Showing posts with label program management. Show all posts
Showing posts with label program management. Show all posts

eXtreme Project Management: Using Leadership, Principles, and Tools to Deliver Value in the Face of Volatility Review

eXtreme Project Management: Using Leadership, Principles, and Tools to Deliver Value in the Face of Volatility
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eXtreme Project Management: Using Leadership, Principles, and Tools to Deliver Value in the Face of Volatility ReviewWhat DeCarlo describes is not in any way an extreme project management approach but a common sense process of dealing with the insanity of the expectations for many contemporary projects. DeCarlo has great insight and sound advice on how people and processes must adapt to the business and technical requirements of modern projects.
Unfortunately, he overly chides and unceremoniously puts down the traditional "Newtonians" and their traditional planning and change aversion but somewhat begrudgingly recognizes their proper place in the long history and wide spectrum of projects, i.e., "you don't use eXtreme project management to shutdown a nuclear power plant for maintenance."
I think DeCarlo could have make his points without some of the denigrating remarks about traditional project management and managers, particularly, PMPs. He is certainly not unique with this tact among other non-traditional project management authors in the agile software development camp. Leading both traditional and extreme projects and even some which have both concurrent elements, I have found projects dictate their own approach as DeCarlo suggests in the final chapter.
His section on leadership and self-mastery is the keystone and guiding light of the book, a book which DeCarlo confesses is not about project management but about making a difference in an eXtreme world. This section alone is worth the price of the book. This book is really about leading people not managing projects.
One disappointment is DeCarlo's simplified two step prescription for the organizational transition from the traditional to the eXtreme process. He seems to abandon his own protocol on how to plan and execute the transition which should be the first eXtreme project to be undertaken. He seems to take the "Nike" approach to "just do it" by just adopting the Flexible Project Model and applying JIT project management to a few real projects. I have never worked in an organization, traditional or extreme, where it is this simple to implement fundamental changes without getting the buy-in that DeCarlo emphasizes throughout his book. Perhaps, in the next edition, DeCarlo will expand this section and give us some additional insights of how to make the organizational transition using the eXtreme project management approach.
Overall, DeCarlo has written a witty, insightful and common sense approach to eXtreme projects that just may work if you achieve self mastery, demonstrate courage and convince stakeholders to go along. It should be required reading for all students and practioneers of project management and others who are charged with constructively changing themselves and eventually the world.
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Inspired: How To Create Products Customers Love Review

Inspired: How To Create Products Customers Love
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Inspired: How To Create Products Customers Love ReviewIt is a pity that there are only 5 stars to award the maximum appreciation for this book. There are a number of achievements that deserve, alone, five stars.
First, Marty Cagan clearly states what qualities a Product Manager must have. Not everyone is talented to be a Product Manager. The author lists unmeasurable traits, such as product passion, customer empathy, innate intelligence (there is no substitute for it, we learn), ethics, integrity and confidence. The latter is very important as the entire teams in engineering and marketing must be kept inspired. This leads to the corollary that simply training a person to be a Product Manager is not enough. One must know when an unsuitable person must look for other positions. This is something uncommon, to consider what many view a process driven function to a talent.
Second, the book asks where to place the Product Manageent function. In Engineering? In Marketing? There is a distinction between a Product Manager and Product Marketing Manager. As veteran product manager myself, I know the challenges to be part of engineering. Engineers are sometimes suspicious of marketing and their product manager becomes the "piñata" everyone beats in frustration. As part of Marketing, there is tendency to follow release processes and create demands engineering can not deliver in a logical way. Marty advocates the creation of a Product Council with equal rights as engineering and marketing
Marty says a successful product manager sees himself as the CEO of the product. This is absolutely true, but unfortunately the Directors of Engineering and those of Marketing, also see themselves as CEOs. As long as an independent product council does not exist, the product manager must be a CEO with zero authority. S/he must be a diplomat and shrewd negotiator before he can be a CEO. Yet the true blue blood product manager is the one whose skills are required for start up.
As startup is usually a one product or service company. Chapter 28 is dedicated to product management in a startup company. The challenge is a new start up is started with an idea that comes from engineering. However we must have the right product for the right audience, before "before burning through $500,000 or more in seed funding".
Every aspect of the product management function is presented.
I am an alumni of UC Berkeley Haas School Product Management executive program, one of few, if not the only program dedicated to Product Management. Berkeley program talks of portfolio management. What products to release, how many are completely new and how many are new releases of older or even very old products?
It all depends on the risk tolerance. A products portfolio must include new high risk, lottery-like winning products. This is what made Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley. After reading Marty Cagan, every professional team all over the world can produce "inspired" products. Silicon Valley and it's personalities now share all they know. But what is a low probability to create outside Silicon Valley is another Google. The Google Sequoia Capital VC's made more money in Google than all the rest of the portfolio combined over the last 20 years.
Another topic that I would have liked to see expanded in a next edition is pricing. How do we price the products in such a way that we do not leave money on the table? But this is another subject. Marty's book is both educational and thought provoking. The book self published by Silicon Valley Product Group, the company of Marty Cagan, went beyond the goal of being a reference for it's prospective v customers. It is THE BOOK for of product management, a must-read for anyone.
The idea of the product manager as a creator with talent and passion I advocated for years in my blog, "The memories of a Program Manager". It is re-assuring to see the same sentiments shared in the more comprehensive, practical and sensitive book of Marty Cagan..Inspired: How To Create Products Customers Love Overview

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