Agile Excellence For Product Managers

"Agile Excellence for Product Managers" is a plain-speaking guide on how to work with Agile development teams to achieve phenomenal product success. It covers the why and how of agile development (including Scrum, XP, and Lean, ) the role of product management, release planning, and more.

Strategy Excellence for Product Managers takes fresh look at the role of product strategy in navigating competitive and dynamic markets. It is targeted for those looking to move beyond managing their product to leading their product. The book explores three main areas: i) The five elements of a product strategy, ii) driving product growth, and iii) analyzing markets to identify areas you can win. While an Agile roadmap typically looks out about nine months, this book focuses the reader on how to position their product for where the market will be in three to five years.

42 Rules of Product Management is a collection of product management wisdom from forty experts from around the world. The goal of this book is to expose you to the wisdom and knowledge from a group of the world's leading product management experts. Among the contributors, there are leading authors, professors, CEOs and vice presidents, bloggers, consultants, trainers, and even a few salespeople and engineers. In total, there are over five centuries of collected wisdom represented here. The contributors each share one rule they think is critical to succeed in product management based on their hands-on product management and product marketing experience with companies such as Apple, eBay, Intuit, SAP, and Yahoo!

The Provocative and Practical Guide to Coaching Agile Teams As an agile coach, you can help project teams become outstanding at agile, creating products that make them proud and helping organizations reap the powerful benefits of teams that deliver both innovation and excellence. More and more frequently, ScrumMasters and project managers are being asked to coach agile teams. But it’s a challenging role. It requires new skills—as well as a subtle understanding of when to step in and when to step back. Migrating from “command and control” to agile coaching requires a whole new mind-set. In Coaching Agile Teams, Lyssa Adkins gives agile coaches the insights they need to adopt this new mind-set and to guide teams to extraordinary performance in a re-energized work environment. You’ll gain a deep view into the role of the agile coach, discover what works and what doesn’t, and learn how to adapt powerful skills from many allied disciplines, including the fields of professional coaching and mentoring. Coverage includes Understanding what it takes to be a great agile coach Mastering all of the agile coach’s roles: teacher, mentor, problem solver, conflict navigator, and performance coach Creating an environment where self-organized, high-performance teams can emerge Coaching teams past cooperation and into full collaboration Evolving your leadership style as your team grows and changes Staying actively engaged without dominating your team and stunting its growth Recognizing failure, recovery, and success modes in your coaching Getting the most out of your own personal agile coaching journey Whether you’re an agile coach, leader, trainer, mentor, facilitator, ScrumMaster, project manager, product owner, or team member, this book will help you become skilled at helping others become truly great. What could possibly be more rewarding?

Setting the Standard for Product Management and Marketing Many of the leading voices in the product management profession collaborated closely with working product managers to develop The Guide to the Product Management and Marketing Body of Knowledge (the ProdBOK(r) Guide). This effort was enhanced by project management, user experience, and business analyst thought leaders who further defined and optimized several essential working relationships that improve product manager effectiveness. As a result of this groundbreaking collaboration within the product management community and across the adjoining professions, the ProdBOK Guide provides the most comprehensive view of product management and marketing as they apply to a wide range of goods and services. The resulting standard provides product managers with essential knowledge to improve the practice of product management and deliver organizational results. This edition of the ProdBOK Guide: Introduces a product management lifecycle for goods and services Encompasses and defines traditional product development processes such as waterfall, as well as newer approaches that fall under the Agile umbrella Illustrates the various inputs and outputs that product managers should consider at each phase of the product management lifecycle Highlights how to optimize the working relationship between product management professionals and our counterparts in the project, program, portfolio management, user experience, and business analyst communities Describes essential tools that product managers should be aware of and utilize as they work to create value for their Organizations The ProdBOK Guide represents an industry-wide effort to establish a standard for the practice of product management. The book was sponsored by the Association of International Product Marketing and Management (AIPMM). Founded in 1998, AIPMM aims to help professionals like you attain a higher level of knowledge and enhance the results you bring to your organizations every day. About the Authors Greg Geracie is a recognized product management thought leader and the president of Actuation Consulting, a global provider of product management training, consulting, and advisory services to some of the world's most well-known organizations. Greg is the author of the global best seller Take Charge Product Management and led the development of the ProdBOK Guide as editor-in-chief. He is also an adjunct professor at DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois. Steven D. Eppinger is professor of management science and innovation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Sloan School of Management. Professor Eppinger teaches MIT's executive programs in product development and complex project management. He has co-authored a leading textbook, Product Design and Development (5th edition, 2012, McGraw-Hill), which is used by hundreds of universities around the worl

Best practices for managing projects in agile environments—now updated with new techniques for larger projects Today, the pace of project management moves faster. Project management needs to become more flexible and far more responsive to customers. Using Agile Project Management (APM), project managers can achieve all these goals without compromising value, quality, or business discipline. In Agile Project Management, Second Edition, renowned agile pioneer Jim Highsmith thoroughly updates his classic guide to APM, extending and refining it to support even the largest projects and organizations. Writing for project leaders, managers, and executives at all levels, Highsmith integrates the best project management, product management, and software development practices into an overall framework designed to support unprecedented speed and mobility. The many topics added in this new edition include incorporating agile values, scaling agile projects, release planning, portfolio governance, and enhancing organizational agility. Project and business leaders will especially appreciate Highsmith’s new coverage of promoting agility through performance measurements based on value, quality, and constraints. This edition’s coverage includes: Understanding the agile revolution’s impact on product development Recognizing when agile methods will work in project management, and when they won’t Setting realistic business objectives for Agile Project Management Promoting agile values and principles across the organization Utilizing a proven Agile Enterprise Framework that encompasses governance, project and iteration management, and technical practices Optimizing all five stages of the agile project: Envision, Speculate, Explore, Adapt, and Close Organizational and product-related processes for scaling agile to the largest projects and teams Agile project governance solutions for executives and management The “Agile Triangle”: measuring performance in ways that encourage agility instead of discouraging it The changing role of the agile project leader

Gain all of the techniques, teachings, tools, and methodologies required to be an effective first-time product manager. The overarching goal of this book is to help you understand the product manager role, give you concrete examples of what a product manager does, and build the foundational skill-set that will gear you towards a career in product management. To be an effective PM in the tech industry, you need to have a basic understanding of technology. In this book you’ll get your feet wet by exploring the skills a PM needs in their toolset and cover enough ground to make you feel comfortable in a technical discussion. A PM is not expected to have the same level of depth or knowledge as a software engineer, but knowing enough to continue the conversation can be a benefit in your career in product management. A complete product manager will have a 360-degree understanding of user experience and how to craft beautiful products that are easy-to-use, with the end user in mind. You’ll continue your journey with a walk through basic UX principles and even go through the process of building a simple set of UI frames for a mock app. Aside from the technical and design expertise, a PM needs to master the social aspects of the role. Acting as a bridge between engineering, marketing, and other teams can be difficult, and this book will dive into the business and soft skills of product management. After reading Product Management Essentials you will be one of a select few technically-capable PMs who can interface with management, stakeholders, customers, and the engineering team. What You Will Learn Gain the traits of a successful PM from industry PMs, VCs, and other professionals See the day-to-day responsibilities of a PM and how the role differs across tech companies Absorb the technical knowledge necessary to interface with engineers and estimate timelines Design basic mocks, high-fidelity wireframes, and fully polished user interfaces Create core documents and handle business interactions Who This Book Is For Individuals who are eyeing a transition into a PM role or have just entered a PM role at a new organization for the first time. They currently hold positions as a software engineer, marketing manager, UX designer, or data analyst and want to move away from a feature-focused view to a high-level strategic view of the product vision.

Shows you what it takes to develop products that blow your users away—and take market share from your competitors. This book will explain how the principles behind agile product development help designers, developers, architects, and product managers create awesome products; and how to look beyond a shiny user interface to build a great product. Most importantly, this book will give you a shared framework for your product development team to collaborate effectively. Product development involves several key activities—including ideation, discovery, design, development, and delivery—and yet too many companies and innovators focus on just a few of them much to the detriment of the product’s success in the marketplace. As a result we still continue to see high failure rates in new product development, be it inside organizations or startups. Unfortunately, or rather fortunately, these failures are largely avoidable. In the last fifteen years, advances in agile software development, lean product development, human-centered design, design thinking, lean startups and product delivery have helped improve individual aspects of product development. However, not enough guidance has been available to integrate them in the context of the product development life cycle. Until now. Product developer extraordinaire Tathagat Varma in Agile Product Development integrates individual knowledge areas into a fiel d manual for product developers. Organized in the way an idea germinates, sprouts, and grows, the book synthesizes the body of knowledge in a pragmatic way that is more natural to the entire product creation process rather than from individual practices that constitute it. In today’s hyper-innovative world, being first to the market, or delivering feature-loaded products, or even offering the latest technology doesn’t guarantee success anymore. Sure, those elements are all needed in the right measures, but they are not sufficient by themselves. And getting it right couldn’t be more important: Building products that deliver awesome user experiences is the top challenge facing businesses today, especially in a post-Apple world where user experience and design has been elevated to a cult status.