Product Management
Delivering working software quickly and regularly is a fundamental principle of agile development.
What is product management?
In web development, we can’t assume we fully understand either our users or how their product will be used. The concept of a “minimum viable product” is commonly used in the startup world to identify the subset of features needed to deploy a usable product and test it in the market. Yet 65% of features in software are rarely or never used (according to a Standish Group survey).
Our Product Managers can help in the following areas:-
- Testing concepts/ideas/hypotheses before product or service development - product validation and conjoint analysis
- Introducing a product market refining the product positioning and supporting collateral while targeting ideal prospects
- Sustaining and accelerating growth the creation of more comprehensive collateral and harvesting initial customer feedback for future development
- Re-invigorating a product by re-positioning, re-pricing or developing the route to market with the creation of specific channel collateral and tools
- Re-developing a mature product that ensures sustained use or evolving into a new product line
- Introducing formal product management tools and techniques to teams that are not familiar with product management
The key to systematically being able to cut product scope, while still delivering a great product, is to link the value the user needs to receive to the actual features in the product. To understand that value, consider what problems the product is solving and what objectives the user has for the product. Through this methodology derive the most valuable features.
Agile and Product Management
Agile methodologies are used to improve the speed of the development while keeping the flexibility of change by grouping the number of feature requests into sprints when creating Scrum teams. Sprints are highly visible and collaborative with the Scrum team and are used to focus all resources on completion/objective.
Tracking of completed feature requests or tasks contributes to the development burn down which is aligned to the release goal. Product management and Scrum Master work in tandem to ensure that the correct features are selected, grouped into sprints and progressed to completion. Agile methodologies have been used successfully by Think 360 over the years especially to improve performance and tighten release schedules with a variety of products regardless of where they are in the product lifecycle.
Agile Product Management & Development
Agile provides many major benefits over more traditional product development and realisation. The first is development can be released in short bursts of focus and then also maintains development momentum. The whole development and product management team have visibility of progress and any challenges discovered on the way.
Agile methodology is highly collaborative and is designed to provide small steps rather than giant leaps. Using Agile, short-term cycle development and long-term project planning can provide a powerful combination regarding realising product to market and while keeping an eye on the strategic aspirations of the company.
One other important factor is the cost of change within the short development cycles is less expensive than a traditional Waterfall approach.
Agile removes the number gates for many other processes involved in releasing to market, including product marketing, documentation, internal and external communication etc.
Launching or planning for launch can be managed more efficiently due to the reduced complexity of the release and sprints provide a much quicker feedback mechanism both within the company and within the market.
Agile Development
Cyclic Product Management consists of balancing the needs of the customer/market and the needs of the business at any point in the product lifecycle while developing a minimum viable product to generate revenue & profit. The approach also reuses some aspects of Agile development regarding rapid Define, Code and Test sprints that can be released as small releases rather than collating many changes into one large and complex release.
Think 360 utilises proven product management processes are creating valuable products or services that result in profit for your business.
Our goal is to create significant value for your customers generating sustainable revenue and substantial profit.