Steve Johnson on product management

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Product management evangelist and guitar player.

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May 2011

 

Practical Agility: Waterfall Works!

We simply cannot say that Waterfall doesn't work.  The catch is, though, that it's at best a sub-optimal way to deliver systems, especially now in the 21st century.  When I present this to people, though, I frame it in the context of when Dr. Royce wrote his paper and presented it at the IEEE Wescon conference.
via practicalagility.blogspot.com

Waterfall isn't bad because of the artifacts; waterfall fails because of the lack of collaboration. Read this for agile and waterfall share a common ancestry and strive to achieve the same goals.

Posted by Steve Johnson 
 

A new (and better) definition for Product Owner — On Product Management

It’s time to provide a better, more applicable and less convoluted description of the “Product Owner” role so that companies who are implementing Scrum can do so with far less confusion and tumult in their organizations.
via onproductmanagement.net

Yes, product owner is a role, not a title. And I'm with those who favor the title Technical Product Manager. But don't forget: there are many boxes on the Pragmatic Marketing framework. Make sure they're all being done--by somebody--and not just the technical ones.

Posted by Steve Johnson 
 

The Scrum Title “Product Owner” must die! — On Product Management

When I looked at the link in the tweet I saw the image shown below. I thought, “Geez, now the Agilists are turning the Product Owner into some kind of superhero Product Manager?”. And we know what a problem that is. :-)
via onproductmanagement.net

The product owner role was supposed to distance Scrum from any baggage associated to the term product manager--but alas, it seems to have introduced more confusion instead. Saeed does a good job of addressing this confusion. The Technical Product Manager is a much better term, don't you think?

Posted by Steve Johnson 
 

B2C vs. B2B product management – 16 differences « Software Product Manager by Gopal Shenoy

Most of my product management career has been spent doing B2B product management. For the last year and a half, I have switched over to B2C product management in my current role as Director of Product Management at Gazelle. Last 12 months has been a lot of fun learning a whole lot of new things in the consumer world. Given this learning, I have been able to create a long list of things that matter a whole lot more doing B2C product management that may not be as important doing B2B product management.
via productmanagementtips.com

Nice post by Gopal. In B2C, some things are easier, some harder. But optimization is critical. Maybe the same ought to be true for B2B.

Posted by Steve Johnson