If you are reading this post I assume that you are wondering if you should hire the Product Manager for your startup. You should. And the fact you are reading this is a sign of good intuition. Let me give you 4 reasons why you have to ASAP Hire the Product Manager if you really think about success. For the case of this article assume that you already got some early adopters and you are thinking right now about going all in. The Product Manager will help you build the product that clients really need. Customers are the most important factor at this stage. As you aim to reach an early majority t ..read more

It is a question that I was really curious to find an answer. So I decided to find out what is the best agile estimating method. I’ve made a survey and I asked many people for help. You can read more about results and download the report here. To be honest I thought that swimlanes will be a clear winner. Instead, I learned not only I was wrong, but even more that there is no direct answer to such a question. Because (as always) it depends… What factors I considered when looking for the best agile estimating method? I considered Ease, Speed, and Accuracy as three key factors. The ideal method s ..read more

Different names for the same role or 3 completely different roles with similar names? However, this question is multilayer and very complex, I believe there are factors that can produce the answer to who is Product Manager, Product Owner and Project Manager. Please remember that things are not black and white – there are multiple shades of grey. I mean that in different companies and different environments things might look slightly odd. My intention is only to give you a brief understanding. Factor Project Manger Product Owner Product Manager Work level Backlog Roadmap Vision Accountab ..read more

Imagine a situation when you are finishing a Sprint and not every issue in the Sprint is done. Question here is what should you do? Should you re-estimate the spillowers or not? I think that you should always re-estimate and I am going to prove why. Background, so why are we estimating? We are estimating stories to make better predictions about when we will be able to deliver features. So re-estimating or not should best help us with forecasting the future and that will be main criteria I used. Why you should consider re-estimate the spillovers? Total size of a Product Backlog should be update ..read more

Agile is the fanciest word in software development and I think it is time to stop overusing the word Agile. Almost every job description mention requirement of knowing agile methodologies or even better to have agile experience. However Agile Manifesto values and principles are not known. Usually, when you ask people what they think Agile means – they crumble. I have two heavy demands to all of you. Stop overusing the word Agile if you are not sure what it means. It’s probably because people often confuse being Agile with: free snacks at the cafeteria, working remotely, having flexi ..read more

I decided to create a straightforward tutorial on “How to create a Roadmap?” for any Product Owner or Product Manager who is facing such a challenge for the first time. In the following post, I cut the whole process into phases. Moreover, I also put an example for every single one of them, to help you visualize the process. Have or make a clear goal. There is a saying that “when a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind”. This is also true business-wise. The point of preparing a roadmap is to create a plan for reaching some goal. So all roadmaps should be crea ..read more

One can read far too often that being a Proxy Product Owner is a shame. There are many blog posts or articles that suggest that such a position is toxic and counterproductive. For instance, there is a really good read available on Barry Overeem’s blog. But even here, on this website, you can find an answer to a question – What to do if you are a Proxy Product Owner? I have to admit that I had similar thoughts at the beginning of my journey with Product Management and Agile software development. However, I changed my mind. I don’t look at that as at anti-pattern anymore and I can two stances of ..read more

If you are wondering “How to deal with a very large product backlog” you are probably in one of the following scenarios. You just started a new job and inherited the backlog from the previous Product Owner (who moved to another position or company). You changed team and product in the same organization (so you inherited backlog with the product, ideally more demanding one). You made backlog enormously big yourself and at some point, you noticed it and decided to deal with it. In any case, you are facing a very large list of more or less well-described stories and bugs. Some of them are fairl ..read more

Recently during a talk with one of the stakeholders I said, that from my experience 13 Story Points tasks are usually split into two 8 Story Points tasks. The stakeholder instantly laughed and suggested exchanging money with me in a similar way. He proposed that he will give me $13 and I will have to give him only two times $8 in return. I need to add a small disclaimer here, that not always 8 plus 8 is 13, sometimes 5 plus 5 is also 13 and even 13 plus 5 can still be 13. It depends on multiple things, even of estimation technique, do you use Planning poker or Team estimation ga ..read more

All Scrum Teams aim to deliver all of the things they committed to deliver. But because of some circumstances, every team occasionally overestimate their capabilities. They might still deliver The Sprint Goal without all tasks inside the sprint or even worse – they might fail with delivering The Sprint Goal. In either case, the spillovers (tasks that are started but not done) are the problem. It is common to see developers hesitation to re-estimate as they feel that part of their work is missing somewhere between sprints. I would like to shortly describe three common approaches: Reestimating ..read more