by Enfocus Solutions | Mar 12, 2014 | Business Analysis, Product Development, Uncategorized |
I was recently reading an article about a company featured in Fast Company magazine, who has become very successful with a very simple business model: give customers only what they want. You might be thinking: “well, that’s what every company does.” But, the 2013 Chaos Manifesto published by The Standish Group presents a very different story. They report that only 20% of any given product’s features are used often, 50% are hardly ever used, and the remaining 30% are used infrequently. Yikes. That literally means that about 70% of the functionality most companies are spending their money to discover and deliver to the market are not really even being used—and by extension, one can assume, needed. As a consumer I know I can relate to that—I’m pretty sure my phone does much more than I ever use, know how to use, or care to use. You can probably relate. But this company I was reading about in Fast Company, they didn’t really seem to have that issue because either a) they did not build anything not explicitly asked for by the market, or b) they quickly tossed any products that were not being used and moved onto research what else to develop. Now maybe that in and of itself is not that interesting, but what I did find interesting was they approach they used to do it. And how easily they seemed to have done it—as well as how cheaply. Some organizations spend thousands of dollars a year on market-sensing activities trying to figure out what the right product and features are to build—focus groups, surveys, market research service...
by John Parker | Sep 18, 2012 | Agile, Business Analysis, Product Development, Uncategorized |
There are three fundamental roles in Scrum: Product Owner, ScrumMaster, and Team. This article discusses the Product Owner in how in many cases a Business Analyst is the best person to serve this role. Product Owner is the most demanding of the Scrum roles. The Product Owner creates a vision of what needs to be built and conveys that vision to the Team. Effectively communicating this vision is key for beginning any agile software development project. In Scrum, the Product Owner is the primary person responsible for ensuring that the solution delivers business value. The Product Owner leads the development effort by conveying his or her vision to the Team, creating requirements (user stories) in the backlog, and prioritizing user stories based on business value. The Product Owner must work closely with stakeholders and the Team to make sure their interests are included in the release. The Product Owner works closely with the Team to negotiate work assignments, resolve issues, and ensure that the agreed upon work is completed by the end of the iteration. The Product Owner must be available to the Team during the sprint to answer questions and deliver direction. This combination of authority and availability to the Development Team makes it difficult for the Scrum Product Owner not to micro-manage. However, Scrum places significant value on self-organization and, as a result, the Product Owner must respect the Team’s ability to create its own plan of action. This means that a Product Owner is forbidden from assigning the Team more work in the middle of the sprint. Even if requirements change or some business dynamic arises...
