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SCRUM User Stories, Part 2: User value over business value?
My last post about User Stories and putting the value for the user first in any product decision generated some great discussion on Twitter. As with anything there are some varying views on the topic, and as one example I was pointed to Liz Keogh’s post on user stories. Liz argues that User Stories should…
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SCRUM User Stories: As a User, NOT As a Manager
The success or failure of a piece of software, or any product for that matter, is how well its users are satisfied, and how well it solves their needs. In the world of web software, adding functionality is rarely the differentiating factor that will lead to the winning product. More likely the winner is the…
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Move fast
The world moves fast. Your competitors move fast with it. Users move fast, too. Users are more fickle than ever before. This month’s UK WIRED magazine rated Twitter as “tired”. This for a service that’s only five years old with a still-growing userbase. Ouch! In the world of web products, building and releasing beautiful and…
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Classic product management wisdom from one of the fathers of industrial design
In 1955 Henry Dreyfuss, one of the most influential industrial designers of the 20th century, in his book “Designing for People” wrote the following : “The successful performer in this new field is a man of many hats. He does more than merely design things. He is a businessman as well as a person who…
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The most important career skill for this century: fixing what’s broken
Companies are a complicated beasts. Reporting lines, structures, process, heirarchy, politics… finding your way through the corporate maze and working out how to get things done and ship meaningful work can be tough. If you look around in any company, I’m sure you’ll see things that don’t make sense. You’ll see ineffective managers and inefficient…
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Driving innovation with agile: a short case study
A prototype of the first mouse We all know the story – but it’s still remarkably easy to forget that some of the most influential innovations in the field of personal computing, including the mouse, the laser printer, computer generated bitmap graphics and the graphical user interface, were not invented by Microsoft or Apple, but…
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User testing: an input to innovation, not a source of it
Benz “Velo” model (1894) It’s hard to imagine a life without cars. Before the automobile was invented getting around was a costly and particularly time-consuming business. That quick drive to the hardware store that takes 15 minutes in the car might have taken several hours on horseback, or an entire day in a horse-drawn carriage.…
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Release it: now
Release your software to real users as early as possible. Building software for years without ever releasing any of it is like working in a kitchen and letting the food go cold and mouldy before serving it up. Building software is a collaborative process – not just amongst you and your colleagues – or between…
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GPS, turn-by-turn guidance and location-based services: what are they doing to my brain?
There’s a motorcycle accessories store that I go to quite a lot. It’s quite a distance away – 10 kilometers through the city or so – but I like it because it has the best range and quite good prices. Anyway, I was there the other day buying some new touring pants, and as I…
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Tracking software bugs: keep the important ones; drop the rest
In ancient neolithic farming communities, the size of the average tribe or village was about 150 people. That’s also about the size of most military units dating back to Roman antiquity and earlier, and it’s a number that features frequently in a variety of social antropological examples. It turns out, as Robin Dunbar popularised with…