MMFs: What they are and why they matter
Suppose you have a headache. A bad headache. “I’ll take Tylenol to make it go away,” you think. So, you grab the Tylenol bottle and…
Category: Product Management
Getting Good at Story Splitting
As I’ve said before, working in thin vertical slices is the key habit in Agile software development. Many people struggle to find vertical slices, but…
Vertical Slices and Scale
Last week, I tweeted, Working in thin vertical slices is the keystone habit for agile software development. It enables so many other good practices. —…
Turn The Ship Around – A View Into Agile Leadership
Note: This post is adapted from some posts that I originally created on Adobe’s blog while I was an employee there. I recently finished reading former…
80/20 Product Ownership Updates
A few updates on 80/20 Product Ownership, my online course that teaches you how to slice your work at every level of detail to get…
Reducing the Load on the Product Owner
Product Owners have it tough. They need to spend time and energy working to understand the needs of customers and users. They need to work…
Splitting Stories in Chinese (or, 用户故事切分招数)
Thanks to Bob Jiang for the translation (with feedback from Evelyn Tian and Daniel Teng). This poster is also available in English, French, German, Russian,…
New to agile? Learn how to split stories
In my last blog Agile antipattern: Taking on large stories I said I would give you some tips on how to split stories. First though, it is…
Patterns for Splitting User Stories
Update, October 2020: Richard’s latest story splitting resources are available at Humanizing Work. Good user stories follow Bill Wake’s INVEST model. They’re Independent, Negotiable, Valuable,…
Agile pondering: Is it agile to have a “single wringable neck?”
In Scrum one of the named roles is that of Product Owner. Some people have taken to referring to this position as the “single wringable…
Agile antipattern: Waiting for all the requirements before starting
Time for a short blog entry (I tend to be way too verbose!). I often see teams trying to make sure they have all of…
How to make a LOT more money using agile
Yesterday’s blog post dealt with how to manage scope for an agile project. Today I have to admit it was a bit of a setup. …
New to agile? 3 ways to cut scope (and live)
The primary way I see teams release products faster is by reducing the scope of each product. However, this can’t be done in an arbitrary…
Agile Antipattern: Everything is priority 1
I was just working on some Powerpoint slides for our Agile Product Management Boot Camp coming up on March 9 and 10 and I realized I should…
When in Doubt Ask “How Will I Know I’ve Done That?”
Tired of not knowing exactly what to create or test? Get in the habit of asking the magic question “How will I know I’ve done…
What do you want next?
The software industry today is plagued by long release cycles for important products. That is one of the many reasons why companies are going to…