(2007-11-05) Cagan Agile Product Management

Martin Cagan on some guidelines for doing Product Management in an Agile Software Development process. Rapid cycling of ProtoTypes before the Iteration starts. As a product manager/owner, your main responsibility is to come up with useful and usable prototypes and user stories that your team can build from. Replace heavy PRDs and Functional Specs with ProtoTypes and User Story-s.

He links to an earlier piece on a lite Product Opportunity Assessment to do before the ProtoType. The hardest question to answer is usually the first, which surprises people because it sounds like the easiest. But ask most product managers what problem their product is intended to solve, and you usually get a rambling list of features and capabilities, rather than the a crisp, clear and compelling statement of exactly the problem that's solved. (JTBD)