Category: Agile
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“The Lean Enterprise” (Book Review)
Most of the product people or businesses that I speak to all seem to want one thing: to be ‘lean’. They all nod when you talk about wasting resources on making products that no wants to buy. They’ve picked up on the approach adopted by many successful startups who have got the capacity to learn…
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“The Checklist Manifesto” (Book Review)
Before I tell you more about “The Checklist Manifesto” written by Atuwal Gawande, a US-based surgeon, I feel I need to make a confession: I LOVE check and to do lists. The Checklist Manifesto therefore felt like the right book for me to read since it explains the role and value of checklists. In this book,…
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Interviewing customers to explore problems and solutions
I recently learned more about the distinction between ‘problem interviews’ and ‘solution interviews’, when interacting with your customers. The problem interview is Ash Maurya’s term for the interview you conduct to validate whether or not there’s a real problem that our target audience has. In contrast, the goal of a solution interview is to find out what…
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Why we need a PRODUCT retrospective
Any self respecting developer or product person will be doing team retrospectives on a regular basis. These retrospectives provide a great opportunity to reflect on past releases, build team dynamics and identify any areas which could be improved. However, I’ve found product retrospectives to be a lot less common. Let me first explain what I…
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“User Story Mapping” (Book Review)
Three years ago I wrote about Jeff Patton’s “Story Mapping”. I described this technique as a great tool to help design and develop products (see Fig. 1 below for a good example of a Story Map). Jeff Patton has now written a book about this technique, titled “User Story Mapping”. Patton is a well-known user experience (‘UX’) specialist. He…
As I learn ... 