Business success hinges on successfully creating products with the right features. You must correctly analyze the needs of the customer and match these needs with your resources to not only produce a product and but also deliver it in a timely manner. An in-depth understanding of systematic release planning can put you on this path. Authored by ren

This is a comprehensive guide to Scrum for all (team members, managers, and executives). If you want to use Scrum to develop innovative products and services that delight your customers, this is the complete, single-source reference you've been searching for. This book provides a common understanding of Scrum, a shared vocabulary that can be used in applying it, and practical knowledge for deriving maximum value from it.

“Companies have been implementing large agile projects for a number of years, but the ‘stigma’ of ‘agile only works for small projects’ continues to be a frequent barrier for newcomers and a rallying cry for agile critics. What has been missing from the agile literature is a solid, practical book on the specifics of developing large projects in an agile way. Dean Leffingwell’s book Scaling Software Agility fills this gap admirably. It offers a practical guide to large project issues such as architecture, requirements development, multi-level release planning, and team organization. Leffingwell’s book is a necessary guide for large projects and large organizations making the transition to agile development.” —Jim Highsmith, director, Agile Practice, Cutter Consortium, author of Agile Project Management “There’s tension between building software fast and delivering software that lasts, between being ultra-responsive to changes in the market and maintaining a degree of stability. In his latest work, Scaling Software Agility, Dean Leffingwell shows how to achieve a pragmatic balance among these forces. Leffingwell’s observations of the problem, his advice on the solution, and his description of the resulting best practices come from experience: he’s been there, done that, and has seen what’s worked.” —Grady Booch, IBM Fellow Agile development practices, while still controversial in some circles, offer undeniable benefits: faster time to market, better responsiveness to changing customer requirements, and higher quality. However, agile practices have been defined and recommended primarily to small teams. In Scaling Software Agility, Dean Leffingwell describes how agile methods can be applied to enterprise-class development. Part I provides an overview of the most common and effective agile methods. Part II describes seven best practices of agility that natively scale to the enterprise level. Part III describes an additional set of seven organizational capabilities that companies can master to achieve the full benefits of software agility on an enterprise scale. This book is invaluable to software developers, testers and QA personnel, managers and team leads, as well as to executives of software organizations whose objective is to increase the quality and productivity of the software development process but who are faced with all the challenges of developing software on an enterprise scale.

This book will help you become a better product leader. Benefitting from Roman Pichler's extensive experience, you will learn how to align stakeholders and guide development teams even in challenging circumstances, avoid common leadership mistakes, and grow as a leader. Written in an engaging and easily accessible style, How to Lead in Product Management offers a wealth of practical tips and strategies. Through helpful examples, the book illustrates how you can directly apply the techniques to your work. Coverage includes: * Choosing the right leadership style * Cultivating empathy, building trust, and influencing others * Increasing your authority and empowering others * Directing stakeholders and development teams through common goals * Making decisions that people will support and follow through * Successfully resolving disputes and conflicts even with senior stakeholders * Listening deeply to discover and address hidden needs and interests * Practising mindfulness and embracing a growth mindset to develop as a leader Praise for How to Lead in Product Management: "Roman has done it again, delivering a practical book for the product management community that appeals to both heart and mind. How to Lead in Product Management is packed with concise, direct, and practical advice that addresses the deeper, personal aspects of the product leadership. Roman's book shares wisdom on topics including goals, healthy interactions with stakeholders, handling conflict, effective conversations, decision-making, having a growth mindset, and self-care. It is a must read for both new and experienced product people." ~Ellen Gottesdiener, Product Coach at EBG Consulting "Being a great product manager is tough. It requires domain knowledge, industry knowledge, technical skills, but also the skills to lead and inspire a team. Roman Pichler's How to Lead in Product Management is the best book I've read for equipping product managers to lead their teams." ~Mike Cohn, Author of Succeeding with Agile, Agile Estimating and Planning, and User Stories Applied "This is the book that has been missing for product people. Roman has created another masterpiece, a fast read with lots of value. It's a must read for every aspiring product manager." ~Magnus Billgren, CEO of Tolpagorni Product Management "How Lead in Product Management is for everyone who manages a product or drives important business decisions. Roman lays out the key challenges of product leadership and shows us ways of thoughtfully working with team members, stakeholders, partners, and the inevitable conflicts." ~Rich Mironov, CEO of Mironov Consulting and "Smokejumper" Head of Product

The overwhelming majority of a software system’s lifespan is spent in use, not in design or implementation. So, why does conventional wisdom insist that software engineers focus primarily on the design and development of large-scale computing systems? In this collection of essays and articles, key members of Google’s Site Reliability Team explain how and why their commitment to the entire lifecycle has enabled the company to successfully build, deploy, monitor, and maintain some of the largest software systems in the world. You’ll learn the principles and practices that enable Google engineers to make systems more scalable, reliable, and efficient—lessons directly applicable to your organization. This book is divided into four sections: Introduction—Learn what site reliability engineering is and why it differs from conventional IT industry practices Principles—Examine the patterns, behaviors, and areas of concern that influence the work of a site reliability engineer (SRE) Practices—Understand the theory and practice of an SRE’s day-to-day work: building and operating large distributed computing systems Management—Explore Google's best practices for training, communication, and meetings that your organization can use

Create a winning game plan for your digital products with Strategize: Product Strategy and Product Roadmap Practices for the Digital Age, 2nd edition. Using a wide range of proven techniques and tools, product management expert Roman Pichler explains how to create a winning product strategy and actionable roadmap. Comprehensive and insightful, the book will enable you to make the right strategic decisions in today’s dynamic digital age. If you work as a product manager, Scrum product owner, product portfolio manager, head of product, or product coach, then this book is for you. What you will learn: * Create an inspiring vision for your product. * Develop a product strategy that maximises the chances of launching a winning product. * Successfully adapt the strategy across the product life cycle to achieve sustained product success. * Measure the value your product creates using the right key performance indicators (KPIs). * Build an actionable outcome-based product roadmap that aligns stakeholders and directs the product backlog. * Regularly review the product strategy and roadmap and keep them up-to-date. Written in an engaging and easily accessible style, Strategize offers practical advice and valuable examples so that you can apply the practices directly to your products. This second, revised, and extended edition offers new concepts, more tools, and additional tips and examples. Praise for Strategize: "Strategize offers a comprehensive approach to product strategy using the latest practices geared specifically to digital products. Not just theory, the book is chock-full of real-world examples, making it easier to apply the principles to your company and products. Strategize is essential reading for everyone in charge of products: product executives, product managers, and product owners." Steve Johnson, Founder at Under10 Consulting. "Whether you are new to product management or an experienced practitioner, Strategize is a must read. You are guaranteed to get new ideas about how to develop or improve your product strategy and how to execute it successfully. It’s an essential addition to every product manager’s reading list." Marc Abraham, Senior Group Product Manager at Intercom.

Agile Estimating and Planning is the definitive, practical guide to estimating and planning agile projects. In this book, Agile Alliance cofounder Mike Cohn discusses the philosophy of agile estimating and planning and shows you exactly how to get the job done, with real-world examples and case studies. Concepts are clearly illustrated and readers are guided, step by step, toward how to answer the following questions: What will we build? How big will it be? When must it be done? How much can I really complete by then? You will first learn what makes a good plan-and then what makes it agile. Using the techniques in Agile Estimating and Planning, you can stay agile from start to finish, saving time, conserving resources, and accomplishing more. Highlights include: Why conventional prescriptive planning fails and why agile planning works How to estimate feature size using story points and ideal days–and when to use each How and when to re-estimate How to prioritize features using both financial and nonfinancial approaches How to split large features into smaller, more manageable ones How to plan iterations and predict your team's initial rate of progress How to schedule projects that have unusually high uncertainty or schedule-related risk How to estimate projects that will be worked on by multiple teams Agile Estimating and Planning supports any agile, semiagile, or iterative process, including Scrum, XP, Feature-Driven Development, Crystal, Adaptive Software Development, DSDM, Unified Process, and many more. It will be an indispensable resource for every development manager, team leader, and team member.

A good product roadmap is one of the most important and influential documents an organization can develop, publish, and continuously update. In fact, this one document can steer an entire organization when it comes to delivering on company strategy. This practical guide teaches you how to create an effective product roadmap, and demonstrates how to use the roadmap to align stakeholders and prioritize ideas and requests. With it, you’ll learn to communicate how your products will make your customers and organization successful. Whether you're a product manager, product owner, business analyst, program manager, project manager, scrum master, lead developer, designer, development manager, entrepreneur, or business owner, this book will show you how to: Articulate an inspiring vision and goals for your product Prioritize ruthlessly and scientifically Protect against pursuing seemingly good ideas without evaluation and prioritization Ensure alignment with stakeholders Inspire loyalty and over­-delivery from your team Get your sales team working with you instead of against you Bring a user­ and buyer-­centric approach to planning and decision-making Anticipate opportunities and stay ahead of the game Publish a comprehensive roadmap without over­committing

An indispensable resource for business leaders, IT professionals and project managers working to effect positive change in their organizations, this innovative book presents a new paradigm for the management of evolving business and IT architectures. Enterprise release management takes a holistic view of change that offers a synthesis of traditional management approaches, including project and change management, enterprise architecture, and development practices like configuration and release management. Unlike many books that simply focus on portfolio planning, this practical reference establishes an end to end release framework which ensures initiatives are planned and prioritized to streamline portfolio execution and delivery. Benefits of the release-centric approach advocated include reduced execution and operational risk, improved demand management and optimized release throughput. This unique book offers a fresh enterprise perspective that addresses strategic change and the release life cycle, providing executives and managers with the tools they need to chart and track the course of their business.