest to product people that I attended (or presented). Most of these have videos, and you’ll need to be an …
What is a Persona? A persona defines a typical user of a product. They help you understand the context in which people use the product to help guide your design decisions. Personas originated from Alan Cooper’s work on user-centered design. An Example Below is an example persona for the Agile Alliance Submission System. Reed the …
What Is the Commitment Scale? The commitment scale is a stakeholder analysis technique. This technique gauges the current level of stakeholder commitment to a project, as well as what level of commitment is needed to ensure the project’s success. An Example of the Commitment Scale A team working on a commission system created their stakeholder …
What Is a Stakeholder Map The stakeholder map is a technique commonly used for stakeholder analysis. Using the stakeholder map to guide conversations helps a team understand who the stakeholders for the project are, understand key characteristics about those stakeholders, and identify plans for engaging the stakeholders on an ongoing basis. Primary outcomes from a …
What Is Internal Product Management To understand what Internal product management is, it’s helpful to start by understanding what product management in general is. For that, I look to Melissa Perri, who provided one of the better definitions of product management (there are plenty) in her Product Institute Class on Product Management: “A product manager …
One of the things that the agile seems to do consistently is spark a never ending series of “this versus that” debates. Agile vs Waterfall XP vs Scrum Scrum Master vs Project Manager Scrum vs Kanban Scrum vs SAFe The latest debate is product manager vs product owner. Whatever you think of the debate, I …
