Blogs

Creativity - TEDTalks with Practitioner Insights

By Carlos M. Rodriguez posted 12-20-2023
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Creativity - TEDTalks with Practitioner Insights Read Time: 2 Minutes The Power of Imagination Designing products and services involves deeply understanding consumers’ beliefs, attitudes, and inner selves as product managers; the journey to a fine and competitive product is a function of user insights, competitiveness, value-added, differentiation, and effective execution. Unlike artificial intelligence and other technology, people possess a faculty computers can’t match: the power to imagine and act on new possibilities. Our unique ability is imagination. Meet the imagination worker: those who think creatively to envision a different future and ...
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Motivating Teams - TEDTalks with Practitioner Insights

By Rose Klimovich posted 12-20-2023
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Motivating Teams - TEDTalks with Practitioner Insights Read Time: 2 Minutes The Puzzle of Motivation by Dan Pink Click here to Watch Keeping team members motivated is challenging for leaders. Looking at the science of teams, Dan Pick offers some ways to motivate people. Dan Pink’s 2009 TED talk uses humor and personal experience to explain how the business model of carrot and stick stifles motivation rather than driving it. Pink explains that for more complicated problems needing cognitive skills, giving the team leader flexibility and adapting your motivational model to more intrinsic motivation is the best way to keep your team driven. ...
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Function Analysis: Foundation to Concept Development

By Carlos M. Rodriguez posted 11-13-2023
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Function Analysis: Foundation to Concept Development Read Time: 5 minutes The details are details. They make the product. The connections, the connections, the connections. In the end, it will be these details that give the product life. Charles Eames Consumers purchase products because they can perform specific functions. For example, a consumer will buy a cellular phone because it accomplishes the “facilitates communication” function. A customer will purchase a lawn mower because it performs the function of “cutting grass.” These are known as the basic functions. Products and services generally perform basic and secondary functions ...
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Improving Innovation Decision Making

By David Matheson posted 10-16-2023
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Read Time: 2 Minutes When asked “How would you know a good decision if you saw one”, audience members at PDMA’s Inspire Innovation conference September 18, 2023 in New Orleans said things like “Alignment with goal and vision” and “Aligned with expectations” and “True alignment (not just superficial agreement)” – are you getting a theme? Many people had breakthroughs: getting commitment was the part of a good decision and the result of a process that could be engineered! Many also realized that their current process framework (Phase Gate) wasn’t set up to deliver good decisions, resulting in frustration in this area, and were inspired that there might be ...
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The Application of Jobs to Be Done in B2B Markets: Unlocking Value and Driving Innovation

By Scott Burleson posted 08-16-2023
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The Application of Jobs to Be Done in B2B Markets: Unlocking Value and Driving Innovation Read time: 4 minutes As the speed of innovation increases, understanding customer needs and creating products and services that address those needs is crucial for success. The Jobs-to-Be-Done (JTBD) framework has gained significant attention in recent years as a powerful philosophy for customer-centric innovation. Initially developed in the context of consumer markets , JTBD is just as relevant for business-to-business (B2B) sectors. I. Understanding JTBD in B2B Markets The Jobs-to-Be-Done framework is centered around the idea that customers "hire" ...
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Design Studio Workshops: Ideation, Problem-Solving, and the MVP

By Carlos M. Rodriguez posted 07-25-2023
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Design Studio Workshops: Ideation, Problem-Solving, and the MVP Read time: 4 minutes “Alone, we can do so little; together, we can do so much.” Helen Keller What Is a Design Studio? A design studio is a UX workshop combining divergent and convergent thinking in an ideation process, focusing on finding solutions to a problem, and providing the platform to aid prototyping efforts. It combines brainstorming, setting priorities, and adjusting solution demands in a fast, energetic, and collaborative environment. Several refer to design studios as design sprints, UX workshops, etc. Design studios include diverse perspectives, ...
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Working Styles for Product Team Success

By Rose Klimovich posted 06-08-2023
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PDMA Body of Knowledge: Culture, Teams & Leadership Insights #6 Read time: 5 minutes The kHUB Curator Team members have each been assigned a BoK section to own. This includes seeking, editing and sharing content related to that section. The curators are also sharing their perspective of various sub-sections of their chapter and contributing personal examples, experience, or related articles corresponding to the subject matter. Chapter 6 Insights – Culture, Teams & Leadership Working Styles for Product Team Success Most companies have many teams working on various product areas. One key area that can be overlooked is how to choose ...
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Portfolio and Portfolio Management

By Salvador Gonzalez-Garcia posted 06-01-2023
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Portfolio and Portfolio Management: PDMA Body of Knowledge: Chapter 2 Insights Read time: 2 minutes The kHUB Curator Team members have each been assigned a BoK section to own. This includes seeking, editing and sharing content related to that section. The curators are also sharing their perspective of various sub-sections of their chapter and contributing personal examples, experience, or related articles corresponding to the subject matter. Chapter 2 Insights – Portfolio Management Portfolio and Portfolio Management According to the PDMA Body of Knowledge 2 nd edition, a portfolio is “A set of projects or products that ...
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TED Talks Related to Product Design & Development Tools

By Carlos M. Rodriguez posted 05-11-2023
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TED Talks Related to Product Design & Development Tools Read time: 2 minutes Have you heard the statement: Forms follow function? When designing products, we often identify the consumer needs to solve, translate them to functions, identify clusters, and build an architecture that allows us to generate derivates. But what if we design forms that drive functions? In such a case, we may need to use emotions as mediators between forms and functions. Emotions allow us to understand forms. These TED talks challenge our curious minds to understand the most profound relationships among functions, forms, and emotions in consumption experiences. ...
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ChatGPT for Product Development and Product Management

By Rose Klimovich posted 03-02-2023
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ChatGPT for Product Development and Product Management Read time: 5 minutes Lots of people are talking about ChatGPT and its use in schools and businesses. Can this technology be useful to Product Developers and Product Managers? What is ChatGPT? ChatGPT, is a large language model developed by OpenAI. It uses machine learning algorithms to generate human-like responses to text-based conversations. It has been trained on a diverse range of texts from the internet, including websites, books, and other written materials, and can understand and respond to a wide variety of topics and questions. The purpose is to provide a conversational interface ...
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Why We Disagree on Scrum

By Robert Webber posted 02-07-2023
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Read time: 3 minutes I often read through the passionate LinkedIn debates about whether Scrum has been successful. My observation is that much of the disagreement is based on the different environments in which Scrum is applied. My conclusion is that nobody’s wrong. I assert that your perspective on Agile success depends on three characteristics of your organization: Modularity – The degree to which functionality can be added or changed by independent Agile teams. Familiarity – The extent to which the Agile teams are familiar with the domain. Flexibility – The degree to which Agile teams can vary scope and/or schedule to incorporate ...
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Strategy - TEDTalks with Practitioner Insights

By Rose Klimovich posted 01-19-2023
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Ted Talks – Strategy Read time: 2 minutes 3A Strategic Thinking | Rich Horwath , Strategic Thinking Institute This is not a Ted Talk but a short video on Strategy. This video is about how to think more strategically. Practitioner points: When you do strategy, you need to think about what you want to do and how you are going to get there. Your plan needs new insights and new ideas from many people both inside and outside the business. Don’t just put the plan on the shelf when it is done. You need to use your plan to drive your corporate activities. Watch time: 9 minutes Read Your Strategy Needs a Strategy ...
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"Real" Agile Product Management

By Robert Webber posted 12-21-2022
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Read time: 3 minutes I often see the term “Agile Product Management,” but what does it really mean? Many believe they became “Agile Product Managers” when their development teams adopted an Agile development framework. Others would argue that they were “Agile Product Managers” back in the waterfall days because they changed development priorities on a weekly basis. Here’s my definition: An Agile Product Manager leverages Agile development to increase product development Return on Investment (ROI) by rapidly reacting to new opportunities and threats. Remember that the business invests in product development to increase shareholder ...
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The Mythical MMFS

By Robert Webber posted 11-29-2022
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Read time: 3 minutes Feel like a voice in the wilderness in your organization? The Minimum Marketable Feature Set (MMFS) makes so much sense. Who could argue against getting software to market faster using smaller and more frequent releases? Is the business really that dumb that they don’t get it? As a software development engineer having the opportunity to become a VP of product management and a CEO, I’ve been able to look at this problem from all sides. The MMFS concept has been around for a long time. However, many organizations still plan large releases the way they did in the waterfall days. The Agile community needs to understand ...
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Measuring Motivation

By Robert Webber posted 11-17-2022
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Read time: 5 minutes My last article provided an organizational behavior model of motivation, and how Agile can provide the frequent and timely positive reinforcement to create employee engagement. As leaders, our objective, and arguably our most important role, is to establish systems of reinforcement within the workplace. This is the performance curve from my last article: Unlocking Agile’s Missed Potential , Robert Webber, Wiley-IEEE Press, 2022 Recall that you need to be on the left or the right to establish motivation. The lowest performance is in the middle, where unfortunately most software organizations sit. ...
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Teamwork - TEDTalks with Practitioner Insights

By Rose Klimovich posted 11-07-2022
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Ted Talks – Teamwork Read time: 2 minutes How to turn a group of strangers into a team | Amy Edmondson Business school professor Amy Edmondson talks about the basics of “teaming”. Edmondson shares the elements needed to turn a group of strangers into a quick-thinking team that can nimbly respond to challenges. Practitioner points: Teams are often the best way to solve new, urgent, or unusual problems. Certain elements are needed to help teams be effective: Situational humility – where leaders admit they don’t know the answer and need help. Curiosity – bringing the right people together with different backgrounds to ...
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The Product Owner is a Unicorn

By Robert Webber posted 11-01-2022
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Read time: 5 minutes In my previous article, When Scrum is not Scrum , I listed five criteria that must be met to say you are doing Scrum: Teams pull work from backlogs at their own pace Feedback is implemented at a higher priority than new development Defects are corrected at a higher priority than new development so that releases remain “potentially shippable” Sprints produce working functionality, not chunks of software An engaged product owner can convey the problems to solve for the team That article addressed all but the fifth – having an effective product owner. I observed that the inability to implement the ...
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The Secret of Agile Motivation

By Robert Webber posted 10-25-2022
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Read time: 5 minutes Everyone is looking for silver bullets. There’s a lot written about the secrets of motivation. If the secrets are out, why do so many organizations have unmotivated employees who come to work and do the minimum to get by? Here’s the promised secret of Agile motivation in four words: LET THEM DO AGILE! I’ll prove to you with a few organizational behavior principles that Agile development, as originally conceived, has the potential to establish highly motivated teams. However, this potential has been squandered in most organizations. My wife, Susan, has a PhD in psychology with a specialization in organizational behavior. ...
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When Scrum is not Scrum

By Robert Webber posted 10-19-2022
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Read time: 5 minutes My book, Unlocking Agile’s Missed Potential and my LinkedIn articles have a common theme – Agile has not met expectations because of the constraints of waterfall planning. I’m going to address Scrum specifically in this article. I’ll show you that Scrum is not possible when teams are held to feature schedules derived from waterfall planning. And I assert that “real” Scrum is only being done in a fraction of the software industry, mostly in smaller companies. My conclusion is that much of the criticism of Scrum you see isn’t valid because almost nobody is really doing Scrum. Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water! ...
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Save Agile - Stop Waterfall Planning

By Robert Webber posted 09-30-2022
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Read time: 5 minutes My last article on business predictability asserts that we in software development are at a disadvantage relative to sales and manufacturing because we can’t define our output in terms of value that the business understands. Would you believe me if I told you that there is a way that you can quantify the financial value of software increments below the release level and above the feature level? Stick with me. I came up with a way after thinking really hard about how to assign “Cost of Delay (CoD)” to software. I will explain CoD in more detail in a future article but suffice it to say that it’s basically ...
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