Better Metrics for Measuring Agile Development Success

The term agile was first coined for this in 2001, in the Manifesto for Agile Software Development.  According to the manifesto Twelve Principles of Agile Software, their highest priority is to “Satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.” Which is a good thing, especially in today’s rapidly changing marketplace. Another one of their … Read more

Plans Don’t Fail. People Fail to Plan

“In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower In the Agile Manifesto, it is stated that the value of Responding to Change Over Following a Plan. The Agile movement seeks alternatives to traditional project management like waterfall and traditional sequential development that cannot adapt quickly enough … Read more

Easy to Use: Icons

Ever visit a website or store or see a sign in a public space that you had no idea what the icon meant? There are a lot of reasons for that. One, of course is the ethnocentric aspect – we know what we know based on our prior experiences. So, if the image of the … Read more

Marty Cagan and Continuous Discovery and Delivery

Marty Cagan gave a talk on The Root Causes of Product Failure at productcamp la. Many things that he shared resonated with me. Here are few ideas about the big difference between how most product teams work and the best product teams work: The Product Team. If you want to make great products, the product … Read more

Personas, Journey Maps, Service Blueprints, and Innovation

Personas Personas help you specify the context of use by identifying the people who will use your solution, what they will use it for, and under what conditions they will use it. They help you to create a point of view that is based on your target audiences’ needs and insights so you can see … Read more

Value-Driven Design to Value-Centered Design

Value-Driven Design is a process where the design choices are made to maximize system value rather than to meet performance requirements. Value-Driven Design grew from a collaboration of three Technical Committees of the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA): the Economics Technical Committee, the Systems Engineering Technical Committee, and the Multidisciplinary Optimization Technical Committee. … Read more

Creativity and Innovation

There is a world of techniques, methods and process that generate ideas (creativity) and convert those ideas into reality (innovation). They are “tools in a tool box” with each having its strength and weakness for solving a variety of problems. Mycoted provides a wiki of creative and innovative techniques that breaks these down into five … Read more

Globalization, Internationalization and Localization – What does all it Mean?

I get this one on a regular basis – especially working with global organizations’ product and services design and development. Here is how it breaks down: Globalization “Globalization is a process of interaction and integration among the people, companies, and governments of different nations, a process driven by international trade and investment and aided by … Read more

UX Boot Camp Workshop Workbooks

One of the best parts of the UX Boot Camps are the workshops – and the workbooks. There are several workshops throughout the day at a boot camp. The workshops are hands-on activities where we get to practice what we have just learned and apply it to our organization – all captured in the workbook. … Read more

Minimum Viable Product

A Minimum Viable Product (MVP) center around the business perspective. It asks the question “what is the minimum product I have to build to figure out whether I have a business?” You might do that from testing signups on landing pages or putting up price points and collecting payment information to helps assess the true … Read more

User Experience is not what you think it is

UI is not UX   Usability is not UX   Design is not UX User experience encompasses all aspects of your end-user’s interaction with your company’s brand, products and services. To learn more about what User Experience is not and is, please join us at the UX Boot Camp for Product Managers in Tustin, California, … Read more

Take Part in Actuation Consulting 5th Annual Study of Product Teams

These annual ongoing studies share information that is meaningful to executives of product organizations in general and product executives in particular. Once the survey is complete, the data is shared with an independent statistician who conducts regression analysis. The result of this regression analysis are factors that are highly correlated with high performance on product … Read more