product management in an agile world
Agile development methodologies have taken hold in many companies and have caught product management by surprise. What role does product management play in agile? Who on the agile team will be identifying and quantifying the market problems that need solving? This session will explore agile roles, agile artifacts and processes, and applying the Pragmatic Marketing framework to agile teams.
Old description: Agile development methodologies have taken hold in many companies and have caught product management by surprise. Developers no longer want lengthy documents; instead they want index cards. Instead of planning a whole release, they are now looking a week or a month ahead. What does agile mean to product managers? And what role does product management play in agile?
Product management is an area of great concern in most agile projects as the product manager seems relegated to prioritizing the developers’ workload rather than identifying and quantifying the market problems that need solving. You can’t do the backlog unless you know the priorities of the market.
This session will explore agile roles, agile artifacts and processes, and applying the Pragmatic Marketing framework to agile teams. Using results from our 2007 product management survey, the session will also discuss current titles and job responsibilities, compensation, and the scope of activities product managers and marketers are performing as part of their role in today’s agile environment.
Topics include: * Role of product manager in an agile team * delineation between the activities of product management and marketing * impact of org charts on effectiveness in the organization * exploration of where to begin
Steve Johnson is a frequent presenter for various technology marketing forums throughout the North America, author of many articles on technology product management, an instructor for Pragmatic Marketing, and is the webmaster of http://productmarketing.com —a website devoted to technology product management.
I had planned a short talk on the subject but I can expand to include a gap analysis exercise if you’d like. I generally speak to crowds of 50-75 so we should let the room size determine how interactive it can be.