Johanna Rothman

AUGUST 19, 2021

Example 1: Startup/Small Organization with Few Products. They offer their product in two versions: Pro and Lite. The first was not waiting for the end of an iteration to demo or release. They demo'd every week on Wednesday mornings and then they released after the demo. Let's start with a couple of examples. Others mob.

Agile 105

Agile Tools Productivity Development 105

Johanna Rothman

APRIL 6, 2022

Every sprint delivers working product.” Not the thinking and learning that go into the deliverables where you end up with something demo-able, if not usable.” They do have product goals. However, they don't deliver value, have team-based planning, a review/demo, or a retrospective. ” “Oooh.”

Agile 90

Agile Productivity Finance Software 90

Johanna Rothman

JANUARY 16, 2019

High Need for Product Innovation and Change. The more need for product innovation and change, the shorter the feedback loops need to be. When the product requires much innovation and change, management doesn't need estimates. When management sees the product direction, they can say, “Stop with this and continue with that.”

Productivity 60

Productivity Agile Management Analysis 60

Johanna Rothman

MARCH 30, 2020

If you're creating products of any kind—especially software products—you've got a team sport. Successful software product development is about how well the team learns together. The better the team learns together, the better the product is. See Product Orientation Requires Technical Excellence ).

Management 92

Management Agile Metrics Video 92

Johanna Rothman

JANUARY 6, 2020

In Costs of an Agile Approach for Hardware Products , I suggested that an iteration-based approach for hardware was too expensive. Those people work independently until they need to verify the product as a whole, works. This hardware team swarms on a product. You can use an agile approach for parts of a hardware product.

Agile 52

Agile Productivity Software Development 52

Johanna Rothman

MARCH 24, 2022

No one wants to demo this work, because everyone thinks the demo will wander all over the place. Worse, no one wants to demo, because they can't see the value for any user. Use the Demo to Guide Sizing. Use the Demo to Guide Sizing. Start with the demo in mind. I bet you can think of more tests.

Efficiency 58

Efficiency Productivity Consulting Management 58

Johanna Rothman

MARCH 18, 2024

I assume you have some sort of functional product development expertise. If not, why are you in technical product development? This post is about your deep domain expertise, first in product, then in agility. First, the product-based expertise. That's often product people, testers, and some UI/UX people.

Agile 81

Agile How To Metrics Productivity 81

Johanna Rothman

OCTOBER 12, 2020

Once the team completes that highest priority feature(s), the team can release the product. When we release, we can regroup and figure out what to do next for this product. Fork another product. (I I did this with several Lite vs Pro products using this approach.). See and demo the product as it grows.

Agile 113

Agile Productivity Management Development 113

Johanna Rothman

NOVEMBER 27, 2023

I have a new book: Project Lifecycles: How to Reduce Risks, Release Successful Products, and Increase Agility. Worse, sometimes the team doesn't demo or deliver. See Manage Unplanned Feedback Loops to Reduce Risks and Create Successful Products.) That's because no product survives contact with the customers.

Agile 85

Agile Productivity How To Management 85

Johanna Rothman

DECEMBER 11, 2019

We had (and still have) too many products to keep the same teams on them for a long time. For programs, the team stayed together and moved to a different feature set/internal product until the program finished. We could move to a new product and/or a new team. My job was to smooth the way for people to deliver products.

Agile 60

Agile Productivity Management Meeting 60

Johanna Rothman

JANUARY 5, 2021

(That might be the feature set or the product. ). ” Many managers now realize they don't have to see everything to get an idea of where the team is going with the product. However, maybe this is a new product for you and you don't quite know how to do that yet. When will we see half of it? That's good.

Guidelines 125

Guidelines Productivity Data Management 125

Johanna Rothman

OCTOBER 8, 2020

Once our customers saw demos, they wanted to change things. ” One of the customers realized he wanted something different—something we didn't expect for this product. That means you can replan the project or the product. See the product come together, depending on how you approach the prototyping.

Agile 117

Agile Development Productivity Management 117

Johanna Rothman

NOVEMBER 4, 2022

But there are several problems with all this planning: These plans require prediction at all levels, from strategy to product to what the team delivers. However, too often, the managers prevent product innovations or strategy changes because they planned so much. That's the product. They plan to be able to predict the future.

Management 87

Management Agile Data Productivity 87

Johanna Rothman

AUGUST 25, 2023

By product, where they assign a team to a product for a long period of time. By person, where they take one person from here and one person from there, etc, to create enough people to work on the product. Every time the team delivers, the leaders can reassess the ongoing value of the project or product.

How To 78

How To Productivity Agile Management 78

Johanna Rothman

JANUARY 10, 2024

When I work with these teams or their managers, I realize they're not demoing or retrospecting on a regular basis. Worse, these people and teams don't feel any satisfaction with their products. And don't get me started on how coaches tend to do life coaching instead of support for agility.) ” There are many better ways.

Agile 88

Agile Culture Efficiency Management 88

Johanna Rothman

JUNE 28, 2018

I mentioned how you could integrate the demo work into an iteration if you create a column for the demo. Here’s a picture of how you might create a kanban with a Demo state, just before the Done column. Here’s how you walk this board: Start at the column just before Done, the Demo column.

Agile 51

Agile Meeting System Productivity 51

Johanna Rothman

JULY 27, 2023

In addition, a product leader might approve the feature. Finally, the team, a product leader, or the customer(!) might demo the feature. That defect escaped all your checklists, approvals, and demos. Yes, they had to spend time fixing those problems, but they were under no illusions about the quality of the product.

How To 81

How To Agile Productivity Data 81

Johanna Rothman

OCTOBER 2, 2023

The first is that Brooks strongly suggested the idea of a “surgical team” That hierarchical team was a feature- or product-based team. Ten people, seven of them professionals, are at work on the problem, but the system is the product of one mind–or at most two, acting uno animo.”

Agile 95

Agile Analysis Management Productivity 95

Johanna Rothman

SEPTEMBER 13, 2023

Back in Part 1 of this series, I explained all the problems I saw with this interview question: “The product owner and dev team cannot decide on a sprint goal, even after hours of discussion. The Wednesday Agenda 9:30- 10 am (or thereabouts) demo the progress the team made. What should the Scrum Master do?” That day needs an agenda.

Leadership 89

Leadership Meeting Agile Productivity 89

Johanna Rothman

APRIL 3, 2020

You might have hypotheses about your market, your customers, or how your current product(s) can offer value. Normally, I like to ask the teams who deliver the product to also do the discovery. You might find, as I do, that using flow/kanban with WIP limits and a cadence of planning/demos/retros works better for you.

Agile 102

Agile Data Productivity Management 102

Johanna Rothman

FEBRUARY 6, 2024

I like to ask them to choose a challenging production support problem, or something else that's making them nuts. Show a demo of whatever you complete at the 15-minute mark. The timing: I use a 15-minute timebox, followed by not more than 5 minutes of a demo. Ask the team to choose one of their current team-based problems.

Agile 75

Agile How To Exercises Efficiency 75

Jerry Fletcher

AUGUST 28, 2021

His basic premise was that testing all components of marketing a product was essential to overcome the risks inherent in advertising. That meant looking at product distribution, sampling, copy and graphic split-testing as well pre-empting product specifics benefits and personalities to establish a brand He was a total advertising man.

Marketing 98

Marketing Consulting Advertising Productivity 98

Johanna Rothman

AUGUST 28, 2019

When you ask this question, you might learn what some of my clients learned: Sometimes, managers wanted to know when it was safe to announce the product. ” I thought it was reasonable to use data to be able to announce the product. I like demos to know when if we're on track. Demos can tell us if we've done enough.

Data 68

Data Agile Culture Management 68

Johanna Rothman

MARCH 6, 2024

They are: Understand the various risks: project, product, and organization, and how to manage those risks with feedback loops. And product development has at least these risks: Project-based risks, so we can make effective tradeoffs. See How Product Risks Differ from Project Risks for a brief discussion of those two kinds of risks.)

Agile 81

Agile Culture Efficiency Metrics 81

Johanna Rothman

MARCH 26, 2024

In innovative products, the interdependencies can change any day. If your product does not need much innovation, you can plan for longer and know you will meet that plan. Those are the kinds of products that do not require much, if any, innovation. In addition, I ask teams to show visual progress , such as in a demo.

How To 70

How To Metrics Tools Productivity 70

Johanna Rothman

SEPTEMBER 15, 2023

I started this series with many specific concerns about a particular interview question: “The product owner and dev team cannot decide on a sprint goal, even after hours of discussion. Divide and Conquer is Anti-Agility I see the product owner and dev team as a divide-and-conquer approach to work. When was the most recent demo?

Interviews 96

Interviews Culture Agile Efficiency 96

Johanna Rothman

FEBRUARY 14, 2020

Let's assume everyone works together, on one project (product, if you prefer). So, let's assume the team spends a total of 4 hours planning, retrospecting, demoing, all that non-creation time out of the 40 hours the team works. I would add demoing in as value creation, but I'm not sure how accountants categorize feedback loops.

Software 74

Software Agile Finance Company 74

Johanna Rothman

MARCH 28, 2019

You've got interdependencies across the organization for a given project or program to release a product. You can see demos. You need enough insight or prediction to start the marketing campaign or to create training videos or product documentation. Release criteria tells you when a product is done.

Agile 63

Agile Productivity Software Marketing 63

Johanna Rothman

FEBRUARY 12, 2019

Your customers can't take your product more often than once or twice a year. Because the product doesn't need to leave the building, the teams don't release internally. Nor do the teams demo on a regular basis. What if we thought of all these people as customers: The various people who buy the product. Colleagues?).

Agile 58

Agile Productivity Retail Management 58

Jerry Fletcher

FEBRUARY 6, 2021

Don’t waste production time. See Jerry’s new speaker demo reel. One of the reasons he cited for that selection was the ability to provide a deep repository for content. Lots of content. If you find good ones, stick with them. Podcasts can be listened to at 2x. If the subject is worth it but not during the day. And so it goes.

Marketing 98

Marketing Consulting Video Course 98

Jerry Fletcher

AUGUST 7, 2021

I don’t Know your company’s product. See Jerry’s speaker demo reel. Md Graw Hill placed it many times starting in, I believe, 1958. The copy is as powerful and appropriate today as it was then: ”I don’t know who you are. I don’t know your company. I don’t know what your company stands for. I don’t know your company’s customers.

Marketing 98

Marketing Consulting Industry Video 98

Women in Consulting

JANUARY 11, 2018

First consultants eliminated were ME CENTERED …they dominated the conversation, told all about their processes, products, past clients. 3) Third set of consulting firms eliminated were PRODUCT CENTERED …these firms offered their product solutions long before they understood the underlying problems.

Consulting 63

Consulting Productivity Survey Analysis 63

Johanna Rothman

JUNE 17, 2021

” When we have insufficient trust, morale and the products deteriorate. Instead, we can extend trust and keep innovating for morale and the products. Two of them are the product backlog burnup and the feature chart in Velocity is Not Acceleration. Ask for a regular cadence of demos, too.

Leadership 75

Leadership Agile Management Training 75

Johanna Rothman

JUNE 18, 2021

They hired me because they were in danger of going out of business due to their inability to release a working product. That's because they had an architecture that couldn't scale, people who couldn't do the work, and a mess of a product. Instead, tell the manager to create the environment where the team can release the product.).

Software 95

Software Talent Meeting Tools 95

Johanna Rothman

AUGUST 28, 2023

In Part 2 , I suggested the product leader/team/some combination, have a conversation to understand the context for the request. Worse, long backlogs tend to mean that teams become feature factories, instead of focusing on the overarching goal for this product. Create a weekly cadence of public demos.

Agile 75

Agile How To Productivity Management 75

Johanna Rothman

MARCH 30, 2020

If you're creating products of any kind—especially software products—you've got a team sport. Successful software product development is about how well the team learns together. The better the team learns together, the better the product is. See Product Orientation Requires Technical Excellence ).

Management 52

Management Agile Metrics Video 52

Jerry Fletcher

FEBRUARY 27, 2021

I had attended a conference on gamifying products in the fall before Covid struck. Somehow we got on the subject of getting through to officials in companies in order to sell our products in the corporate market. See Jerry’s new speaker demo reel. We’ve been meeting on Friday mornings for at least a couple years. A Mastermind.

Marketing 94

Marketing Consulting Conference Software 94