Answering some (of my) agile questions!

Following have been some of my queries that I found
answer to in due course of time. Hope that to some of you these are useful!




Where does the Project Management role fits in Agile methodology?
When it comes to agile project management roles, most agile processes - Scrum in particular - do not include a project manager. Agile “project manager” roles and responsibilities are shared among others on the project, namely the team, Scrum Master and product owner. Read more @ https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/agile-project-management


What types of projects should use agile?
Agile projects work best when they are not clear upfront, they need exploration and are adaptive. So that's why they've been adopted by a lot with high-technology projects or creative projects (where as you're going along, you realize that there might be changes).


The traditional project has the three constraints of Scope, Time and Cost. How does agile compares to that?
Agile development is primarily governed by Cost and Time constraints. That is how you have the Sprint and Release burn down chart made to track the work within the constraints of Cost and Time. Agile focuses on the cost and schedule. And then you kind of create as much scope as the product owner or stakeholders want to add to the project. In Agile you're filling up your project with scope that is most valuable. 


What is the purpose of backlog refinement meeting?
Purpose is to make team aware of highest value stories at a high level. This helps the team do be well prepared for more detailed sprint planning later on. The stories should be estimated. The product backlog is more than just a list of work, it's also a planning tool. The product backlog should be emergent. A backlog is not static, it will change over time. As the team learns more about the product, new users stories will be added, removed, or changed.


How many times should you do backlog refining?
Once or twice (at max) and typically 2-3 days before the end of running sprint. 3-6 hours of effort in each sprint should be spent on backlog grooming. While the whole team’s involvement would be nice, not all team members may be able to participate. When you’re refining the backlog, remember that it’s not required that all product backlog items (usually in the form of user stories) are perfectly understood at the beginning of a sprint. The features only need to be sufficiently understood so the team has a reasonably strong chance of completing it during the sprint.

- Keep it as short as possible.
- Show up prepared.
- Encourage everyone to participate.


How do you manage a product development schedule that is short-term focused?
The key is to get away from a roadmap that assigns feature delivery dates and to move to one that establishes validation dates. Rather than having a year long Product Roadmap, have a roadmap that is based on how you are learning from customers about your ideas. The dates you should represent to your stakeholders are the dates by when you hope to validate a problem. Read more @ https://medium.com/techstars/why-most-product-roadmaps-are-a-train-wreck-and-how-to-fix-this-12617e3adabc


Does one need a project charter for Agile projects?
The short answer is "Yes". A good Agile Project Charter should be like one page. It should have three main sections -- project's vision, mission, and success criteria.
- Vision defines the purpose -- Why are we doing this?
- Mission defines how to achieve the purpose or vision -- How will we do this?
- Success criteria is about defining key metrics that help decide whether the project achieved what it was set out for -- How we have done this?

The customer should create a formal charter to set the initial direction and record the project's reason for starting. An Agile Charter should be an agreement and not a plan. It should list what every party wants from the project.


What's the primary role of Marketing in Agile Product Development?
Marketing works to drive a continuous stream of users into a funnel in order to test conversions and see how users react to product changes. 


Special note: I have personally benefited and learnt a lot from the online course by Doug Rose on Lynda / LinkedIn Learning.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The "Big Heart" leadership

Image
As part of my current role, one thing that has really changed in me is to be able to handle my responsibility towards people with more care. Numerous situations and incidents have helped shape me better to play my role today. Here are few thoughts from my journey over the last few years. Via your feedback/comments, we can learn more from each other. Finding your way : I think it is very important that one find their way of leadership. As you work with your seniors and leaders, you will imbibe some of their ways. At the same time, it is important you also think about how you would have handled a particular situation if you were in that role. What would you do differently or perhaps better? What works with your inherent personality (which will also evolve)? Every leader ends up developing a personal brand, and that brand should relate well to your ways (walk the walk). Handling mistakes and failures: How you handle mistakes and failures, defines you best as a leader. If you are in leade
Read more

Product Management Challenges in Small Sized Companies

Based on my own experience of doing product management for a small sized company over the last couple of years, I feel there are some distinct challenges this type of set up offers. Listed below are top 3 challenges I have come across: Balancing short term wins vs long term product goals:  When you are working for a small sized company which typically is trying to make a mark in the market in terms of getting new customers, renewals and up-sells, there is lot of push to include features what will make a certain customer happy. While that is a perfectly fair thing to expect from product, the problem arises when there are plenty of such requests bombarded at you putting at risk a well thought out plan. What I have found is as Product Managers we tend to react first to this pressure by assuming how can all of this be part of deliverable's and that product cannot respond to numerous custom requests.  But  if you talk to your customer management team, you are going to find out tha
Read more