10/11/2023 0 Comments Manager speed upThat might include release notes, automated testing, pricing, performance benchmarks, and a training session for the Support team. Makers and product managers should agree on a general definition of done. (Like every episode of every home improvement show, we discover mold in the basement or raccoons in the attic and have to adjust.) Systems crash, partners change APIs, security holes are discovered, insidious bugs evade fixing, we learn what happens when AWS East goes offline. Most makers are optimists, and schedules usually run late. Humbly, you can ask “if that’s what we want to accomplish, what have I missed? How else could we approach it?”įorcing a little slack in the plan. Rather than command-and-control, good product managers want the best answers. Some will be better or faster or have a bigger impact on KPIs. When our team understands the context of a problem and how users operate our software, they are empowered to imagine alternate solutions. Clearly, frequently communicating goals and strategy.Batch up interesting requests to run past the team every other week. Most emergencies disappear on their own a day later. If it’s not a P1 system down, then we don’t need to interrupt the team this very minute to size some new thing. Slowing down interrupts just a little.So product managers need to be champions of the exclusive OR, sometimes packaged as “yes, of course we could do that if we postpone/cancel InitiativeA and CommitmentB and UpdateC and HotFixD.” Our company and customers have an infinite list of requests and a voracious appetite for new features, which can lead to chaos. Ruthlessly prioritizing work, so we’re doing more of what’s important.There are lots of ways that product managers can get more good stuff, as opposed to just more stuff. Ways To Boost Effective Throughput (Process View) We welcome questions, alternatives, and occasional heated arguments. So let’s not assume that we can write perfect stories or specs or requirements for them to implement exactly. Maker teams (collectively) have more brainpower than product managers. We hire the best developers and designers and test engineers, paying them handsomely. I know I’m in deep water when I hear “just tell me how long the executives think this should take.” Product managers may have questions or suggestions… but maker teams quickly give up on estimating when we overrule them. The people doing the work are the best people to size the work. Estimation – rough-sizing stories or epics or tickets – is the team’s internal assessment of relative size and difficulty. If the team prefers spaces over tabs, that’s their call. But my product managers and I don’t get to veto the team’s choice of GitHub vs. After three decades building B2B software, I have lots of opinions. Imposing development tools, processes, or coding standards.When we’re overloaded, we cut corners and accumulate product debt. With no slack, we can’t handle the inevitable surprises that (unsurprisingly) pop up in most sprints: system outages, hard-to-whack bugs, family emergencies, misbehaving partner APIs, customer demos, HR meetings about new benefits. On average, committing a team to 110% of their capacity means getting less IN TOTAL than 85% or 90% loading. We’ve known since the 1970’s that overloading a development team reduces their total output. Let’s unpack things that product managers shouldn’t do, can do to deliver more value, and recognition that our maker teams are craftspeople rather than robots. It is Product’s job to get the most customer value out of that process and to push for healthy product economics. (Hint: the sum of those must-have-urgently items is 20x development throughput, so prioritization complaints never go away.)īut it’s not Product’s role to wring more code out of the maker team(developers + designers + CloudOps + test engineering + tech docs) or to restructure the development process. It also signals a lack of trust between the executive team and the development organization: “how do I know I’m getting my money’s worth out of this mysterious process? How hard can it be to accurately forecast the next couple of quarters?” And reflecting frequent complaints from internal stakeholders that each of their demands/priorities isn’t getting enough attention. This reflects confusion about what product managers do (and how we really add value), and often poor role definition where product managers are also project/program managers or engineering leads. To reduce some fictitious cost-per-feature financial goal. Half of the calls I get from CEOs include requests for Product Management to boost productivity in Engineering (aka Development aka Makers).
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