As priorities emerge and are agreed upon, shuffle more important cards higher up. Doing this will let a skeleton structure of the solution to be available and on stakeholder agreement becomes a candidate release goal. And these cards, become usually the epics and large stories that kick-start the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As you fill up the matrix with cards, start identifying gaps, inter-relationships and variations. Once there is enough on the wall, it will be useful to get opinions about the story map; from project team, stakeholders and whereever possible persona representatives. Well formed story maps, laid out visually give a clear picture of the problem and the approach to solution forming the backbone of release planning and prioritisation<\/p>\n","post_title":"Two techniques to explain your Product Vision","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"two-techniques-explain-product-vision","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7371","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
This is where the fun begins, typically stakeholders are now able to walk across the wall, view the tasks and interpret tasks closer to each other as related and look at possible variations. Conversations on relative priorities become easier. Visual stories about the persona are good contextual reference here as they set the persona\u2019s goals and emotions in context of the tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As priorities emerge and are agreed upon, shuffle more important cards higher up. Doing this will let a skeleton structure of the solution to be available and on stakeholder agreement becomes a candidate release goal. And these cards, become usually the epics and large stories that kick-start the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As you fill up the matrix with cards, start identifying gaps, inter-relationships and variations. Once there is enough on the wall, it will be useful to get opinions about the story map; from project team, stakeholders and whereever possible persona representatives. Well formed story maps, laid out visually give a clear picture of the problem and the approach to solution forming the backbone of release planning and prioritisation<\/p>\n","post_title":"Two techniques to explain your Product Vision","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"two-techniques-explain-product-vision","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7371","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
As you organize your tasks in a sequence, you will find the list wide. Step back to identify variations you will need to add. These are details that go deep. Aggregate tasks by goals. As you aggregate tasks closer by related goals, you will find that there is a set of tasks related placed closer together and sets of cards in another dimension that are variations and exceptions for each task group going deep. For example, reviewing loan requests could also mean understanding prior bank histories and exploring opportunities to place new products in front of the customer. These are all related tasks towards the same goal of completing loan request reviews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is where the fun begins, typically stakeholders are now able to walk across the wall, view the tasks and interpret tasks closer to each other as related and look at possible variations. Conversations on relative priorities become easier. Visual stories about the persona are good contextual reference here as they set the persona\u2019s goals and emotions in context of the tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As priorities emerge and are agreed upon, shuffle more important cards higher up. Doing this will let a skeleton structure of the solution to be available and on stakeholder agreement becomes a candidate release goal. And these cards, become usually the epics and large stories that kick-start the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As you fill up the matrix with cards, start identifying gaps, inter-relationships and variations. Once there is enough on the wall, it will be useful to get opinions about the story map; from project team, stakeholders and whereever possible persona representatives. Well formed story maps, laid out visually give a clear picture of the problem and the approach to solution forming the backbone of release planning and prioritisation<\/p>\n","post_title":"Two techniques to explain your Product Vision","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"two-techniques-explain-product-vision","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7371","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
If it is a bank manager persona, a day in the life at work could be meeting customers, approving cash requests, reviewing loan requests and engaging business stakeholders. These are all tasks. Only a part of the persona\u2019s tasks could be part of the product or solution that you are trying to address. Focus on that and as mentioned before, build as much context about how the user will work (busy, need to switch attention between different tasks etc.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As you organize your tasks in a sequence, you will find the list wide. Step back to identify variations you will need to add. These are details that go deep. Aggregate tasks by goals. As you aggregate tasks closer by related goals, you will find that there is a set of tasks related placed closer together and sets of cards in another dimension that are variations and exceptions for each task group going deep. For example, reviewing loan requests could also mean understanding prior bank histories and exploring opportunities to place new products in front of the customer. These are all related tasks towards the same goal of completing loan request reviews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is where the fun begins, typically stakeholders are now able to walk across the wall, view the tasks and interpret tasks closer to each other as related and look at possible variations. Conversations on relative priorities become easier. Visual stories about the persona are good contextual reference here as they set the persona\u2019s goals and emotions in context of the tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As priorities emerge and are agreed upon, shuffle more important cards higher up. Doing this will let a skeleton structure of the solution to be available and on stakeholder agreement becomes a candidate release goal. And these cards, become usually the epics and large stories that kick-start the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As you fill up the matrix with cards, start identifying gaps, inter-relationships and variations. Once there is enough on the wall, it will be useful to get opinions about the story map; from project team, stakeholders and whereever possible persona representatives. Well formed story maps, laid out visually give a clear picture of the problem and the approach to solution forming the backbone of release planning and prioritisation<\/p>\n","post_title":"Two techniques to explain your Product Vision","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"two-techniques-explain-product-vision","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7371","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
Developed personas can be validated only when a story is told and the story resonates with the listeners. And, this is where user story maps fit in. While visual stories about persona sets the context, the story map provides a broad perspective of the solution and the underlying priorities.Creating a story map is simple, easy to learn, but takes practice to do it effectively. To create a story map, have some cards in your hand and start detailing out the tasks that the persona will do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If it is a bank manager persona, a day in the life at work could be meeting customers, approving cash requests, reviewing loan requests and engaging business stakeholders. These are all tasks. Only a part of the persona\u2019s tasks could be part of the product or solution that you are trying to address. Focus on that and as mentioned before, build as much context about how the user will work (busy, need to switch attention between different tasks etc.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As you organize your tasks in a sequence, you will find the list wide. Step back to identify variations you will need to add. These are details that go deep. Aggregate tasks by goals. As you aggregate tasks closer by related goals, you will find that there is a set of tasks related placed closer together and sets of cards in another dimension that are variations and exceptions for each task group going deep. For example, reviewing loan requests could also mean understanding prior bank histories and exploring opportunities to place new products in front of the customer. These are all related tasks towards the same goal of completing loan request reviews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is where the fun begins, typically stakeholders are now able to walk across the wall, view the tasks and interpret tasks closer to each other as related and look at possible variations. Conversations on relative priorities become easier. Visual stories about the persona are good contextual reference here as they set the persona\u2019s goals and emotions in context of the tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As priorities emerge and are agreed upon, shuffle more important cards higher up. Doing this will let a skeleton structure of the solution to be available and on stakeholder agreement becomes a candidate release goal. And these cards, become usually the epics and large stories that kick-start the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As you fill up the matrix with cards, start identifying gaps, inter-relationships and variations. Once there is enough on the wall, it will be useful to get opinions about the story map; from project team, stakeholders and whereever possible persona representatives. Well formed story maps, laid out visually give a clear picture of the problem and the approach to solution forming the backbone of release planning and prioritisation<\/p>\n","post_title":"Two techniques to explain your Product Vision","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"two-techniques-explain-product-vision","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7371","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/visual-story-telling.jpg\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\nDeveloped personas can be validated only when a story is told and the story resonates with the listeners. And, this is where user story maps fit in. While visual stories about persona sets the context, the story map provides a broad perspective of the solution and the underlying priorities.Creating a story map is simple, easy to learn, but takes practice to do it effectively. To create a story map, have some cards in your hand and start detailing out the tasks that the persona will do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If it is a bank manager persona, a day in the life at work could be meeting customers, approving cash requests, reviewing loan requests and engaging business stakeholders. These are all tasks. Only a part of the persona\u2019s tasks could be part of the product or solution that you are trying to address. Focus on that and as mentioned before, build as much context about how the user will work (busy, need to switch attention between different tasks etc.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As you organize your tasks in a sequence, you will find the list wide. Step back to identify variations you will need to add. These are details that go deep. Aggregate tasks by goals. As you aggregate tasks closer by related goals, you will find that there is a set of tasks related placed closer together and sets of cards in another dimension that are variations and exceptions for each task group going deep. For example, reviewing loan requests could also mean understanding prior bank histories and exploring opportunities to place new products in front of the customer. These are all related tasks towards the same goal of completing loan request reviews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is where the fun begins, typically stakeholders are now able to walk across the wall, view the tasks and interpret tasks closer to each other as related and look at possible variations. Conversations on relative priorities become easier. Visual stories about the persona are good contextual reference here as they set the persona\u2019s goals and emotions in context of the tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As priorities emerge and are agreed upon, shuffle more important cards higher up. Doing this will let a skeleton structure of the solution to be available and on stakeholder agreement becomes a candidate release goal. And these cards, become usually the epics and large stories that kick-start the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As you fill up the matrix with cards, start identifying gaps, inter-relationships and variations. Once there is enough on the wall, it will be useful to get opinions about the story map; from project team, stakeholders and whereever possible persona representatives. Well formed story maps, laid out visually give a clear picture of the problem and the approach to solution forming the backbone of release planning and prioritisation<\/p>\n","post_title":"Two techniques to explain your Product Vision","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"two-techniques-explain-product-vision","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7371","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
Chalking out personas visually, require doodling skills \u2013 sketching the user, their world, the tasks they do, their goals and motivations along with details that are appropriate to be highlighted. I have found that it is useful to go back to our primary school skills to learn the basics of observation, drawing and thinking visually. When starting to think visually, it is good to doodle some faces, simplify objects that are most important and leave out unnecessary details. Usually, the persona and the outcome of the persona\u2019s task and the emotion they will be in at the end of the task based on its outcome are the key factors in thinking visually. Putting these details in help stakeholders to inquire more and learn to arrive at one or more solution approaches. Adding a expression conveys emotions deeply and achieves good outcomes in lo-fi visual doodles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Developed personas can be validated only when a story is told and the story resonates with the listeners. And, this is where user story maps fit in. While visual stories about persona sets the context, the story map provides a broad perspective of the solution and the underlying priorities.Creating a story map is simple, easy to learn, but takes practice to do it effectively. To create a story map, have some cards in your hand and start detailing out the tasks that the persona will do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If it is a bank manager persona, a day in the life at work could be meeting customers, approving cash requests, reviewing loan requests and engaging business stakeholders. These are all tasks. Only a part of the persona\u2019s tasks could be part of the product or solution that you are trying to address. Focus on that and as mentioned before, build as much context about how the user will work (busy, need to switch attention between different tasks etc.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n As you organize your tasks in a sequence, you will find the list wide. Step back to identify variations you will need to add. These are details that go deep. Aggregate tasks by goals. As you aggregate tasks closer by related goals, you will find that there is a set of tasks related placed closer together and sets of cards in another dimension that are variations and exceptions for each task group going deep. For example, reviewing loan requests could also mean understanding prior bank histories and exploring opportunities to place new products in front of the customer. These are all related tasks towards the same goal of completing loan request reviews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is where the fun begins, typically stakeholders are now able to walk across the wall, view the tasks and interpret tasks closer to each other as related and look at possible variations. Conversations on relative priorities become easier. Visual stories about the persona are good contextual reference here as they set the persona\u2019s goals and emotions in context of the tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As priorities emerge and are agreed upon, shuffle more important cards higher up. Doing this will let a skeleton structure of the solution to be available and on stakeholder agreement becomes a candidate release goal. And these cards, become usually the epics and large stories that kick-start the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As you fill up the matrix with cards, start identifying gaps, inter-relationships and variations. Once there is enough on the wall, it will be useful to get opinions about the story map; from project team, stakeholders and whereever possible persona representatives. Well formed story maps, laid out visually give a clear picture of the problem and the approach to solution forming the backbone of release planning and prioritisation<\/p>\n","post_title":"Two techniques to explain your Product Vision","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"two-techniques-explain-product-vision","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7371","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
Visual stories about personas and their motivation are powerful. These stories provide a platform for strangers to be part of the journey, sharing their anecdotal experience, learn from the story and enrich the overall story narrative. Visual stories that are available on the floor of a agile project or a place where research validation is being done becomes a conversation magnet \u2013 around which problems and solutions are discussed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chalking out personas visually, require doodling skills \u2013 sketching the user, their world, the tasks they do, their goals and motivations along with details that are appropriate to be highlighted. I have found that it is useful to go back to our primary school skills to learn the basics of observation, drawing and thinking visually. When starting to think visually, it is good to doodle some faces, simplify objects that are most important and leave out unnecessary details. Usually, the persona and the outcome of the persona\u2019s task and the emotion they will be in at the end of the task based on its outcome are the key factors in thinking visually. Putting these details in help stakeholders to inquire more and learn to arrive at one or more solution approaches. Adding a expression conveys emotions deeply and achieves good outcomes in lo-fi visual doodles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Developed personas can be validated only when a story is told and the story resonates with the listeners. And, this is where user story maps fit in. While visual stories about persona sets the context, the story map provides a broad perspective of the solution and the underlying priorities.Creating a story map is simple, easy to learn, but takes practice to do it effectively. To create a story map, have some cards in your hand and start detailing out the tasks that the persona will do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If it is a bank manager persona, a day in the life at work could be meeting customers, approving cash requests, reviewing loan requests and engaging business stakeholders. These are all tasks. Only a part of the persona\u2019s tasks could be part of the product or solution that you are trying to address. Focus on that and as mentioned before, build as much context about how the user will work (busy, need to switch attention between different tasks etc.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n As you organize your tasks in a sequence, you will find the list wide. Step back to identify variations you will need to add. These are details that go deep. Aggregate tasks by goals. As you aggregate tasks closer by related goals, you will find that there is a set of tasks related placed closer together and sets of cards in another dimension that are variations and exceptions for each task group going deep. For example, reviewing loan requests could also mean understanding prior bank histories and exploring opportunities to place new products in front of the customer. These are all related tasks towards the same goal of completing loan request reviews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is where the fun begins, typically stakeholders are now able to walk across the wall, view the tasks and interpret tasks closer to each other as related and look at possible variations. Conversations on relative priorities become easier. Visual stories about the persona are good contextual reference here as they set the persona\u2019s goals and emotions in context of the tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As priorities emerge and are agreed upon, shuffle more important cards higher up. Doing this will let a skeleton structure of the solution to be available and on stakeholder agreement becomes a candidate release goal. And these cards, become usually the epics and large stories that kick-start the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As you fill up the matrix with cards, start identifying gaps, inter-relationships and variations. Once there is enough on the wall, it will be useful to get opinions about the story map; from project team, stakeholders and whereever possible persona representatives. Well formed story maps, laid out visually give a clear picture of the problem and the approach to solution forming the backbone of release planning and prioritisation<\/p>\n","post_title":"Two techniques to explain your Product Vision","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"two-techniques-explain-product-vision","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7371","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
Good persona building involves carefully observing and synthesizing a proper representation of users. The skills required to do that are different from the analytical, technical and organizational skills for building the solution \u2013 inquiry based research, ethnographic observation, awareness of biases, consolidation and facilitation skills<\/a>play a key role here. These can be learnt and developed through practice. Understanding and building personas better is a vast topic by itself and we will cover some of it in subsequent blogs. We will just get introduced the outcome of such a persona building exercise (Visual story telling and user story mapping)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Visual stories about personas and their motivation are powerful. These stories provide a platform for strangers to be part of the journey, sharing their anecdotal experience, learn from the story and enrich the overall story narrative. Visual stories that are available on the floor of a agile project or a place where research validation is being done becomes a conversation magnet \u2013 around which problems and solutions are discussed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chalking out personas visually, require doodling skills \u2013 sketching the user, their world, the tasks they do, their goals and motivations along with details that are appropriate to be highlighted. I have found that it is useful to go back to our primary school skills to learn the basics of observation, drawing and thinking visually. When starting to think visually, it is good to doodle some faces, simplify objects that are most important and leave out unnecessary details. Usually, the persona and the outcome of the persona\u2019s task and the emotion they will be in at the end of the task based on its outcome are the key factors in thinking visually. Putting these details in help stakeholders to inquire more and learn to arrive at one or more solution approaches. Adding a expression conveys emotions deeply and achieves good outcomes in lo-fi visual doodles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Developed personas can be validated only when a story is told and the story resonates with the listeners. And, this is where user story maps fit in. While visual stories about persona sets the context, the story map provides a broad perspective of the solution and the underlying priorities.Creating a story map is simple, easy to learn, but takes practice to do it effectively. To create a story map, have some cards in your hand and start detailing out the tasks that the persona will do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If it is a bank manager persona, a day in the life at work could be meeting customers, approving cash requests, reviewing loan requests and engaging business stakeholders. These are all tasks. Only a part of the persona\u2019s tasks could be part of the product or solution that you are trying to address. Focus on that and as mentioned before, build as much context about how the user will work (busy, need to switch attention between different tasks etc.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n As you organize your tasks in a sequence, you will find the list wide. Step back to identify variations you will need to add. These are details that go deep. Aggregate tasks by goals. As you aggregate tasks closer by related goals, you will find that there is a set of tasks related placed closer together and sets of cards in another dimension that are variations and exceptions for each task group going deep. For example, reviewing loan requests could also mean understanding prior bank histories and exploring opportunities to place new products in front of the customer. These are all related tasks towards the same goal of completing loan request reviews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is where the fun begins, typically stakeholders are now able to walk across the wall, view the tasks and interpret tasks closer to each other as related and look at possible variations. Conversations on relative priorities become easier. Visual stories about the persona are good contextual reference here as they set the persona\u2019s goals and emotions in context of the tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As priorities emerge and are agreed upon, shuffle more important cards higher up. Doing this will let a skeleton structure of the solution to be available and on stakeholder agreement becomes a candidate release goal. And these cards, become usually the epics and large stories that kick-start the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As you fill up the matrix with cards, start identifying gaps, inter-relationships and variations. Once there is enough on the wall, it will be useful to get opinions about the story map; from project team, stakeholders and whereever possible persona representatives. Well formed story maps, laid out visually give a clear picture of the problem and the approach to solution forming the backbone of release planning and prioritisation<\/p>\n","post_title":"Two techniques to explain your Product Vision","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"two-techniques-explain-product-vision","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7371","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
Product and business analysts have a responsibility to consolidate what they have learnt about the problem they are trying to solve. A key activity in this endeavour is to bring clarity on the personae involved in the problem context, their motivations and the problem that the product is trying to solve in the persona\u2019s context.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Good persona building involves carefully observing and synthesizing a proper representation of users. The skills required to do that are different from the analytical, technical and organizational skills for building the solution \u2013 inquiry based research, ethnographic observation, awareness of biases, consolidation and facilitation skills<\/a>play a key role here. These can be learnt and developed through practice. Understanding and building personas better is a vast topic by itself and we will cover some of it in subsequent blogs. We will just get introduced the outcome of such a persona building exercise (Visual story telling and user story mapping)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Visual stories about personas and their motivation are powerful. These stories provide a platform for strangers to be part of the journey, sharing their anecdotal experience, learn from the story and enrich the overall story narrative. Visual stories that are available on the floor of a agile project or a place where research validation is being done becomes a conversation magnet \u2013 around which problems and solutions are discussed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chalking out personas visually, require doodling skills \u2013 sketching the user, their world, the tasks they do, their goals and motivations along with details that are appropriate to be highlighted. I have found that it is useful to go back to our primary school skills to learn the basics of observation, drawing and thinking visually. When starting to think visually, it is good to doodle some faces, simplify objects that are most important and leave out unnecessary details. Usually, the persona and the outcome of the persona\u2019s task and the emotion they will be in at the end of the task based on its outcome are the key factors in thinking visually. Putting these details in help stakeholders to inquire more and learn to arrive at one or more solution approaches. Adding a expression conveys emotions deeply and achieves good outcomes in lo-fi visual doodles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Developed personas can be validated only when a story is told and the story resonates with the listeners. And, this is where user story maps fit in. While visual stories about persona sets the context, the story map provides a broad perspective of the solution and the underlying priorities.Creating a story map is simple, easy to learn, but takes practice to do it effectively. To create a story map, have some cards in your hand and start detailing out the tasks that the persona will do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If it is a bank manager persona, a day in the life at work could be meeting customers, approving cash requests, reviewing loan requests and engaging business stakeholders. These are all tasks. Only a part of the persona\u2019s tasks could be part of the product or solution that you are trying to address. Focus on that and as mentioned before, build as much context about how the user will work (busy, need to switch attention between different tasks etc.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n As you organize your tasks in a sequence, you will find the list wide. Step back to identify variations you will need to add. These are details that go deep. Aggregate tasks by goals. As you aggregate tasks closer by related goals, you will find that there is a set of tasks related placed closer together and sets of cards in another dimension that are variations and exceptions for each task group going deep. For example, reviewing loan requests could also mean understanding prior bank histories and exploring opportunities to place new products in front of the customer. These are all related tasks towards the same goal of completing loan request reviews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is where the fun begins, typically stakeholders are now able to walk across the wall, view the tasks and interpret tasks closer to each other as related and look at possible variations. Conversations on relative priorities become easier. Visual stories about the persona are good contextual reference here as they set the persona\u2019s goals and emotions in context of the tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As priorities emerge and are agreed upon, shuffle more important cards higher up. Doing this will let a skeleton structure of the solution to be available and on stakeholder agreement becomes a candidate release goal. And these cards, become usually the epics and large stories that kick-start the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As you fill up the matrix with cards, start identifying gaps, inter-relationships and variations. Once there is enough on the wall, it will be useful to get opinions about the story map; from project team, stakeholders and whereever possible persona representatives. Well formed story maps, laid out visually give a clear picture of the problem and the approach to solution forming the backbone of release planning and prioritisation<\/p>\n","post_title":"Two techniques to explain your Product Vision","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"two-techniques-explain-product-vision","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7371","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
A problem that is well understood leads to a better solution. Applying design thinking<\/a> techniques help to define a problem well. This blog touches upon a specific techniques used by agile teams to structure and explain the problem context that they are trying to solve. Visual story telling along with story mapping- two simple but powerful techniques helps product owners and team to convey a product\u2019s vision alongside its existential context. These techniques change the way people participate and help agile projects start well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Product and business analysts have a responsibility to consolidate what they have learnt about the problem they are trying to solve. A key activity in this endeavour is to bring clarity on the personae involved in the problem context, their motivations and the problem that the product is trying to solve in the persona\u2019s context.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Good persona building involves carefully observing and synthesizing a proper representation of users. The skills required to do that are different from the analytical, technical and organizational skills for building the solution \u2013 inquiry based research, ethnographic observation, awareness of biases, consolidation and facilitation skills<\/a>play a key role here. These can be learnt and developed through practice. Understanding and building personas better is a vast topic by itself and we will cover some of it in subsequent blogs. We will just get introduced the outcome of such a persona building exercise (Visual story telling and user story mapping)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Visual stories about personas and their motivation are powerful. These stories provide a platform for strangers to be part of the journey, sharing their anecdotal experience, learn from the story and enrich the overall story narrative. Visual stories that are available on the floor of a agile project or a place where research validation is being done becomes a conversation magnet \u2013 around which problems and solutions are discussed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chalking out personas visually, require doodling skills \u2013 sketching the user, their world, the tasks they do, their goals and motivations along with details that are appropriate to be highlighted. I have found that it is useful to go back to our primary school skills to learn the basics of observation, drawing and thinking visually. When starting to think visually, it is good to doodle some faces, simplify objects that are most important and leave out unnecessary details. Usually, the persona and the outcome of the persona\u2019s task and the emotion they will be in at the end of the task based on its outcome are the key factors in thinking visually. Putting these details in help stakeholders to inquire more and learn to arrive at one or more solution approaches. Adding a expression conveys emotions deeply and achieves good outcomes in lo-fi visual doodles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Developed personas can be validated only when a story is told and the story resonates with the listeners. And, this is where user story maps fit in. While visual stories about persona sets the context, the story map provides a broad perspective of the solution and the underlying priorities.Creating a story map is simple, easy to learn, but takes practice to do it effectively. To create a story map, have some cards in your hand and start detailing out the tasks that the persona will do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If it is a bank manager persona, a day in the life at work could be meeting customers, approving cash requests, reviewing loan requests and engaging business stakeholders. These are all tasks. Only a part of the persona\u2019s tasks could be part of the product or solution that you are trying to address. Focus on that and as mentioned before, build as much context about how the user will work (busy, need to switch attention between different tasks etc.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n As you organize your tasks in a sequence, you will find the list wide. Step back to identify variations you will need to add. These are details that go deep. Aggregate tasks by goals. As you aggregate tasks closer by related goals, you will find that there is a set of tasks related placed closer together and sets of cards in another dimension that are variations and exceptions for each task group going deep. For example, reviewing loan requests could also mean understanding prior bank histories and exploring opportunities to place new products in front of the customer. These are all related tasks towards the same goal of completing loan request reviews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is where the fun begins, typically stakeholders are now able to walk across the wall, view the tasks and interpret tasks closer to each other as related and look at possible variations. Conversations on relative priorities become easier. Visual stories about the persona are good contextual reference here as they set the persona\u2019s goals and emotions in context of the tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As priorities emerge and are agreed upon, shuffle more important cards higher up. Doing this will let a skeleton structure of the solution to be available and on stakeholder agreement becomes a candidate release goal. And these cards, become usually the epics and large stories that kick-start the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As you fill up the matrix with cards, start identifying gaps, inter-relationships and variations. Once there is enough on the wall, it will be useful to get opinions about the story map; from project team, stakeholders and whereever possible persona representatives. Well formed story maps, laid out visually give a clear picture of the problem and the approach to solution forming the backbone of release planning and prioritisation<\/p>\n","post_title":"Two techniques to explain your Product Vision","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"two-techniques-explain-product-vision","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7371","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
In earlier blogs, I had touched upon how it is important to have clarity on the problem being addressed and the context in which the solution will be used to plan product releases<\/a> in an agile project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A problem that is well understood leads to a better solution. Applying design thinking<\/a> techniques help to define a problem well. This blog touches upon a specific techniques used by agile teams to structure and explain the problem context that they are trying to solve. Visual story telling along with story mapping- two simple but powerful techniques helps product owners and team to convey a product\u2019s vision alongside its existential context. These techniques change the way people participate and help agile projects start well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Product and business analysts have a responsibility to consolidate what they have learnt about the problem they are trying to solve. A key activity in this endeavour is to bring clarity on the personae involved in the problem context, their motivations and the problem that the product is trying to solve in the persona\u2019s context.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Good persona building involves carefully observing and synthesizing a proper representation of users. The skills required to do that are different from the analytical, technical and organizational skills for building the solution \u2013 inquiry based research, ethnographic observation, awareness of biases, consolidation and facilitation skills<\/a>play a key role here. These can be learnt and developed through practice. Understanding and building personas better is a vast topic by itself and we will cover some of it in subsequent blogs. We will just get introduced the outcome of such a persona building exercise (Visual story telling and user story mapping)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Visual stories about personas and their motivation are powerful. These stories provide a platform for strangers to be part of the journey, sharing their anecdotal experience, learn from the story and enrich the overall story narrative. Visual stories that are available on the floor of a agile project or a place where research validation is being done becomes a conversation magnet \u2013 around which problems and solutions are discussed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chalking out personas visually, require doodling skills \u2013 sketching the user, their world, the tasks they do, their goals and motivations along with details that are appropriate to be highlighted. I have found that it is useful to go back to our primary school skills to learn the basics of observation, drawing and thinking visually. When starting to think visually, it is good to doodle some faces, simplify objects that are most important and leave out unnecessary details. Usually, the persona and the outcome of the persona\u2019s task and the emotion they will be in at the end of the task based on its outcome are the key factors in thinking visually. Putting these details in help stakeholders to inquire more and learn to arrive at one or more solution approaches. Adding a expression conveys emotions deeply and achieves good outcomes in lo-fi visual doodles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Developed personas can be validated only when a story is told and the story resonates with the listeners. And, this is where user story maps fit in. While visual stories about persona sets the context, the story map provides a broad perspective of the solution and the underlying priorities.Creating a story map is simple, easy to learn, but takes practice to do it effectively. To create a story map, have some cards in your hand and start detailing out the tasks that the persona will do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If it is a bank manager persona, a day in the life at work could be meeting customers, approving cash requests, reviewing loan requests and engaging business stakeholders. These are all tasks. Only a part of the persona\u2019s tasks could be part of the product or solution that you are trying to address. Focus on that and as mentioned before, build as much context about how the user will work (busy, need to switch attention between different tasks etc.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n As you organize your tasks in a sequence, you will find the list wide. Step back to identify variations you will need to add. These are details that go deep. Aggregate tasks by goals. As you aggregate tasks closer by related goals, you will find that there is a set of tasks related placed closer together and sets of cards in another dimension that are variations and exceptions for each task group going deep. For example, reviewing loan requests could also mean understanding prior bank histories and exploring opportunities to place new products in front of the customer. These are all related tasks towards the same goal of completing loan request reviews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is where the fun begins, typically stakeholders are now able to walk across the wall, view the tasks and interpret tasks closer to each other as related and look at possible variations. Conversations on relative priorities become easier. Visual stories about the persona are good contextual reference here as they set the persona\u2019s goals and emotions in context of the tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As priorities emerge and are agreed upon, shuffle more important cards higher up. Doing this will let a skeleton structure of the solution to be available and on stakeholder agreement becomes a candidate release goal. And these cards, become usually the epics and large stories that kick-start the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As you fill up the matrix with cards, start identifying gaps, inter-relationships and variations. Once there is enough on the wall, it will be useful to get opinions about the story map; from project team, stakeholders and whereever possible persona representatives. Well formed story maps, laid out visually give a clear picture of the problem and the approach to solution forming the backbone of release planning and prioritisation<\/p>\n","post_title":"Two techniques to explain your Product Vision","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"two-techniques-explain-product-vision","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7371","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
In earlier blogs, I had touched upon how it is important to have clarity on the problem being addressed and the context in which the solution will be used to plan product releases<\/a> in an agile project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A problem that is well understood leads to a better solution. Applying design thinking<\/a> techniques help to define a problem well. This blog touches upon a specific techniques used by agile teams to structure and explain the problem context that they are trying to solve. Visual story telling along with story mapping- two simple but powerful techniques helps product owners and team to convey a product\u2019s vision alongside its existential context. These techniques change the way people participate and help agile projects start well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Product and business analysts have a responsibility to consolidate what they have learnt about the problem they are trying to solve. A key activity in this endeavour is to bring clarity on the personae involved in the problem context, their motivations and the problem that the product is trying to solve in the persona\u2019s context.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Good persona building involves carefully observing and synthesizing a proper representation of users. The skills required to do that are different from the analytical, technical and organizational skills for building the solution \u2013 inquiry based research, ethnographic observation, awareness of biases, consolidation and facilitation skills<\/a>play a key role here. These can be learnt and developed through practice. Understanding and building personas better is a vast topic by itself and we will cover some of it in subsequent blogs. We will just get introduced the outcome of such a persona building exercise (Visual story telling and user story mapping)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Visual stories about personas and their motivation are powerful. These stories provide a platform for strangers to be part of the journey, sharing their anecdotal experience, learn from the story and enrich the overall story narrative. Visual stories that are available on the floor of a agile project or a place where research validation is being done becomes a conversation magnet \u2013 around which problems and solutions are discussed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chalking out personas visually, require doodling skills \u2013 sketching the user, their world, the tasks they do, their goals and motivations along with details that are appropriate to be highlighted. I have found that it is useful to go back to our primary school skills to learn the basics of observation, drawing and thinking visually. When starting to think visually, it is good to doodle some faces, simplify objects that are most important and leave out unnecessary details. Usually, the persona and the outcome of the persona\u2019s task and the emotion they will be in at the end of the task based on its outcome are the key factors in thinking visually. Putting these details in help stakeholders to inquire more and learn to arrive at one or more solution approaches. Adding a expression conveys emotions deeply and achieves good outcomes in lo-fi visual doodles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Developed personas can be validated only when a story is told and the story resonates with the listeners. And, this is where user story maps fit in. While visual stories about persona sets the context, the story map provides a broad perspective of the solution and the underlying priorities.Creating a story map is simple, easy to learn, but takes practice to do it effectively. To create a story map, have some cards in your hand and start detailing out the tasks that the persona will do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If it is a bank manager persona, a day in the life at work could be meeting customers, approving cash requests, reviewing loan requests and engaging business stakeholders. These are all tasks. Only a part of the persona\u2019s tasks could be part of the product or solution that you are trying to address. Focus on that and as mentioned before, build as much context about how the user will work (busy, need to switch attention between different tasks etc.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n As you organize your tasks in a sequence, you will find the list wide. Step back to identify variations you will need to add. These are details that go deep. Aggregate tasks by goals. As you aggregate tasks closer by related goals, you will find that there is a set of tasks related placed closer together and sets of cards in another dimension that are variations and exceptions for each task group going deep. For example, reviewing loan requests could also mean understanding prior bank histories and exploring opportunities to place new products in front of the customer. These are all related tasks towards the same goal of completing loan request reviews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is where the fun begins, typically stakeholders are now able to walk across the wall, view the tasks and interpret tasks closer to each other as related and look at possible variations. Conversations on relative priorities become easier. Visual stories about the persona are good contextual reference here as they set the persona\u2019s goals and emotions in context of the tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As priorities emerge and are agreed upon, shuffle more important cards higher up. Doing this will let a skeleton structure of the solution to be available and on stakeholder agreement becomes a candidate release goal. And these cards, become usually the epics and large stories that kick-start the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As you fill up the matrix with cards, start identifying gaps, inter-relationships and variations. Once there is enough on the wall, it will be useful to get opinions about the story map; from project team, stakeholders and whereever possible persona representatives. Well formed story maps, laid out visually give a clear picture of the problem and the approach to solution forming the backbone of release planning and prioritisation<\/p>\n","post_title":"Two techniques to explain your Product Vision","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"two-techniques-explain-product-vision","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7371","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
Swathi must review her backlog and work with her customer to identify areas where there will be flux based on above two parameters and appropriately change the game.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #55\u2013 How should Swathi handle changing requirements","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-55-swathi-handle-changing-requirements","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 11:30:00","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 11:30:00","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7385","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7371,"post_author":"14","post_date":"2017-04-09 15:19:35","post_date_gmt":"2017-04-09 09:49:35","post_content":"\n In earlier blogs, I had touched upon how it is important to have clarity on the problem being addressed and the context in which the solution will be used to plan product releases<\/a> in an agile project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A problem that is well understood leads to a better solution. Applying design thinking<\/a> techniques help to define a problem well. This blog touches upon a specific techniques used by agile teams to structure and explain the problem context that they are trying to solve. Visual story telling along with story mapping- two simple but powerful techniques helps product owners and team to convey a product\u2019s vision alongside its existential context. These techniques change the way people participate and help agile projects start well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Product and business analysts have a responsibility to consolidate what they have learnt about the problem they are trying to solve. A key activity in this endeavour is to bring clarity on the personae involved in the problem context, their motivations and the problem that the product is trying to solve in the persona\u2019s context.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Good persona building involves carefully observing and synthesizing a proper representation of users. The skills required to do that are different from the analytical, technical and organizational skills for building the solution \u2013 inquiry based research, ethnographic observation, awareness of biases, consolidation and facilitation skills<\/a>play a key role here. These can be learnt and developed through practice. Understanding and building personas better is a vast topic by itself and we will cover some of it in subsequent blogs. We will just get introduced the outcome of such a persona building exercise (Visual story telling and user story mapping)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Visual stories about personas and their motivation are powerful. These stories provide a platform for strangers to be part of the journey, sharing their anecdotal experience, learn from the story and enrich the overall story narrative. Visual stories that are available on the floor of a agile project or a place where research validation is being done becomes a conversation magnet \u2013 around which problems and solutions are discussed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chalking out personas visually, require doodling skills \u2013 sketching the user, their world, the tasks they do, their goals and motivations along with details that are appropriate to be highlighted. I have found that it is useful to go back to our primary school skills to learn the basics of observation, drawing and thinking visually. When starting to think visually, it is good to doodle some faces, simplify objects that are most important and leave out unnecessary details. Usually, the persona and the outcome of the persona\u2019s task and the emotion they will be in at the end of the task based on its outcome are the key factors in thinking visually. Putting these details in help stakeholders to inquire more and learn to arrive at one or more solution approaches. Adding a expression conveys emotions deeply and achieves good outcomes in lo-fi visual doodles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Developed personas can be validated only when a story is told and the story resonates with the listeners. And, this is where user story maps fit in. While visual stories about persona sets the context, the story map provides a broad perspective of the solution and the underlying priorities.Creating a story map is simple, easy to learn, but takes practice to do it effectively. To create a story map, have some cards in your hand and start detailing out the tasks that the persona will do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If it is a bank manager persona, a day in the life at work could be meeting customers, approving cash requests, reviewing loan requests and engaging business stakeholders. These are all tasks. Only a part of the persona\u2019s tasks could be part of the product or solution that you are trying to address. Focus on that and as mentioned before, build as much context about how the user will work (busy, need to switch attention between different tasks etc.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n As you organize your tasks in a sequence, you will find the list wide. Step back to identify variations you will need to add. These are details that go deep. Aggregate tasks by goals. As you aggregate tasks closer by related goals, you will find that there is a set of tasks related placed closer together and sets of cards in another dimension that are variations and exceptions for each task group going deep. For example, reviewing loan requests could also mean understanding prior bank histories and exploring opportunities to place new products in front of the customer. These are all related tasks towards the same goal of completing loan request reviews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is where the fun begins, typically stakeholders are now able to walk across the wall, view the tasks and interpret tasks closer to each other as related and look at possible variations. Conversations on relative priorities become easier. Visual stories about the persona are good contextual reference here as they set the persona\u2019s goals and emotions in context of the tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As priorities emerge and are agreed upon, shuffle more important cards higher up. Doing this will let a skeleton structure of the solution to be available and on stakeholder agreement becomes a candidate release goal. And these cards, become usually the epics and large stories that kick-start the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As you fill up the matrix with cards, start identifying gaps, inter-relationships and variations. Once there is enough on the wall, it will be useful to get opinions about the story map; from project team, stakeholders and whereever possible persona representatives. Well formed story maps, laid out visually give a clear picture of the problem and the approach to solution forming the backbone of release planning and prioritisation<\/p>\n","post_title":"Two techniques to explain your Product Vision","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"two-techniques-explain-product-vision","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7371","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
The other area to watch out for is completeness. While this is usually better identified when requirements are known and known to be unknown, product owners get blind sided by assumptions they make. So, it is important to carefully review the grounds on which assumptions are taken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Swathi must review her backlog and work with her customer to identify areas where there will be flux based on above two parameters and appropriately change the game.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #55\u2013 How should Swathi handle changing requirements","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-55-swathi-handle-changing-requirements","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 11:30:00","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 11:30:00","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7385","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7371,"post_author":"14","post_date":"2017-04-09 15:19:35","post_date_gmt":"2017-04-09 09:49:35","post_content":"\n In earlier blogs, I had touched upon how it is important to have clarity on the problem being addressed and the context in which the solution will be used to plan product releases<\/a> in an agile project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A problem that is well understood leads to a better solution. Applying design thinking<\/a> techniques help to define a problem well. This blog touches upon a specific techniques used by agile teams to structure and explain the problem context that they are trying to solve. Visual story telling along with story mapping- two simple but powerful techniques helps product owners and team to convey a product\u2019s vision alongside its existential context. These techniques change the way people participate and help agile projects start well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Product and business analysts have a responsibility to consolidate what they have learnt about the problem they are trying to solve. A key activity in this endeavour is to bring clarity on the personae involved in the problem context, their motivations and the problem that the product is trying to solve in the persona\u2019s context.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Good persona building involves carefully observing and synthesizing a proper representation of users. The skills required to do that are different from the analytical, technical and organizational skills for building the solution \u2013 inquiry based research, ethnographic observation, awareness of biases, consolidation and facilitation skills<\/a>play a key role here. These can be learnt and developed through practice. Understanding and building personas better is a vast topic by itself and we will cover some of it in subsequent blogs. We will just get introduced the outcome of such a persona building exercise (Visual story telling and user story mapping)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Visual stories about personas and their motivation are powerful. These stories provide a platform for strangers to be part of the journey, sharing their anecdotal experience, learn from the story and enrich the overall story narrative. Visual stories that are available on the floor of a agile project or a place where research validation is being done becomes a conversation magnet \u2013 around which problems and solutions are discussed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chalking out personas visually, require doodling skills \u2013 sketching the user, their world, the tasks they do, their goals and motivations along with details that are appropriate to be highlighted. I have found that it is useful to go back to our primary school skills to learn the basics of observation, drawing and thinking visually. When starting to think visually, it is good to doodle some faces, simplify objects that are most important and leave out unnecessary details. Usually, the persona and the outcome of the persona\u2019s task and the emotion they will be in at the end of the task based on its outcome are the key factors in thinking visually. Putting these details in help stakeholders to inquire more and learn to arrive at one or more solution approaches. Adding a expression conveys emotions deeply and achieves good outcomes in lo-fi visual doodles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Developed personas can be validated only when a story is told and the story resonates with the listeners. And, this is where user story maps fit in. While visual stories about persona sets the context, the story map provides a broad perspective of the solution and the underlying priorities.Creating a story map is simple, easy to learn, but takes practice to do it effectively. To create a story map, have some cards in your hand and start detailing out the tasks that the persona will do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If it is a bank manager persona, a day in the life at work could be meeting customers, approving cash requests, reviewing loan requests and engaging business stakeholders. These are all tasks. Only a part of the persona\u2019s tasks could be part of the product or solution that you are trying to address. Focus on that and as mentioned before, build as much context about how the user will work (busy, need to switch attention between different tasks etc.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n As you organize your tasks in a sequence, you will find the list wide. Step back to identify variations you will need to add. These are details that go deep. Aggregate tasks by goals. As you aggregate tasks closer by related goals, you will find that there is a set of tasks related placed closer together and sets of cards in another dimension that are variations and exceptions for each task group going deep. For example, reviewing loan requests could also mean understanding prior bank histories and exploring opportunities to place new products in front of the customer. These are all related tasks towards the same goal of completing loan request reviews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is where the fun begins, typically stakeholders are now able to walk across the wall, view the tasks and interpret tasks closer to each other as related and look at possible variations. Conversations on relative priorities become easier. Visual stories about the persona are good contextual reference here as they set the persona\u2019s goals and emotions in context of the tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As priorities emerge and are agreed upon, shuffle more important cards higher up. Doing this will let a skeleton structure of the solution to be available and on stakeholder agreement becomes a candidate release goal. And these cards, become usually the epics and large stories that kick-start the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As you fill up the matrix with cards, start identifying gaps, inter-relationships and variations. Once there is enough on the wall, it will be useful to get opinions about the story map; from project team, stakeholders and whereever possible persona representatives. Well formed story maps, laid out visually give a clear picture of the problem and the approach to solution forming the backbone of release planning and prioritisation<\/p>\n","post_title":"Two techniques to explain your Product Vision","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"two-techniques-explain-product-vision","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7371","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
In this case, Swathi must consider the volatility and completeness of the requirements in the backlog. Volatility \u2013 as the name suggests, strives to understand the probability of requirements getting changed. A good way to understand this would be to understand the realm of users \/ personas and how well we have understood them. If volatility is high, a product rollout must plan to pivot fast or use lo-fi techniques to reduce volatility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The other area to watch out for is completeness. While this is usually better identified when requirements are known and known to be unknown, product owners get blind sided by assumptions they make. So, it is important to carefully review the grounds on which assumptions are taken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Swathi must review her backlog and work with her customer to identify areas where there will be flux based on above two parameters and appropriately change the game.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #55\u2013 How should Swathi handle changing requirements","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-55-swathi-handle-changing-requirements","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 11:30:00","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 11:30:00","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7385","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7371,"post_author":"14","post_date":"2017-04-09 15:19:35","post_date_gmt":"2017-04-09 09:49:35","post_content":"\n In earlier blogs, I had touched upon how it is important to have clarity on the problem being addressed and the context in which the solution will be used to plan product releases<\/a> in an agile project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A problem that is well understood leads to a better solution. Applying design thinking<\/a> techniques help to define a problem well. This blog touches upon a specific techniques used by agile teams to structure and explain the problem context that they are trying to solve. Visual story telling along with story mapping- two simple but powerful techniques helps product owners and team to convey a product\u2019s vision alongside its existential context. These techniques change the way people participate and help agile projects start well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Product and business analysts have a responsibility to consolidate what they have learnt about the problem they are trying to solve. A key activity in this endeavour is to bring clarity on the personae involved in the problem context, their motivations and the problem that the product is trying to solve in the persona\u2019s context.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Good persona building involves carefully observing and synthesizing a proper representation of users. The skills required to do that are different from the analytical, technical and organizational skills for building the solution \u2013 inquiry based research, ethnographic observation, awareness of biases, consolidation and facilitation skills<\/a>play a key role here. These can be learnt and developed through practice. Understanding and building personas better is a vast topic by itself and we will cover some of it in subsequent blogs. We will just get introduced the outcome of such a persona building exercise (Visual story telling and user story mapping)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Visual stories about personas and their motivation are powerful. These stories provide a platform for strangers to be part of the journey, sharing their anecdotal experience, learn from the story and enrich the overall story narrative. Visual stories that are available on the floor of a agile project or a place where research validation is being done becomes a conversation magnet \u2013 around which problems and solutions are discussed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chalking out personas visually, require doodling skills \u2013 sketching the user, their world, the tasks they do, their goals and motivations along with details that are appropriate to be highlighted. I have found that it is useful to go back to our primary school skills to learn the basics of observation, drawing and thinking visually. When starting to think visually, it is good to doodle some faces, simplify objects that are most important and leave out unnecessary details. Usually, the persona and the outcome of the persona\u2019s task and the emotion they will be in at the end of the task based on its outcome are the key factors in thinking visually. Putting these details in help stakeholders to inquire more and learn to arrive at one or more solution approaches. Adding a expression conveys emotions deeply and achieves good outcomes in lo-fi visual doodles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Developed personas can be validated only when a story is told and the story resonates with the listeners. And, this is where user story maps fit in. While visual stories about persona sets the context, the story map provides a broad perspective of the solution and the underlying priorities.Creating a story map is simple, easy to learn, but takes practice to do it effectively. To create a story map, have some cards in your hand and start detailing out the tasks that the persona will do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If it is a bank manager persona, a day in the life at work could be meeting customers, approving cash requests, reviewing loan requests and engaging business stakeholders. These are all tasks. Only a part of the persona\u2019s tasks could be part of the product or solution that you are trying to address. Focus on that and as mentioned before, build as much context about how the user will work (busy, need to switch attention between different tasks etc.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n As you organize your tasks in a sequence, you will find the list wide. Step back to identify variations you will need to add. These are details that go deep. Aggregate tasks by goals. As you aggregate tasks closer by related goals, you will find that there is a set of tasks related placed closer together and sets of cards in another dimension that are variations and exceptions for each task group going deep. For example, reviewing loan requests could also mean understanding prior bank histories and exploring opportunities to place new products in front of the customer. These are all related tasks towards the same goal of completing loan request reviews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is where the fun begins, typically stakeholders are now able to walk across the wall, view the tasks and interpret tasks closer to each other as related and look at possible variations. Conversations on relative priorities become easier. Visual stories about the persona are good contextual reference here as they set the persona\u2019s goals and emotions in context of the tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As priorities emerge and are agreed upon, shuffle more important cards higher up. Doing this will let a skeleton structure of the solution to be available and on stakeholder agreement becomes a candidate release goal. And these cards, become usually the epics and large stories that kick-start the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As you fill up the matrix with cards, start identifying gaps, inter-relationships and variations. Once there is enough on the wall, it will be useful to get opinions about the story map; from project team, stakeholders and whereever possible persona representatives. Well formed story maps, laid out visually give a clear picture of the problem and the approach to solution forming the backbone of release planning and prioritisation<\/p>\n","post_title":"Two techniques to explain your Product Vision","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"two-techniques-explain-product-vision","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7371","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
Many times, backlogs are created by understanding requirements, but not the context in which the requirements have been generated. This understanding is critical to manage risks and effective backlog management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In this case, Swathi must consider the volatility and completeness of the requirements in the backlog. Volatility \u2013 as the name suggests, strives to understand the probability of requirements getting changed. A good way to understand this would be to understand the realm of users \/ personas and how well we have understood them. If volatility is high, a product rollout must plan to pivot fast or use lo-fi techniques to reduce volatility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The other area to watch out for is completeness. While this is usually better identified when requirements are known and known to be unknown, product owners get blind sided by assumptions they make. So, it is important to carefully review the grounds on which assumptions are taken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Swathi must review her backlog and work with her customer to identify areas where there will be flux based on above two parameters and appropriately change the game.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #55\u2013 How should Swathi handle changing requirements","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-55-swathi-handle-changing-requirements","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 11:30:00","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 11:30:00","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7385","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7371,"post_author":"14","post_date":"2017-04-09 15:19:35","post_date_gmt":"2017-04-09 09:49:35","post_content":"\n In earlier blogs, I had touched upon how it is important to have clarity on the problem being addressed and the context in which the solution will be used to plan product releases<\/a> in an agile project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A problem that is well understood leads to a better solution. Applying design thinking<\/a> techniques help to define a problem well. This blog touches upon a specific techniques used by agile teams to structure and explain the problem context that they are trying to solve. Visual story telling along with story mapping- two simple but powerful techniques helps product owners and team to convey a product\u2019s vision alongside its existential context. These techniques change the way people participate and help agile projects start well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Product and business analysts have a responsibility to consolidate what they have learnt about the problem they are trying to solve. A key activity in this endeavour is to bring clarity on the personae involved in the problem context, their motivations and the problem that the product is trying to solve in the persona\u2019s context.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Good persona building involves carefully observing and synthesizing a proper representation of users. The skills required to do that are different from the analytical, technical and organizational skills for building the solution \u2013 inquiry based research, ethnographic observation, awareness of biases, consolidation and facilitation skills<\/a>play a key role here. These can be learnt and developed through practice. Understanding and building personas better is a vast topic by itself and we will cover some of it in subsequent blogs. We will just get introduced the outcome of such a persona building exercise (Visual story telling and user story mapping)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Visual stories about personas and their motivation are powerful. These stories provide a platform for strangers to be part of the journey, sharing their anecdotal experience, learn from the story and enrich the overall story narrative. Visual stories that are available on the floor of a agile project or a place where research validation is being done becomes a conversation magnet \u2013 around which problems and solutions are discussed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chalking out personas visually, require doodling skills \u2013 sketching the user, their world, the tasks they do, their goals and motivations along with details that are appropriate to be highlighted. I have found that it is useful to go back to our primary school skills to learn the basics of observation, drawing and thinking visually. When starting to think visually, it is good to doodle some faces, simplify objects that are most important and leave out unnecessary details. Usually, the persona and the outcome of the persona\u2019s task and the emotion they will be in at the end of the task based on its outcome are the key factors in thinking visually. Putting these details in help stakeholders to inquire more and learn to arrive at one or more solution approaches. Adding a expression conveys emotions deeply and achieves good outcomes in lo-fi visual doodles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Developed personas can be validated only when a story is told and the story resonates with the listeners. And, this is where user story maps fit in. While visual stories about persona sets the context, the story map provides a broad perspective of the solution and the underlying priorities.Creating a story map is simple, easy to learn, but takes practice to do it effectively. To create a story map, have some cards in your hand and start detailing out the tasks that the persona will do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If it is a bank manager persona, a day in the life at work could be meeting customers, approving cash requests, reviewing loan requests and engaging business stakeholders. These are all tasks. Only a part of the persona\u2019s tasks could be part of the product or solution that you are trying to address. Focus on that and as mentioned before, build as much context about how the user will work (busy, need to switch attention between different tasks etc.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n As you organize your tasks in a sequence, you will find the list wide. Step back to identify variations you will need to add. These are details that go deep. Aggregate tasks by goals. As you aggregate tasks closer by related goals, you will find that there is a set of tasks related placed closer together and sets of cards in another dimension that are variations and exceptions for each task group going deep. For example, reviewing loan requests could also mean understanding prior bank histories and exploring opportunities to place new products in front of the customer. These are all related tasks towards the same goal of completing loan request reviews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is where the fun begins, typically stakeholders are now able to walk across the wall, view the tasks and interpret tasks closer to each other as related and look at possible variations. Conversations on relative priorities become easier. Visual stories about the persona are good contextual reference here as they set the persona\u2019s goals and emotions in context of the tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As priorities emerge and are agreed upon, shuffle more important cards higher up. Doing this will let a skeleton structure of the solution to be available and on stakeholder agreement becomes a candidate release goal. And these cards, become usually the epics and large stories that kick-start the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As you fill up the matrix with cards, start identifying gaps, inter-relationships and variations. Once there is enough on the wall, it will be useful to get opinions about the story map; from project team, stakeholders and whereever possible persona representatives. Well formed story maps, laid out visually give a clear picture of the problem and the approach to solution forming the backbone of release planning and prioritisation<\/p>\n","post_title":"Two techniques to explain your Product Vision","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"two-techniques-explain-product-vision","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7371","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
Suggested Solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Many times, backlogs are created by understanding requirements, but not the context in which the requirements have been generated. This understanding is critical to manage risks and effective backlog management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In this case, Swathi must consider the volatility and completeness of the requirements in the backlog. Volatility \u2013 as the name suggests, strives to understand the probability of requirements getting changed. A good way to understand this would be to understand the realm of users \/ personas and how well we have understood them. If volatility is high, a product rollout must plan to pivot fast or use lo-fi techniques to reduce volatility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The other area to watch out for is completeness. While this is usually better identified when requirements are known and known to be unknown, product owners get blind sided by assumptions they make. So, it is important to carefully review the grounds on which assumptions are taken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Swathi must review her backlog and work with her customer to identify areas where there will be flux based on above two parameters and appropriately change the game.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #55\u2013 How should Swathi handle changing requirements","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-55-swathi-handle-changing-requirements","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 11:30:00","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 11:30:00","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7385","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7371,"post_author":"14","post_date":"2017-04-09 15:19:35","post_date_gmt":"2017-04-09 09:49:35","post_content":"\n In earlier blogs, I had touched upon how it is important to have clarity on the problem being addressed and the context in which the solution will be used to plan product releases<\/a> in an agile project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A problem that is well understood leads to a better solution. Applying design thinking<\/a> techniques help to define a problem well. This blog touches upon a specific techniques used by agile teams to structure and explain the problem context that they are trying to solve. Visual story telling along with story mapping- two simple but powerful techniques helps product owners and team to convey a product\u2019s vision alongside its existential context. These techniques change the way people participate and help agile projects start well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Product and business analysts have a responsibility to consolidate what they have learnt about the problem they are trying to solve. A key activity in this endeavour is to bring clarity on the personae involved in the problem context, their motivations and the problem that the product is trying to solve in the persona\u2019s context.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Good persona building involves carefully observing and synthesizing a proper representation of users. The skills required to do that are different from the analytical, technical and organizational skills for building the solution \u2013 inquiry based research, ethnographic observation, awareness of biases, consolidation and facilitation skills<\/a>play a key role here. These can be learnt and developed through practice. Understanding and building personas better is a vast topic by itself and we will cover some of it in subsequent blogs. We will just get introduced the outcome of such a persona building exercise (Visual story telling and user story mapping)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Visual stories about personas and their motivation are powerful. These stories provide a platform for strangers to be part of the journey, sharing their anecdotal experience, learn from the story and enrich the overall story narrative. Visual stories that are available on the floor of a agile project or a place where research validation is being done becomes a conversation magnet \u2013 around which problems and solutions are discussed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chalking out personas visually, require doodling skills \u2013 sketching the user, their world, the tasks they do, their goals and motivations along with details that are appropriate to be highlighted. I have found that it is useful to go back to our primary school skills to learn the basics of observation, drawing and thinking visually. When starting to think visually, it is good to doodle some faces, simplify objects that are most important and leave out unnecessary details. Usually, the persona and the outcome of the persona\u2019s task and the emotion they will be in at the end of the task based on its outcome are the key factors in thinking visually. Putting these details in help stakeholders to inquire more and learn to arrive at one or more solution approaches. Adding a expression conveys emotions deeply and achieves good outcomes in lo-fi visual doodles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Developed personas can be validated only when a story is told and the story resonates with the listeners. And, this is where user story maps fit in. While visual stories about persona sets the context, the story map provides a broad perspective of the solution and the underlying priorities.Creating a story map is simple, easy to learn, but takes practice to do it effectively. To create a story map, have some cards in your hand and start detailing out the tasks that the persona will do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If it is a bank manager persona, a day in the life at work could be meeting customers, approving cash requests, reviewing loan requests and engaging business stakeholders. These are all tasks. Only a part of the persona\u2019s tasks could be part of the product or solution that you are trying to address. Focus on that and as mentioned before, build as much context about how the user will work (busy, need to switch attention between different tasks etc.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n As you organize your tasks in a sequence, you will find the list wide. Step back to identify variations you will need to add. These are details that go deep. Aggregate tasks by goals. As you aggregate tasks closer by related goals, you will find that there is a set of tasks related placed closer together and sets of cards in another dimension that are variations and exceptions for each task group going deep. For example, reviewing loan requests could also mean understanding prior bank histories and exploring opportunities to place new products in front of the customer. These are all related tasks towards the same goal of completing loan request reviews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is where the fun begins, typically stakeholders are now able to walk across the wall, view the tasks and interpret tasks closer to each other as related and look at possible variations. Conversations on relative priorities become easier. Visual stories about the persona are good contextual reference here as they set the persona\u2019s goals and emotions in context of the tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As priorities emerge and are agreed upon, shuffle more important cards higher up. Doing this will let a skeleton structure of the solution to be available and on stakeholder agreement becomes a candidate release goal. And these cards, become usually the epics and large stories that kick-start the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As you fill up the matrix with cards, start identifying gaps, inter-relationships and variations. Once there is enough on the wall, it will be useful to get opinions about the story map; from project team, stakeholders and whereever possible persona representatives. Well formed story maps, laid out visually give a clear picture of the problem and the approach to solution forming the backbone of release planning and prioritisation<\/p>\n","post_title":"Two techniques to explain your Product Vision","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"two-techniques-explain-product-vision","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7371","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
What should Swathi do? How should Swathi approach so that the backlog becomes stable over a period of time quickly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Suggested Solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Many times, backlogs are created by understanding requirements, but not the context in which the requirements have been generated. This understanding is critical to manage risks and effective backlog management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In this case, Swathi must consider the volatility and completeness of the requirements in the backlog. Volatility \u2013 as the name suggests, strives to understand the probability of requirements getting changed. A good way to understand this would be to understand the realm of users \/ personas and how well we have understood them. If volatility is high, a product rollout must plan to pivot fast or use lo-fi techniques to reduce volatility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The other area to watch out for is completeness. While this is usually better identified when requirements are known and known to be unknown, product owners get blind sided by assumptions they make. So, it is important to carefully review the grounds on which assumptions are taken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Swathi must review her backlog and work with her customer to identify areas where there will be flux based on above two parameters and appropriately change the game.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #55\u2013 How should Swathi handle changing requirements","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-55-swathi-handle-changing-requirements","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 11:30:00","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 11:30:00","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7385","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7371,"post_author":"14","post_date":"2017-04-09 15:19:35","post_date_gmt":"2017-04-09 09:49:35","post_content":"\n In earlier blogs, I had touched upon how it is important to have clarity on the problem being addressed and the context in which the solution will be used to plan product releases<\/a> in an agile project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A problem that is well understood leads to a better solution. Applying design thinking<\/a> techniques help to define a problem well. This blog touches upon a specific techniques used by agile teams to structure and explain the problem context that they are trying to solve. Visual story telling along with story mapping- two simple but powerful techniques helps product owners and team to convey a product\u2019s vision alongside its existential context. These techniques change the way people participate and help agile projects start well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Product and business analysts have a responsibility to consolidate what they have learnt about the problem they are trying to solve. A key activity in this endeavour is to bring clarity on the personae involved in the problem context, their motivations and the problem that the product is trying to solve in the persona\u2019s context.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Good persona building involves carefully observing and synthesizing a proper representation of users. The skills required to do that are different from the analytical, technical and organizational skills for building the solution \u2013 inquiry based research, ethnographic observation, awareness of biases, consolidation and facilitation skills<\/a>play a key role here. These can be learnt and developed through practice. Understanding and building personas better is a vast topic by itself and we will cover some of it in subsequent blogs. We will just get introduced the outcome of such a persona building exercise (Visual story telling and user story mapping)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Visual stories about personas and their motivation are powerful. These stories provide a platform for strangers to be part of the journey, sharing their anecdotal experience, learn from the story and enrich the overall story narrative. Visual stories that are available on the floor of a agile project or a place where research validation is being done becomes a conversation magnet \u2013 around which problems and solutions are discussed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chalking out personas visually, require doodling skills \u2013 sketching the user, their world, the tasks they do, their goals and motivations along with details that are appropriate to be highlighted. I have found that it is useful to go back to our primary school skills to learn the basics of observation, drawing and thinking visually. When starting to think visually, it is good to doodle some faces, simplify objects that are most important and leave out unnecessary details. Usually, the persona and the outcome of the persona\u2019s task and the emotion they will be in at the end of the task based on its outcome are the key factors in thinking visually. Putting these details in help stakeholders to inquire more and learn to arrive at one or more solution approaches. Adding a expression conveys emotions deeply and achieves good outcomes in lo-fi visual doodles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Developed personas can be validated only when a story is told and the story resonates with the listeners. And, this is where user story maps fit in. While visual stories about persona sets the context, the story map provides a broad perspective of the solution and the underlying priorities.Creating a story map is simple, easy to learn, but takes practice to do it effectively. To create a story map, have some cards in your hand and start detailing out the tasks that the persona will do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If it is a bank manager persona, a day in the life at work could be meeting customers, approving cash requests, reviewing loan requests and engaging business stakeholders. These are all tasks. Only a part of the persona\u2019s tasks could be part of the product or solution that you are trying to address. Focus on that and as mentioned before, build as much context about how the user will work (busy, need to switch attention between different tasks etc.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n As you organize your tasks in a sequence, you will find the list wide. Step back to identify variations you will need to add. These are details that go deep. Aggregate tasks by goals. As you aggregate tasks closer by related goals, you will find that there is a set of tasks related placed closer together and sets of cards in another dimension that are variations and exceptions for each task group going deep. For example, reviewing loan requests could also mean understanding prior bank histories and exploring opportunities to place new products in front of the customer. These are all related tasks towards the same goal of completing loan request reviews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is where the fun begins, typically stakeholders are now able to walk across the wall, view the tasks and interpret tasks closer to each other as related and look at possible variations. Conversations on relative priorities become easier. Visual stories about the persona are good contextual reference here as they set the persona\u2019s goals and emotions in context of the tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As priorities emerge and are agreed upon, shuffle more important cards higher up. Doing this will let a skeleton structure of the solution to be available and on stakeholder agreement becomes a candidate release goal. And these cards, become usually the epics and large stories that kick-start the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As you fill up the matrix with cards, start identifying gaps, inter-relationships and variations. Once there is enough on the wall, it will be useful to get opinions about the story map; from project team, stakeholders and whereever possible persona representatives. Well formed story maps, laid out visually give a clear picture of the problem and the approach to solution forming the backbone of release planning and prioritisation<\/p>\n","post_title":"Two techniques to explain your Product Vision","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"two-techniques-explain-product-vision","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7371","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
She has started finding that many times, while internally they are on the same page, feedback from the client has given surprises. This has forced her to make changes, stop some stories and essentially go back to the drawing board \u2013 her customer who is first in that market seems to be changing their mind. The product director has asked her to take a step back, review the whole situation and own the backlog to reduce so much of churn and frustration \u2013 given that the client is important and first in the segment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What should Swathi do? How should Swathi approach so that the backlog becomes stable over a period of time quickly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Suggested Solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Many times, backlogs are created by understanding requirements, but not the context in which the requirements have been generated. This understanding is critical to manage risks and effective backlog management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In this case, Swathi must consider the volatility and completeness of the requirements in the backlog. Volatility \u2013 as the name suggests, strives to understand the probability of requirements getting changed. A good way to understand this would be to understand the realm of users \/ personas and how well we have understood them. If volatility is high, a product rollout must plan to pivot fast or use lo-fi techniques to reduce volatility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The other area to watch out for is completeness. While this is usually better identified when requirements are known and known to be unknown, product owners get blind sided by assumptions they make. So, it is important to carefully review the grounds on which assumptions are taken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Swathi must review her backlog and work with her customer to identify areas where there will be flux based on above two parameters and appropriately change the game.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #55\u2013 How should Swathi handle changing requirements","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-55-swathi-handle-changing-requirements","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 11:30:00","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 11:30:00","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7385","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7371,"post_author":"14","post_date":"2017-04-09 15:19:35","post_date_gmt":"2017-04-09 09:49:35","post_content":"\n In earlier blogs, I had touched upon how it is important to have clarity on the problem being addressed and the context in which the solution will be used to plan product releases<\/a> in an agile project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A problem that is well understood leads to a better solution. Applying design thinking<\/a> techniques help to define a problem well. This blog touches upon a specific techniques used by agile teams to structure and explain the problem context that they are trying to solve. Visual story telling along with story mapping- two simple but powerful techniques helps product owners and team to convey a product\u2019s vision alongside its existential context. These techniques change the way people participate and help agile projects start well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Product and business analysts have a responsibility to consolidate what they have learnt about the problem they are trying to solve. A key activity in this endeavour is to bring clarity on the personae involved in the problem context, their motivations and the problem that the product is trying to solve in the persona\u2019s context.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Good persona building involves carefully observing and synthesizing a proper representation of users. The skills required to do that are different from the analytical, technical and organizational skills for building the solution \u2013 inquiry based research, ethnographic observation, awareness of biases, consolidation and facilitation skills<\/a>play a key role here. These can be learnt and developed through practice. Understanding and building personas better is a vast topic by itself and we will cover some of it in subsequent blogs. We will just get introduced the outcome of such a persona building exercise (Visual story telling and user story mapping)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Visual stories about personas and their motivation are powerful. These stories provide a platform for strangers to be part of the journey, sharing their anecdotal experience, learn from the story and enrich the overall story narrative. Visual stories that are available on the floor of a agile project or a place where research validation is being done becomes a conversation magnet \u2013 around which problems and solutions are discussed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chalking out personas visually, require doodling skills \u2013 sketching the user, their world, the tasks they do, their goals and motivations along with details that are appropriate to be highlighted. I have found that it is useful to go back to our primary school skills to learn the basics of observation, drawing and thinking visually. When starting to think visually, it is good to doodle some faces, simplify objects that are most important and leave out unnecessary details. Usually, the persona and the outcome of the persona\u2019s task and the emotion they will be in at the end of the task based on its outcome are the key factors in thinking visually. Putting these details in help stakeholders to inquire more and learn to arrive at one or more solution approaches. Adding a expression conveys emotions deeply and achieves good outcomes in lo-fi visual doodles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Developed personas can be validated only when a story is told and the story resonates with the listeners. And, this is where user story maps fit in. While visual stories about persona sets the context, the story map provides a broad perspective of the solution and the underlying priorities.Creating a story map is simple, easy to learn, but takes practice to do it effectively. To create a story map, have some cards in your hand and start detailing out the tasks that the persona will do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If it is a bank manager persona, a day in the life at work could be meeting customers, approving cash requests, reviewing loan requests and engaging business stakeholders. These are all tasks. Only a part of the persona\u2019s tasks could be part of the product or solution that you are trying to address. Focus on that and as mentioned before, build as much context about how the user will work (busy, need to switch attention between different tasks etc.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n As you organize your tasks in a sequence, you will find the list wide. Step back to identify variations you will need to add. These are details that go deep. Aggregate tasks by goals. As you aggregate tasks closer by related goals, you will find that there is a set of tasks related placed closer together and sets of cards in another dimension that are variations and exceptions for each task group going deep. For example, reviewing loan requests could also mean understanding prior bank histories and exploring opportunities to place new products in front of the customer. These are all related tasks towards the same goal of completing loan request reviews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is where the fun begins, typically stakeholders are now able to walk across the wall, view the tasks and interpret tasks closer to each other as related and look at possible variations. Conversations on relative priorities become easier. Visual stories about the persona are good contextual reference here as they set the persona\u2019s goals and emotions in context of the tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As priorities emerge and are agreed upon, shuffle more important cards higher up. Doing this will let a skeleton structure of the solution to be available and on stakeholder agreement becomes a candidate release goal. And these cards, become usually the epics and large stories that kick-start the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As you fill up the matrix with cards, start identifying gaps, inter-relationships and variations. Once there is enough on the wall, it will be useful to get opinions about the story map; from project team, stakeholders and whereever possible persona representatives. Well formed story maps, laid out visually give a clear picture of the problem and the approach to solution forming the backbone of release planning and prioritisation<\/p>\n","post_title":"Two techniques to explain your Product Vision","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"two-techniques-explain-product-vision","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7371","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
Swathi has recently started working with an agile team as a product owner. In that capacity, Swathi has end to end ownership of her part of the product, She reports in to a product director. She works closely with the sales teams and operations teams to identify features, proactively suggest changes to reduce operational load. In this release, they are adding several new features for a new client.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She has started finding that many times, while internally they are on the same page, feedback from the client has given surprises. This has forced her to make changes, stop some stories and essentially go back to the drawing board \u2013 her customer who is first in that market seems to be changing their mind. The product director has asked her to take a step back, review the whole situation and own the backlog to reduce so much of churn and frustration \u2013 given that the client is important and first in the segment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What should Swathi do? How should Swathi approach so that the backlog becomes stable over a period of time quickly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Suggested Solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Many times, backlogs are created by understanding requirements, but not the context in which the requirements have been generated. This understanding is critical to manage risks and effective backlog management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In this case, Swathi must consider the volatility and completeness of the requirements in the backlog. Volatility \u2013 as the name suggests, strives to understand the probability of requirements getting changed. A good way to understand this would be to understand the realm of users \/ personas and how well we have understood them. If volatility is high, a product rollout must plan to pivot fast or use lo-fi techniques to reduce volatility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The other area to watch out for is completeness. While this is usually better identified when requirements are known and known to be unknown, product owners get blind sided by assumptions they make. So, it is important to carefully review the grounds on which assumptions are taken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Swathi must review her backlog and work with her customer to identify areas where there will be flux based on above two parameters and appropriately change the game.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #55\u2013 How should Swathi handle changing requirements","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-55-swathi-handle-changing-requirements","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 11:30:00","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 11:30:00","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7385","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7371,"post_author":"14","post_date":"2017-04-09 15:19:35","post_date_gmt":"2017-04-09 09:49:35","post_content":"\n In earlier blogs, I had touched upon how it is important to have clarity on the problem being addressed and the context in which the solution will be used to plan product releases<\/a> in an agile project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A problem that is well understood leads to a better solution. Applying design thinking<\/a> techniques help to define a problem well. This blog touches upon a specific techniques used by agile teams to structure and explain the problem context that they are trying to solve. Visual story telling along with story mapping- two simple but powerful techniques helps product owners and team to convey a product\u2019s vision alongside its existential context. These techniques change the way people participate and help agile projects start well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Product and business analysts have a responsibility to consolidate what they have learnt about the problem they are trying to solve. A key activity in this endeavour is to bring clarity on the personae involved in the problem context, their motivations and the problem that the product is trying to solve in the persona\u2019s context.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Good persona building involves carefully observing and synthesizing a proper representation of users. The skills required to do that are different from the analytical, technical and organizational skills for building the solution \u2013 inquiry based research, ethnographic observation, awareness of biases, consolidation and facilitation skills<\/a>play a key role here. These can be learnt and developed through practice. Understanding and building personas better is a vast topic by itself and we will cover some of it in subsequent blogs. We will just get introduced the outcome of such a persona building exercise (Visual story telling and user story mapping)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Visual stories about personas and their motivation are powerful. These stories provide a platform for strangers to be part of the journey, sharing their anecdotal experience, learn from the story and enrich the overall story narrative. Visual stories that are available on the floor of a agile project or a place where research validation is being done becomes a conversation magnet \u2013 around which problems and solutions are discussed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chalking out personas visually, require doodling skills \u2013 sketching the user, their world, the tasks they do, their goals and motivations along with details that are appropriate to be highlighted. I have found that it is useful to go back to our primary school skills to learn the basics of observation, drawing and thinking visually. When starting to think visually, it is good to doodle some faces, simplify objects that are most important and leave out unnecessary details. Usually, the persona and the outcome of the persona\u2019s task and the emotion they will be in at the end of the task based on its outcome are the key factors in thinking visually. Putting these details in help stakeholders to inquire more and learn to arrive at one or more solution approaches. Adding a expression conveys emotions deeply and achieves good outcomes in lo-fi visual doodles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Developed personas can be validated only when a story is told and the story resonates with the listeners. And, this is where user story maps fit in. While visual stories about persona sets the context, the story map provides a broad perspective of the solution and the underlying priorities.Creating a story map is simple, easy to learn, but takes practice to do it effectively. To create a story map, have some cards in your hand and start detailing out the tasks that the persona will do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If it is a bank manager persona, a day in the life at work could be meeting customers, approving cash requests, reviewing loan requests and engaging business stakeholders. These are all tasks. Only a part of the persona\u2019s tasks could be part of the product or solution that you are trying to address. Focus on that and as mentioned before, build as much context about how the user will work (busy, need to switch attention between different tasks etc.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n As you organize your tasks in a sequence, you will find the list wide. Step back to identify variations you will need to add. These are details that go deep. Aggregate tasks by goals. As you aggregate tasks closer by related goals, you will find that there is a set of tasks related placed closer together and sets of cards in another dimension that are variations and exceptions for each task group going deep. For example, reviewing loan requests could also mean understanding prior bank histories and exploring opportunities to place new products in front of the customer. These are all related tasks towards the same goal of completing loan request reviews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is where the fun begins, typically stakeholders are now able to walk across the wall, view the tasks and interpret tasks closer to each other as related and look at possible variations. Conversations on relative priorities become easier. Visual stories about the persona are good contextual reference here as they set the persona\u2019s goals and emotions in context of the tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As priorities emerge and are agreed upon, shuffle more important cards higher up. Doing this will let a skeleton structure of the solution to be available and on stakeholder agreement becomes a candidate release goal. And these cards, become usually the epics and large stories that kick-start the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As you fill up the matrix with cards, start identifying gaps, inter-relationships and variations. Once there is enough on the wall, it will be useful to get opinions about the story map; from project team, stakeholders and whereever possible persona representatives. Well formed story maps, laid out visually give a clear picture of the problem and the approach to solution forming the backbone of release planning and prioritisation<\/p>\n","post_title":"Two techniques to explain your Product Vision","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"two-techniques-explain-product-vision","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7371","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
These are areas where traditional Business Analyst role is not taken in to; and will require focus on developing skills in multiple areas. Apart from this, is the \u2018taken for granted\u2019 domain awareness (I , however, feel this awareness is confused with expertise, which may not be necessary)<\/p>\n","post_title":"Help a Business Analyst Pivot","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"help-business-analyst-pivot","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 11:25:22","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 11:25:22","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6203","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7385,"post_author":"14","post_date":"2017-04-09 15:36:50","post_date_gmt":"2017-04-09 10:06:50","post_content":"\n Swathi has recently started working with an agile team as a product owner. In that capacity, Swathi has end to end ownership of her part of the product, She reports in to a product director. She works closely with the sales teams and operations teams to identify features, proactively suggest changes to reduce operational load. In this release, they are adding several new features for a new client.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She has started finding that many times, while internally they are on the same page, feedback from the client has given surprises. This has forced her to make changes, stop some stories and essentially go back to the drawing board \u2013 her customer who is first in that market seems to be changing their mind. The product director has asked her to take a step back, review the whole situation and own the backlog to reduce so much of churn and frustration \u2013 given that the client is important and first in the segment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What should Swathi do? How should Swathi approach so that the backlog becomes stable over a period of time quickly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Suggested Solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Many times, backlogs are created by understanding requirements, but not the context in which the requirements have been generated. This understanding is critical to manage risks and effective backlog management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In this case, Swathi must consider the volatility and completeness of the requirements in the backlog. Volatility \u2013 as the name suggests, strives to understand the probability of requirements getting changed. A good way to understand this would be to understand the realm of users \/ personas and how well we have understood them. If volatility is high, a product rollout must plan to pivot fast or use lo-fi techniques to reduce volatility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The other area to watch out for is completeness. While this is usually better identified when requirements are known and known to be unknown, product owners get blind sided by assumptions they make. So, it is important to carefully review the grounds on which assumptions are taken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Swathi must review her backlog and work with her customer to identify areas where there will be flux based on above two parameters and appropriately change the game.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #55\u2013 How should Swathi handle changing requirements","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-55-swathi-handle-changing-requirements","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 11:30:00","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 11:30:00","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7385","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7371,"post_author":"14","post_date":"2017-04-09 15:19:35","post_date_gmt":"2017-04-09 09:49:35","post_content":"\n In earlier blogs, I had touched upon how it is important to have clarity on the problem being addressed and the context in which the solution will be used to plan product releases<\/a> in an agile project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A problem that is well understood leads to a better solution. Applying design thinking<\/a> techniques help to define a problem well. This blog touches upon a specific techniques used by agile teams to structure and explain the problem context that they are trying to solve. Visual story telling along with story mapping- two simple but powerful techniques helps product owners and team to convey a product\u2019s vision alongside its existential context. These techniques change the way people participate and help agile projects start well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Product and business analysts have a responsibility to consolidate what they have learnt about the problem they are trying to solve. A key activity in this endeavour is to bring clarity on the personae involved in the problem context, their motivations and the problem that the product is trying to solve in the persona\u2019s context.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Good persona building involves carefully observing and synthesizing a proper representation of users. The skills required to do that are different from the analytical, technical and organizational skills for building the solution \u2013 inquiry based research, ethnographic observation, awareness of biases, consolidation and facilitation skills<\/a>play a key role here. These can be learnt and developed through practice. Understanding and building personas better is a vast topic by itself and we will cover some of it in subsequent blogs. We will just get introduced the outcome of such a persona building exercise (Visual story telling and user story mapping)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Visual stories about personas and their motivation are powerful. These stories provide a platform for strangers to be part of the journey, sharing their anecdotal experience, learn from the story and enrich the overall story narrative. Visual stories that are available on the floor of a agile project or a place where research validation is being done becomes a conversation magnet \u2013 around which problems and solutions are discussed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chalking out personas visually, require doodling skills \u2013 sketching the user, their world, the tasks they do, their goals and motivations along with details that are appropriate to be highlighted. I have found that it is useful to go back to our primary school skills to learn the basics of observation, drawing and thinking visually. When starting to think visually, it is good to doodle some faces, simplify objects that are most important and leave out unnecessary details. Usually, the persona and the outcome of the persona\u2019s task and the emotion they will be in at the end of the task based on its outcome are the key factors in thinking visually. Putting these details in help stakeholders to inquire more and learn to arrive at one or more solution approaches. Adding a expression conveys emotions deeply and achieves good outcomes in lo-fi visual doodles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Developed personas can be validated only when a story is told and the story resonates with the listeners. And, this is where user story maps fit in. While visual stories about persona sets the context, the story map provides a broad perspective of the solution and the underlying priorities.Creating a story map is simple, easy to learn, but takes practice to do it effectively. To create a story map, have some cards in your hand and start detailing out the tasks that the persona will do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If it is a bank manager persona, a day in the life at work could be meeting customers, approving cash requests, reviewing loan requests and engaging business stakeholders. These are all tasks. Only a part of the persona\u2019s tasks could be part of the product or solution that you are trying to address. Focus on that and as mentioned before, build as much context about how the user will work (busy, need to switch attention between different tasks etc.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n As you organize your tasks in a sequence, you will find the list wide. Step back to identify variations you will need to add. These are details that go deep. Aggregate tasks by goals. As you aggregate tasks closer by related goals, you will find that there is a set of tasks related placed closer together and sets of cards in another dimension that are variations and exceptions for each task group going deep. For example, reviewing loan requests could also mean understanding prior bank histories and exploring opportunities to place new products in front of the customer. These are all related tasks towards the same goal of completing loan request reviews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is where the fun begins, typically stakeholders are now able to walk across the wall, view the tasks and interpret tasks closer to each other as related and look at possible variations. Conversations on relative priorities become easier. Visual stories about the persona are good contextual reference here as they set the persona\u2019s goals and emotions in context of the tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As priorities emerge and are agreed upon, shuffle more important cards higher up. Doing this will let a skeleton structure of the solution to be available and on stakeholder agreement becomes a candidate release goal. And these cards, become usually the epics and large stories that kick-start the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As you fill up the matrix with cards, start identifying gaps, inter-relationships and variations. Once there is enough on the wall, it will be useful to get opinions about the story map; from project team, stakeholders and whereever possible persona representatives. Well formed story maps, laid out visually give a clear picture of the problem and the approach to solution forming the backbone of release planning and prioritisation<\/p>\n","post_title":"Two techniques to explain your Product Vision","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"two-techniques-explain-product-vision","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7371","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
3. Release & Development Management: As the proxy owner of their project from a functional perspective, Divya can and must develop abilities to come up with options on releases that will create value to end customer (not just based on constraints in development)<\/p>\n\n\n\n These are areas where traditional Business Analyst role is not taken in to; and will require focus on developing skills in multiple areas. Apart from this, is the \u2018taken for granted\u2019 domain awareness (I , however, feel this awareness is confused with expertise, which may not be necessary)<\/p>\n","post_title":"Help a Business Analyst Pivot","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"help-business-analyst-pivot","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 11:25:22","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 11:25:22","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6203","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7385,"post_author":"14","post_date":"2017-04-09 15:36:50","post_date_gmt":"2017-04-09 10:06:50","post_content":"\n Swathi has recently started working with an agile team as a product owner. In that capacity, Swathi has end to end ownership of her part of the product, She reports in to a product director. She works closely with the sales teams and operations teams to identify features, proactively suggest changes to reduce operational load. In this release, they are adding several new features for a new client.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She has started finding that many times, while internally they are on the same page, feedback from the client has given surprises. This has forced her to make changes, stop some stories and essentially go back to the drawing board \u2013 her customer who is first in that market seems to be changing their mind. The product director has asked her to take a step back, review the whole situation and own the backlog to reduce so much of churn and frustration \u2013 given that the client is important and first in the segment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What should Swathi do? How should Swathi approach so that the backlog becomes stable over a period of time quickly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Suggested Solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Many times, backlogs are created by understanding requirements, but not the context in which the requirements have been generated. This understanding is critical to manage risks and effective backlog management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In this case, Swathi must consider the volatility and completeness of the requirements in the backlog. Volatility \u2013 as the name suggests, strives to understand the probability of requirements getting changed. A good way to understand this would be to understand the realm of users \/ personas and how well we have understood them. If volatility is high, a product rollout must plan to pivot fast or use lo-fi techniques to reduce volatility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The other area to watch out for is completeness. While this is usually better identified when requirements are known and known to be unknown, product owners get blind sided by assumptions they make. So, it is important to carefully review the grounds on which assumptions are taken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Swathi must review her backlog and work with her customer to identify areas where there will be flux based on above two parameters and appropriately change the game.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #55\u2013 How should Swathi handle changing requirements","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-55-swathi-handle-changing-requirements","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 11:30:00","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 11:30:00","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7385","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7371,"post_author":"14","post_date":"2017-04-09 15:19:35","post_date_gmt":"2017-04-09 09:49:35","post_content":"\n In earlier blogs, I had touched upon how it is important to have clarity on the problem being addressed and the context in which the solution will be used to plan product releases<\/a> in an agile project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A problem that is well understood leads to a better solution. Applying design thinking<\/a> techniques help to define a problem well. This blog touches upon a specific techniques used by agile teams to structure and explain the problem context that they are trying to solve. Visual story telling along with story mapping- two simple but powerful techniques helps product owners and team to convey a product\u2019s vision alongside its existential context. These techniques change the way people participate and help agile projects start well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Product and business analysts have a responsibility to consolidate what they have learnt about the problem they are trying to solve. A key activity in this endeavour is to bring clarity on the personae involved in the problem context, their motivations and the problem that the product is trying to solve in the persona\u2019s context.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Good persona building involves carefully observing and synthesizing a proper representation of users. The skills required to do that are different from the analytical, technical and organizational skills for building the solution \u2013 inquiry based research, ethnographic observation, awareness of biases, consolidation and facilitation skills<\/a>play a key role here. These can be learnt and developed through practice. Understanding and building personas better is a vast topic by itself and we will cover some of it in subsequent blogs. We will just get introduced the outcome of such a persona building exercise (Visual story telling and user story mapping)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Visual stories about personas and their motivation are powerful. These stories provide a platform for strangers to be part of the journey, sharing their anecdotal experience, learn from the story and enrich the overall story narrative. Visual stories that are available on the floor of a agile project or a place where research validation is being done becomes a conversation magnet \u2013 around which problems and solutions are discussed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chalking out personas visually, require doodling skills \u2013 sketching the user, their world, the tasks they do, their goals and motivations along with details that are appropriate to be highlighted. I have found that it is useful to go back to our primary school skills to learn the basics of observation, drawing and thinking visually. When starting to think visually, it is good to doodle some faces, simplify objects that are most important and leave out unnecessary details. Usually, the persona and the outcome of the persona\u2019s task and the emotion they will be in at the end of the task based on its outcome are the key factors in thinking visually. Putting these details in help stakeholders to inquire more and learn to arrive at one or more solution approaches. Adding a expression conveys emotions deeply and achieves good outcomes in lo-fi visual doodles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Developed personas can be validated only when a story is told and the story resonates with the listeners. And, this is where user story maps fit in. While visual stories about persona sets the context, the story map provides a broad perspective of the solution and the underlying priorities.Creating a story map is simple, easy to learn, but takes practice to do it effectively. To create a story map, have some cards in your hand and start detailing out the tasks that the persona will do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If it is a bank manager persona, a day in the life at work could be meeting customers, approving cash requests, reviewing loan requests and engaging business stakeholders. These are all tasks. Only a part of the persona\u2019s tasks could be part of the product or solution that you are trying to address. Focus on that and as mentioned before, build as much context about how the user will work (busy, need to switch attention between different tasks etc.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n As you organize your tasks in a sequence, you will find the list wide. Step back to identify variations you will need to add. These are details that go deep. Aggregate tasks by goals. As you aggregate tasks closer by related goals, you will find that there is a set of tasks related placed closer together and sets of cards in another dimension that are variations and exceptions for each task group going deep. For example, reviewing loan requests could also mean understanding prior bank histories and exploring opportunities to place new products in front of the customer. These are all related tasks towards the same goal of completing loan request reviews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is where the fun begins, typically stakeholders are now able to walk across the wall, view the tasks and interpret tasks closer to each other as related and look at possible variations. Conversations on relative priorities become easier. Visual stories about the persona are good contextual reference here as they set the persona\u2019s goals and emotions in context of the tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As priorities emerge and are agreed upon, shuffle more important cards higher up. Doing this will let a skeleton structure of the solution to be available and on stakeholder agreement becomes a candidate release goal. And these cards, become usually the epics and large stories that kick-start the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As you fill up the matrix with cards, start identifying gaps, inter-relationships and variations. Once there is enough on the wall, it will be useful to get opinions about the story map; from project team, stakeholders and whereever possible persona representatives. Well formed story maps, laid out visually give a clear picture of the problem and the approach to solution forming the backbone of release planning and prioritisation<\/p>\n","post_title":"Two techniques to explain your Product Vision","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"two-techniques-explain-product-vision","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7371","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
2. Design Thinking skills: Techniques that help in unearthing problems and validating solutions end to end, thereby reducing wasted software creation<\/p>\n\n\n\n 3. Release & Development Management: As the proxy owner of their project from a functional perspective, Divya can and must develop abilities to come up with options on releases that will create value to end customer (not just based on constraints in development)<\/p>\n\n\n\n These are areas where traditional Business Analyst role is not taken in to; and will require focus on developing skills in multiple areas. Apart from this, is the \u2018taken for granted\u2019 domain awareness (I , however, feel this awareness is confused with expertise, which may not be necessary)<\/p>\n","post_title":"Help a Business Analyst Pivot","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"help-business-analyst-pivot","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 11:25:22","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 11:25:22","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6203","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7385,"post_author":"14","post_date":"2017-04-09 15:36:50","post_date_gmt":"2017-04-09 10:06:50","post_content":"\n Swathi has recently started working with an agile team as a product owner. In that capacity, Swathi has end to end ownership of her part of the product, She reports in to a product director. She works closely with the sales teams and operations teams to identify features, proactively suggest changes to reduce operational load. In this release, they are adding several new features for a new client.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She has started finding that many times, while internally they are on the same page, feedback from the client has given surprises. This has forced her to make changes, stop some stories and essentially go back to the drawing board \u2013 her customer who is first in that market seems to be changing their mind. The product director has asked her to take a step back, review the whole situation and own the backlog to reduce so much of churn and frustration \u2013 given that the client is important and first in the segment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What should Swathi do? How should Swathi approach so that the backlog becomes stable over a period of time quickly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Suggested Solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Many times, backlogs are created by understanding requirements, but not the context in which the requirements have been generated. This understanding is critical to manage risks and effective backlog management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In this case, Swathi must consider the volatility and completeness of the requirements in the backlog. Volatility \u2013 as the name suggests, strives to understand the probability of requirements getting changed. A good way to understand this would be to understand the realm of users \/ personas and how well we have understood them. If volatility is high, a product rollout must plan to pivot fast or use lo-fi techniques to reduce volatility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The other area to watch out for is completeness. While this is usually better identified when requirements are known and known to be unknown, product owners get blind sided by assumptions they make. So, it is important to carefully review the grounds on which assumptions are taken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Swathi must review her backlog and work with her customer to identify areas where there will be flux based on above two parameters and appropriately change the game.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #55\u2013 How should Swathi handle changing requirements","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-55-swathi-handle-changing-requirements","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 11:30:00","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 11:30:00","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7385","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7371,"post_author":"14","post_date":"2017-04-09 15:19:35","post_date_gmt":"2017-04-09 09:49:35","post_content":"\n In earlier blogs, I had touched upon how it is important to have clarity on the problem being addressed and the context in which the solution will be used to plan product releases<\/a> in an agile project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A problem that is well understood leads to a better solution. Applying design thinking<\/a> techniques help to define a problem well. This blog touches upon a specific techniques used by agile teams to structure and explain the problem context that they are trying to solve. Visual story telling along with story mapping- two simple but powerful techniques helps product owners and team to convey a product\u2019s vision alongside its existential context. These techniques change the way people participate and help agile projects start well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Product and business analysts have a responsibility to consolidate what they have learnt about the problem they are trying to solve. A key activity in this endeavour is to bring clarity on the personae involved in the problem context, their motivations and the problem that the product is trying to solve in the persona\u2019s context.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Good persona building involves carefully observing and synthesizing a proper representation of users. The skills required to do that are different from the analytical, technical and organizational skills for building the solution \u2013 inquiry based research, ethnographic observation, awareness of biases, consolidation and facilitation skills<\/a>play a key role here. These can be learnt and developed through practice. Understanding and building personas better is a vast topic by itself and we will cover some of it in subsequent blogs. We will just get introduced the outcome of such a persona building exercise (Visual story telling and user story mapping)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Visual stories about personas and their motivation are powerful. These stories provide a platform for strangers to be part of the journey, sharing their anecdotal experience, learn from the story and enrich the overall story narrative. Visual stories that are available on the floor of a agile project or a place where research validation is being done becomes a conversation magnet \u2013 around which problems and solutions are discussed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chalking out personas visually, require doodling skills \u2013 sketching the user, their world, the tasks they do, their goals and motivations along with details that are appropriate to be highlighted. I have found that it is useful to go back to our primary school skills to learn the basics of observation, drawing and thinking visually. When starting to think visually, it is good to doodle some faces, simplify objects that are most important and leave out unnecessary details. Usually, the persona and the outcome of the persona\u2019s task and the emotion they will be in at the end of the task based on its outcome are the key factors in thinking visually. Putting these details in help stakeholders to inquire more and learn to arrive at one or more solution approaches. Adding a expression conveys emotions deeply and achieves good outcomes in lo-fi visual doodles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Developed personas can be validated only when a story is told and the story resonates with the listeners. And, this is where user story maps fit in. While visual stories about persona sets the context, the story map provides a broad perspective of the solution and the underlying priorities.Creating a story map is simple, easy to learn, but takes practice to do it effectively. To create a story map, have some cards in your hand and start detailing out the tasks that the persona will do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If it is a bank manager persona, a day in the life at work could be meeting customers, approving cash requests, reviewing loan requests and engaging business stakeholders. These are all tasks. Only a part of the persona\u2019s tasks could be part of the product or solution that you are trying to address. Focus on that and as mentioned before, build as much context about how the user will work (busy, need to switch attention between different tasks etc.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n As you organize your tasks in a sequence, you will find the list wide. Step back to identify variations you will need to add. These are details that go deep. Aggregate tasks by goals. As you aggregate tasks closer by related goals, you will find that there is a set of tasks related placed closer together and sets of cards in another dimension that are variations and exceptions for each task group going deep. For example, reviewing loan requests could also mean understanding prior bank histories and exploring opportunities to place new products in front of the customer. These are all related tasks towards the same goal of completing loan request reviews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is where the fun begins, typically stakeholders are now able to walk across the wall, view the tasks and interpret tasks closer to each other as related and look at possible variations. Conversations on relative priorities become easier. Visual stories about the persona are good contextual reference here as they set the persona\u2019s goals and emotions in context of the tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As priorities emerge and are agreed upon, shuffle more important cards higher up. Doing this will let a skeleton structure of the solution to be available and on stakeholder agreement becomes a candidate release goal. And these cards, become usually the epics and large stories that kick-start the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As you fill up the matrix with cards, start identifying gaps, inter-relationships and variations. Once there is enough on the wall, it will be useful to get opinions about the story map; from project team, stakeholders and whereever possible persona representatives. Well formed story maps, laid out visually give a clear picture of the problem and the approach to solution forming the backbone of release planning and prioritisation<\/p>\n","post_title":"Two techniques to explain your Product Vision","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"two-techniques-explain-product-vision","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7371","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
1. Facilitation skills \u2013 Bringing teams together, so that relevant stakeholders agree on problems and solutions, with each stakeholder (development, product owner, sometimes end user too) providing their perspective \u2013 ideas, approaches, risks, challenges<\/p>\n\n\n\n 2. Design Thinking skills: Techniques that help in unearthing problems and validating solutions end to end, thereby reducing wasted software creation<\/p>\n\n\n\n 3. Release & Development Management: As the proxy owner of their project from a functional perspective, Divya can and must develop abilities to come up with options on releases that will create value to end customer (not just based on constraints in development)<\/p>\n\n\n\n These are areas where traditional Business Analyst role is not taken in to; and will require focus on developing skills in multiple areas. Apart from this, is the \u2018taken for granted\u2019 domain awareness (I , however, feel this awareness is confused with expertise, which may not be necessary)<\/p>\n","post_title":"Help a Business Analyst Pivot","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"help-business-analyst-pivot","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 11:25:22","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 11:25:22","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6203","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7385,"post_author":"14","post_date":"2017-04-09 15:36:50","post_date_gmt":"2017-04-09 10:06:50","post_content":"\n Swathi has recently started working with an agile team as a product owner. In that capacity, Swathi has end to end ownership of her part of the product, She reports in to a product director. She works closely with the sales teams and operations teams to identify features, proactively suggest changes to reduce operational load. In this release, they are adding several new features for a new client.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She has started finding that many times, while internally they are on the same page, feedback from the client has given surprises. This has forced her to make changes, stop some stories and essentially go back to the drawing board \u2013 her customer who is first in that market seems to be changing their mind. The product director has asked her to take a step back, review the whole situation and own the backlog to reduce so much of churn and frustration \u2013 given that the client is important and first in the segment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What should Swathi do? How should Swathi approach so that the backlog becomes stable over a period of time quickly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Suggested Solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Many times, backlogs are created by understanding requirements, but not the context in which the requirements have been generated. This understanding is critical to manage risks and effective backlog management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In this case, Swathi must consider the volatility and completeness of the requirements in the backlog. Volatility \u2013 as the name suggests, strives to understand the probability of requirements getting changed. A good way to understand this would be to understand the realm of users \/ personas and how well we have understood them. If volatility is high, a product rollout must plan to pivot fast or use lo-fi techniques to reduce volatility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The other area to watch out for is completeness. While this is usually better identified when requirements are known and known to be unknown, product owners get blind sided by assumptions they make. So, it is important to carefully review the grounds on which assumptions are taken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Swathi must review her backlog and work with her customer to identify areas where there will be flux based on above two parameters and appropriately change the game.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #55\u2013 How should Swathi handle changing requirements","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-55-swathi-handle-changing-requirements","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 11:30:00","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 11:30:00","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7385","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7371,"post_author":"14","post_date":"2017-04-09 15:19:35","post_date_gmt":"2017-04-09 09:49:35","post_content":"\n In earlier blogs, I had touched upon how it is important to have clarity on the problem being addressed and the context in which the solution will be used to plan product releases<\/a> in an agile project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A problem that is well understood leads to a better solution. Applying design thinking<\/a> techniques help to define a problem well. This blog touches upon a specific techniques used by agile teams to structure and explain the problem context that they are trying to solve. Visual story telling along with story mapping- two simple but powerful techniques helps product owners and team to convey a product\u2019s vision alongside its existential context. These techniques change the way people participate and help agile projects start well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Product and business analysts have a responsibility to consolidate what they have learnt about the problem they are trying to solve. A key activity in this endeavour is to bring clarity on the personae involved in the problem context, their motivations and the problem that the product is trying to solve in the persona\u2019s context.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Good persona building involves carefully observing and synthesizing a proper representation of users. The skills required to do that are different from the analytical, technical and organizational skills for building the solution \u2013 inquiry based research, ethnographic observation, awareness of biases, consolidation and facilitation skills<\/a>play a key role here. These can be learnt and developed through practice. Understanding and building personas better is a vast topic by itself and we will cover some of it in subsequent blogs. We will just get introduced the outcome of such a persona building exercise (Visual story telling and user story mapping)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Visual stories about personas and their motivation are powerful. These stories provide a platform for strangers to be part of the journey, sharing their anecdotal experience, learn from the story and enrich the overall story narrative. Visual stories that are available on the floor of a agile project or a place where research validation is being done becomes a conversation magnet \u2013 around which problems and solutions are discussed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chalking out personas visually, require doodling skills \u2013 sketching the user, their world, the tasks they do, their goals and motivations along with details that are appropriate to be highlighted. I have found that it is useful to go back to our primary school skills to learn the basics of observation, drawing and thinking visually. When starting to think visually, it is good to doodle some faces, simplify objects that are most important and leave out unnecessary details. Usually, the persona and the outcome of the persona\u2019s task and the emotion they will be in at the end of the task based on its outcome are the key factors in thinking visually. Putting these details in help stakeholders to inquire more and learn to arrive at one or more solution approaches. Adding a expression conveys emotions deeply and achieves good outcomes in lo-fi visual doodles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Developed personas can be validated only when a story is told and the story resonates with the listeners. And, this is where user story maps fit in. While visual stories about persona sets the context, the story map provides a broad perspective of the solution and the underlying priorities.Creating a story map is simple, easy to learn, but takes practice to do it effectively. To create a story map, have some cards in your hand and start detailing out the tasks that the persona will do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If it is a bank manager persona, a day in the life at work could be meeting customers, approving cash requests, reviewing loan requests and engaging business stakeholders. These are all tasks. Only a part of the persona\u2019s tasks could be part of the product or solution that you are trying to address. Focus on that and as mentioned before, build as much context about how the user will work (busy, need to switch attention between different tasks etc.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n As you organize your tasks in a sequence, you will find the list wide. Step back to identify variations you will need to add. These are details that go deep. Aggregate tasks by goals. As you aggregate tasks closer by related goals, you will find that there is a set of tasks related placed closer together and sets of cards in another dimension that are variations and exceptions for each task group going deep. For example, reviewing loan requests could also mean understanding prior bank histories and exploring opportunities to place new products in front of the customer. These are all related tasks towards the same goal of completing loan request reviews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is where the fun begins, typically stakeholders are now able to walk across the wall, view the tasks and interpret tasks closer to each other as related and look at possible variations. Conversations on relative priorities become easier. Visual stories about the persona are good contextual reference here as they set the persona\u2019s goals and emotions in context of the tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As priorities emerge and are agreed upon, shuffle more important cards higher up. Doing this will let a skeleton structure of the solution to be available and on stakeholder agreement becomes a candidate release goal. And these cards, become usually the epics and large stories that kick-start the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As you fill up the matrix with cards, start identifying gaps, inter-relationships and variations. Once there is enough on the wall, it will be useful to get opinions about the story map; from project team, stakeholders and whereever possible persona representatives. Well formed story maps, laid out visually give a clear picture of the problem and the approach to solution forming the backbone of release planning and prioritisation<\/p>\n","post_title":"Two techniques to explain your Product Vision","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"two-techniques-explain-product-vision","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7371","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
Business Analysts will now need to don the role of facilitators in the solution development space. For this, they will need to actively develop these new areas:<\/p>\n\n\n\n 1. Facilitation skills \u2013 Bringing teams together, so that relevant stakeholders agree on problems and solutions, with each stakeholder (development, product owner, sometimes end user too) providing their perspective \u2013 ideas, approaches, risks, challenges<\/p>\n\n\n\n 2. Design Thinking skills: Techniques that help in unearthing problems and validating solutions end to end, thereby reducing wasted software creation<\/p>\n\n\n\n 3. Release & Development Management: As the proxy owner of their project from a functional perspective, Divya can and must develop abilities to come up with options on releases that will create value to end customer (not just based on constraints in development)<\/p>\n\n\n\n These are areas where traditional Business Analyst role is not taken in to; and will require focus on developing skills in multiple areas. Apart from this, is the \u2018taken for granted\u2019 domain awareness (I , however, feel this awareness is confused with expertise, which may not be necessary)<\/p>\n","post_title":"Help a Business Analyst Pivot","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"help-business-analyst-pivot","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 11:25:22","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 11:25:22","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6203","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7385,"post_author":"14","post_date":"2017-04-09 15:36:50","post_date_gmt":"2017-04-09 10:06:50","post_content":"\n Swathi has recently started working with an agile team as a product owner. In that capacity, Swathi has end to end ownership of her part of the product, She reports in to a product director. She works closely with the sales teams and operations teams to identify features, proactively suggest changes to reduce operational load. In this release, they are adding several new features for a new client.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She has started finding that many times, while internally they are on the same page, feedback from the client has given surprises. This has forced her to make changes, stop some stories and essentially go back to the drawing board \u2013 her customer who is first in that market seems to be changing their mind. The product director has asked her to take a step back, review the whole situation and own the backlog to reduce so much of churn and frustration \u2013 given that the client is important and first in the segment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What should Swathi do? How should Swathi approach so that the backlog becomes stable over a period of time quickly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Suggested Solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Many times, backlogs are created by understanding requirements, but not the context in which the requirements have been generated. This understanding is critical to manage risks and effective backlog management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In this case, Swathi must consider the volatility and completeness of the requirements in the backlog. Volatility \u2013 as the name suggests, strives to understand the probability of requirements getting changed. A good way to understand this would be to understand the realm of users \/ personas and how well we have understood them. If volatility is high, a product rollout must plan to pivot fast or use lo-fi techniques to reduce volatility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The other area to watch out for is completeness. While this is usually better identified when requirements are known and known to be unknown, product owners get blind sided by assumptions they make. So, it is important to carefully review the grounds on which assumptions are taken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Swathi must review her backlog and work with her customer to identify areas where there will be flux based on above two parameters and appropriately change the game.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #55\u2013 How should Swathi handle changing requirements","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-55-swathi-handle-changing-requirements","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 11:30:00","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 11:30:00","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7385","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7371,"post_author":"14","post_date":"2017-04-09 15:19:35","post_date_gmt":"2017-04-09 09:49:35","post_content":"\n In earlier blogs, I had touched upon how it is important to have clarity on the problem being addressed and the context in which the solution will be used to plan product releases<\/a> in an agile project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A problem that is well understood leads to a better solution. Applying design thinking<\/a> techniques help to define a problem well. This blog touches upon a specific techniques used by agile teams to structure and explain the problem context that they are trying to solve. Visual story telling along with story mapping- two simple but powerful techniques helps product owners and team to convey a product\u2019s vision alongside its existential context. These techniques change the way people participate and help agile projects start well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Product and business analysts have a responsibility to consolidate what they have learnt about the problem they are trying to solve. A key activity in this endeavour is to bring clarity on the personae involved in the problem context, their motivations and the problem that the product is trying to solve in the persona\u2019s context.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Good persona building involves carefully observing and synthesizing a proper representation of users. The skills required to do that are different from the analytical, technical and organizational skills for building the solution \u2013 inquiry based research, ethnographic observation, awareness of biases, consolidation and facilitation skills<\/a>play a key role here. These can be learnt and developed through practice. Understanding and building personas better is a vast topic by itself and we will cover some of it in subsequent blogs. We will just get introduced the outcome of such a persona building exercise (Visual story telling and user story mapping)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Visual stories about personas and their motivation are powerful. These stories provide a platform for strangers to be part of the journey, sharing their anecdotal experience, learn from the story and enrich the overall story narrative. Visual stories that are available on the floor of a agile project or a place where research validation is being done becomes a conversation magnet \u2013 around which problems and solutions are discussed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chalking out personas visually, require doodling skills \u2013 sketching the user, their world, the tasks they do, their goals and motivations along with details that are appropriate to be highlighted. I have found that it is useful to go back to our primary school skills to learn the basics of observation, drawing and thinking visually. When starting to think visually, it is good to doodle some faces, simplify objects that are most important and leave out unnecessary details. Usually, the persona and the outcome of the persona\u2019s task and the emotion they will be in at the end of the task based on its outcome are the key factors in thinking visually. Putting these details in help stakeholders to inquire more and learn to arrive at one or more solution approaches. Adding a expression conveys emotions deeply and achieves good outcomes in lo-fi visual doodles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Developed personas can be validated only when a story is told and the story resonates with the listeners. And, this is where user story maps fit in. While visual stories about persona sets the context, the story map provides a broad perspective of the solution and the underlying priorities.Creating a story map is simple, easy to learn, but takes practice to do it effectively. To create a story map, have some cards in your hand and start detailing out the tasks that the persona will do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If it is a bank manager persona, a day in the life at work could be meeting customers, approving cash requests, reviewing loan requests and engaging business stakeholders. These are all tasks. Only a part of the persona\u2019s tasks could be part of the product or solution that you are trying to address. Focus on that and as mentioned before, build as much context about how the user will work (busy, need to switch attention between different tasks etc.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n As you organize your tasks in a sequence, you will find the list wide. Step back to identify variations you will need to add. These are details that go deep. Aggregate tasks by goals. As you aggregate tasks closer by related goals, you will find that there is a set of tasks related placed closer together and sets of cards in another dimension that are variations and exceptions for each task group going deep. For example, reviewing loan requests could also mean understanding prior bank histories and exploring opportunities to place new products in front of the customer. These are all related tasks towards the same goal of completing loan request reviews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is where the fun begins, typically stakeholders are now able to walk across the wall, view the tasks and interpret tasks closer to each other as related and look at possible variations. Conversations on relative priorities become easier. Visual stories about the persona are good contextual reference here as they set the persona\u2019s goals and emotions in context of the tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As priorities emerge and are agreed upon, shuffle more important cards higher up. Doing this will let a skeleton structure of the solution to be available and on stakeholder agreement becomes a candidate release goal. And these cards, become usually the epics and large stories that kick-start the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As you fill up the matrix with cards, start identifying gaps, inter-relationships and variations. Once there is enough on the wall, it will be useful to get opinions about the story map; from project team, stakeholders and whereever possible persona representatives. Well formed story maps, laid out visually give a clear picture of the problem and the approach to solution forming the backbone of release planning and prioritisation<\/p>\n","post_title":"Two techniques to explain your Product Vision","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"two-techniques-explain-product-vision","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7371","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
While the traditional role of a business analyst has been reduced to collecting requirements from clients, documenting them and then coordinating to get them developed by the team \u2013 things are changing pretty rapidly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Business Analysts will now need to don the role of facilitators in the solution development space. For this, they will need to actively develop these new areas:<\/p>\n\n\n\n 1. Facilitation skills \u2013 Bringing teams together, so that relevant stakeholders agree on problems and solutions, with each stakeholder (development, product owner, sometimes end user too) providing their perspective \u2013 ideas, approaches, risks, challenges<\/p>\n\n\n\n 2. Design Thinking skills: Techniques that help in unearthing problems and validating solutions end to end, thereby reducing wasted software creation<\/p>\n\n\n\n 3. Release & Development Management: As the proxy owner of their project from a functional perspective, Divya can and must develop abilities to come up with options on releases that will create value to end customer (not just based on constraints in development)<\/p>\n\n\n\n These are areas where traditional Business Analyst role is not taken in to; and will require focus on developing skills in multiple areas. Apart from this, is the \u2018taken for granted\u2019 domain awareness (I , however, feel this awareness is confused with expertise, which may not be necessary)<\/p>\n","post_title":"Help a Business Analyst Pivot","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"help-business-analyst-pivot","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 11:25:22","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 11:25:22","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6203","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7385,"post_author":"14","post_date":"2017-04-09 15:36:50","post_date_gmt":"2017-04-09 10:06:50","post_content":"\n Swathi has recently started working with an agile team as a product owner. In that capacity, Swathi has end to end ownership of her part of the product, She reports in to a product director. She works closely with the sales teams and operations teams to identify features, proactively suggest changes to reduce operational load. In this release, they are adding several new features for a new client.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She has started finding that many times, while internally they are on the same page, feedback from the client has given surprises. This has forced her to make changes, stop some stories and essentially go back to the drawing board \u2013 her customer who is first in that market seems to be changing their mind. The product director has asked her to take a step back, review the whole situation and own the backlog to reduce so much of churn and frustration \u2013 given that the client is important and first in the segment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What should Swathi do? How should Swathi approach so that the backlog becomes stable over a period of time quickly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Suggested Solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Many times, backlogs are created by understanding requirements, but not the context in which the requirements have been generated. This understanding is critical to manage risks and effective backlog management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In this case, Swathi must consider the volatility and completeness of the requirements in the backlog. Volatility \u2013 as the name suggests, strives to understand the probability of requirements getting changed. A good way to understand this would be to understand the realm of users \/ personas and how well we have understood them. If volatility is high, a product rollout must plan to pivot fast or use lo-fi techniques to reduce volatility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The other area to watch out for is completeness. While this is usually better identified when requirements are known and known to be unknown, product owners get blind sided by assumptions they make. So, it is important to carefully review the grounds on which assumptions are taken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Swathi must review her backlog and work with her customer to identify areas where there will be flux based on above two parameters and appropriately change the game.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #55\u2013 How should Swathi handle changing requirements","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-55-swathi-handle-changing-requirements","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 11:30:00","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 11:30:00","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7385","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7371,"post_author":"14","post_date":"2017-04-09 15:19:35","post_date_gmt":"2017-04-09 09:49:35","post_content":"\n In earlier blogs, I had touched upon how it is important to have clarity on the problem being addressed and the context in which the solution will be used to plan product releases<\/a> in an agile project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A problem that is well understood leads to a better solution. Applying design thinking<\/a> techniques help to define a problem well. This blog touches upon a specific techniques used by agile teams to structure and explain the problem context that they are trying to solve. Visual story telling along with story mapping- two simple but powerful techniques helps product owners and team to convey a product\u2019s vision alongside its existential context. These techniques change the way people participate and help agile projects start well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Product and business analysts have a responsibility to consolidate what they have learnt about the problem they are trying to solve. A key activity in this endeavour is to bring clarity on the personae involved in the problem context, their motivations and the problem that the product is trying to solve in the persona\u2019s context.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Good persona building involves carefully observing and synthesizing a proper representation of users. The skills required to do that are different from the analytical, technical and organizational skills for building the solution \u2013 inquiry based research, ethnographic observation, awareness of biases, consolidation and facilitation skills<\/a>play a key role here. These can be learnt and developed through practice. Understanding and building personas better is a vast topic by itself and we will cover some of it in subsequent blogs. We will just get introduced the outcome of such a persona building exercise (Visual story telling and user story mapping)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Visual stories about personas and their motivation are powerful. These stories provide a platform for strangers to be part of the journey, sharing their anecdotal experience, learn from the story and enrich the overall story narrative. Visual stories that are available on the floor of a agile project or a place where research validation is being done becomes a conversation magnet \u2013 around which problems and solutions are discussed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chalking out personas visually, require doodling skills \u2013 sketching the user, their world, the tasks they do, their goals and motivations along with details that are appropriate to be highlighted. I have found that it is useful to go back to our primary school skills to learn the basics of observation, drawing and thinking visually. When starting to think visually, it is good to doodle some faces, simplify objects that are most important and leave out unnecessary details. Usually, the persona and the outcome of the persona\u2019s task and the emotion they will be in at the end of the task based on its outcome are the key factors in thinking visually. Putting these details in help stakeholders to inquire more and learn to arrive at one or more solution approaches. Adding a expression conveys emotions deeply and achieves good outcomes in lo-fi visual doodles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Developed personas can be validated only when a story is told and the story resonates with the listeners. And, this is where user story maps fit in. While visual stories about persona sets the context, the story map provides a broad perspective of the solution and the underlying priorities.Creating a story map is simple, easy to learn, but takes practice to do it effectively. To create a story map, have some cards in your hand and start detailing out the tasks that the persona will do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If it is a bank manager persona, a day in the life at work could be meeting customers, approving cash requests, reviewing loan requests and engaging business stakeholders. These are all tasks. Only a part of the persona\u2019s tasks could be part of the product or solution that you are trying to address. Focus on that and as mentioned before, build as much context about how the user will work (busy, need to switch attention between different tasks etc.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n As you organize your tasks in a sequence, you will find the list wide. Step back to identify variations you will need to add. These are details that go deep. Aggregate tasks by goals. As you aggregate tasks closer by related goals, you will find that there is a set of tasks related placed closer together and sets of cards in another dimension that are variations and exceptions for each task group going deep. For example, reviewing loan requests could also mean understanding prior bank histories and exploring opportunities to place new products in front of the customer. These are all related tasks towards the same goal of completing loan request reviews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is where the fun begins, typically stakeholders are now able to walk across the wall, view the tasks and interpret tasks closer to each other as related and look at possible variations. Conversations on relative priorities become easier. Visual stories about the persona are good contextual reference here as they set the persona\u2019s goals and emotions in context of the tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As priorities emerge and are agreed upon, shuffle more important cards higher up. Doing this will let a skeleton structure of the solution to be available and on stakeholder agreement becomes a candidate release goal. And these cards, become usually the epics and large stories that kick-start the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As you fill up the matrix with cards, start identifying gaps, inter-relationships and variations. Once there is enough on the wall, it will be useful to get opinions about the story map; from project team, stakeholders and whereever possible persona representatives. Well formed story maps, laid out visually give a clear picture of the problem and the approach to solution forming the backbone of release planning and prioritisation<\/p>\n","post_title":"Two techniques to explain your Product Vision","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"two-techniques-explain-product-vision","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7371","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
Suggested Solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n While the traditional role of a business analyst has been reduced to collecting requirements from clients, documenting them and then coordinating to get them developed by the team \u2013 things are changing pretty rapidly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Business Analysts will now need to don the role of facilitators in the solution development space. For this, they will need to actively develop these new areas:<\/p>\n\n\n\n 1. Facilitation skills \u2013 Bringing teams together, so that relevant stakeholders agree on problems and solutions, with each stakeholder (development, product owner, sometimes end user too) providing their perspective \u2013 ideas, approaches, risks, challenges<\/p>\n\n\n\n 2. Design Thinking skills: Techniques that help in unearthing problems and validating solutions end to end, thereby reducing wasted software creation<\/p>\n\n\n\n 3. Release & Development Management: As the proxy owner of their project from a functional perspective, Divya can and must develop abilities to come up with options on releases that will create value to end customer (not just based on constraints in development)<\/p>\n\n\n\n These are areas where traditional Business Analyst role is not taken in to; and will require focus on developing skills in multiple areas. Apart from this, is the \u2018taken for granted\u2019 domain awareness (I , however, feel this awareness is confused with expertise, which may not be necessary)<\/p>\n","post_title":"Help a Business Analyst Pivot","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"help-business-analyst-pivot","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 11:25:22","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 11:25:22","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6203","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7385,"post_author":"14","post_date":"2017-04-09 15:36:50","post_date_gmt":"2017-04-09 10:06:50","post_content":"\n Swathi has recently started working with an agile team as a product owner. In that capacity, Swathi has end to end ownership of her part of the product, She reports in to a product director. She works closely with the sales teams and operations teams to identify features, proactively suggest changes to reduce operational load. In this release, they are adding several new features for a new client.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She has started finding that many times, while internally they are on the same page, feedback from the client has given surprises. This has forced her to make changes, stop some stories and essentially go back to the drawing board \u2013 her customer who is first in that market seems to be changing their mind. The product director has asked her to take a step back, review the whole situation and own the backlog to reduce so much of churn and frustration \u2013 given that the client is important and first in the segment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What should Swathi do? How should Swathi approach so that the backlog becomes stable over a period of time quickly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Suggested Solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Many times, backlogs are created by understanding requirements, but not the context in which the requirements have been generated. This understanding is critical to manage risks and effective backlog management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In this case, Swathi must consider the volatility and completeness of the requirements in the backlog. Volatility \u2013 as the name suggests, strives to understand the probability of requirements getting changed. A good way to understand this would be to understand the realm of users \/ personas and how well we have understood them. If volatility is high, a product rollout must plan to pivot fast or use lo-fi techniques to reduce volatility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The other area to watch out for is completeness. While this is usually better identified when requirements are known and known to be unknown, product owners get blind sided by assumptions they make. So, it is important to carefully review the grounds on which assumptions are taken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Swathi must review her backlog and work with her customer to identify areas where there will be flux based on above two parameters and appropriately change the game.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #55\u2013 How should Swathi handle changing requirements","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-55-swathi-handle-changing-requirements","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 11:30:00","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 11:30:00","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7385","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7371,"post_author":"14","post_date":"2017-04-09 15:19:35","post_date_gmt":"2017-04-09 09:49:35","post_content":"\n In earlier blogs, I had touched upon how it is important to have clarity on the problem being addressed and the context in which the solution will be used to plan product releases<\/a> in an agile project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A problem that is well understood leads to a better solution. Applying design thinking<\/a> techniques help to define a problem well. This blog touches upon a specific techniques used by agile teams to structure and explain the problem context that they are trying to solve. Visual story telling along with story mapping- two simple but powerful techniques helps product owners and team to convey a product\u2019s vision alongside its existential context. These techniques change the way people participate and help agile projects start well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Product and business analysts have a responsibility to consolidate what they have learnt about the problem they are trying to solve. A key activity in this endeavour is to bring clarity on the personae involved in the problem context, their motivations and the problem that the product is trying to solve in the persona\u2019s context.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Good persona building involves carefully observing and synthesizing a proper representation of users. The skills required to do that are different from the analytical, technical and organizational skills for building the solution \u2013 inquiry based research, ethnographic observation, awareness of biases, consolidation and facilitation skills<\/a>play a key role here. These can be learnt and developed through practice. Understanding and building personas better is a vast topic by itself and we will cover some of it in subsequent blogs. We will just get introduced the outcome of such a persona building exercise (Visual story telling and user story mapping)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Visual stories about personas and their motivation are powerful. These stories provide a platform for strangers to be part of the journey, sharing their anecdotal experience, learn from the story and enrich the overall story narrative. Visual stories that are available on the floor of a agile project or a place where research validation is being done becomes a conversation magnet \u2013 around which problems and solutions are discussed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chalking out personas visually, require doodling skills \u2013 sketching the user, their world, the tasks they do, their goals and motivations along with details that are appropriate to be highlighted. I have found that it is useful to go back to our primary school skills to learn the basics of observation, drawing and thinking visually. When starting to think visually, it is good to doodle some faces, simplify objects that are most important and leave out unnecessary details. Usually, the persona and the outcome of the persona\u2019s task and the emotion they will be in at the end of the task based on its outcome are the key factors in thinking visually. Putting these details in help stakeholders to inquire more and learn to arrive at one or more solution approaches. Adding a expression conveys emotions deeply and achieves good outcomes in lo-fi visual doodles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Developed personas can be validated only when a story is told and the story resonates with the listeners. And, this is where user story maps fit in. While visual stories about persona sets the context, the story map provides a broad perspective of the solution and the underlying priorities.Creating a story map is simple, easy to learn, but takes practice to do it effectively. To create a story map, have some cards in your hand and start detailing out the tasks that the persona will do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If it is a bank manager persona, a day in the life at work could be meeting customers, approving cash requests, reviewing loan requests and engaging business stakeholders. These are all tasks. Only a part of the persona\u2019s tasks could be part of the product or solution that you are trying to address. Focus on that and as mentioned before, build as much context about how the user will work (busy, need to switch attention between different tasks etc.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n As you organize your tasks in a sequence, you will find the list wide. Step back to identify variations you will need to add. These are details that go deep. Aggregate tasks by goals. As you aggregate tasks closer by related goals, you will find that there is a set of tasks related placed closer together and sets of cards in another dimension that are variations and exceptions for each task group going deep. For example, reviewing loan requests could also mean understanding prior bank histories and exploring opportunities to place new products in front of the customer. These are all related tasks towards the same goal of completing loan request reviews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is where the fun begins, typically stakeholders are now able to walk across the wall, view the tasks and interpret tasks closer to each other as related and look at possible variations. Conversations on relative priorities become easier. Visual stories about the persona are good contextual reference here as they set the persona\u2019s goals and emotions in context of the tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As priorities emerge and are agreed upon, shuffle more important cards higher up. Doing this will let a skeleton structure of the solution to be available and on stakeholder agreement becomes a candidate release goal. And these cards, become usually the epics and large stories that kick-start the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As you fill up the matrix with cards, start identifying gaps, inter-relationships and variations. Once there is enough on the wall, it will be useful to get opinions about the story map; from project team, stakeholders and whereever possible persona representatives. Well formed story maps, laid out visually give a clear picture of the problem and the approach to solution forming the backbone of release planning and prioritisation<\/p>\n","post_title":"Two techniques to explain your Product Vision","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"two-techniques-explain-product-vision","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 11:30:57","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7371","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
Our point of view to this Chow will be available on 30-May-16. We will love to interact with you through the comments section.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Suggested Solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n While the traditional role of a business analyst has been reduced to collecting requirements from clients, documenting them and then coordinating to get them developed by the team \u2013 things are changing pretty rapidly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Business Analysts will now need to don the role of facilitators in the solution development space. For this, they will need to actively develop these new areas:<\/p>\n\n\n\n 1. Facilitation skills \u2013 Bringing teams together, so that relevant stakeholders agree on problems and solutions, with each stakeholder (development, product owner, sometimes end user too) providing their perspective \u2013 ideas, approaches, risks, challenges<\/p>\n\n\n\n 2. Design Thinking skills: Techniques that help in unearthing problems and validating solutions end to end, thereby reducing wasted software creation<\/p>\n\n\n\n 3. Release & Development Management: As the proxy owner of their project from a functional perspective, Divya can and must develop abilities to come up with options on releases that will create value to end customer (not just based on constraints in development)<\/p>\n\n\n\n These are areas where traditional Business Analyst role is not taken in to; and will require focus on developing skills in multiple areas. Apart from this, is the \u2018taken for granted\u2019 domain awareness (I , however, feel this awareness is confused with expertise, which may not be necessary)<\/p>\n","post_title":"Help a Business Analyst Pivot","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"help-business-analyst-pivot","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 11:25:22","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 11:25:22","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=6203","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7385,"post_author":"14","post_date":"2017-04-09 15:36:50","post_date_gmt":"2017-04-09 10:06:50","post_content":"\n Swathi has recently started working with an agile team as a product owner. In that capacity, Swathi has end to end ownership of her part of the product, She reports in to a product director. She works closely with the sales teams and operations teams to identify features, proactively suggest changes to reduce operational load. In this release, they are adding several new features for a new client.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She has started finding that many times, while internally they are on the same page, feedback from the client has given surprises. This has forced her to make changes, stop some stories and essentially go back to the drawing board \u2013 her customer who is first in that market seems to be changing their mind. The product director has asked her to take a step back, review the whole situation and own the backlog to reduce so much of churn and frustration \u2013 given that the client is important and first in the segment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What should Swathi do? How should Swathi approach so that the backlog becomes stable over a period of time quickly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Suggested Solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Many times, backlogs are created by understanding requirements, but not the context in which the requirements have been generated. This understanding is critical to manage risks and effective backlog management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In this case, Swathi must consider the volatility and completeness of the requirements in the backlog. Volatility \u2013 as the name suggests, strives to understand the probability of requirements getting changed. A good way to understand this would be to understand the realm of users \/ personas and how well we have understood them. If volatility is high, a product rollout must plan to pivot fast or use lo-fi techniques to reduce volatility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The other area to watch out for is completeness. While this is usually better identified when requirements are known and known to be unknown, product owners get blind sided by assumptions they make. So, it is important to carefully review the grounds on which assumptions are taken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Swathi must review her backlog and work with her customer to identify areas where there will be flux based on above two parameters and appropriately change the game.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #55\u2013 How should Swathi handle changing requirements","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-55-swathi-handle-changing-requirements","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-25 11:30:00","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-25 11:30:00","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=7385","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":7371,"post_author":"14","post_date":"2017-04-09 15:19:35","post_date_gmt":"2017-04-09 09:49:35","post_content":"\n In earlier blogs, I had touched upon how it is important to have clarity on the problem being addressed and the context in which the solution will be used to plan product releases<\/a> in an agile project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A problem that is well understood leads to a better solution. Applying design thinking<\/a> techniques help to define a problem well. This blog touches upon a specific techniques used by agile teams to structure and explain the problem context that they are trying to solve. Visual story telling along with story mapping- two simple but powerful techniques helps product owners and team to convey a product\u2019s vision alongside its existential context. These techniques change the way people participate and help agile projects start well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Product and business analysts have a responsibility to consolidate what they have learnt about the problem they are trying to solve. A key activity in this endeavour is to bring clarity on the personae involved in the problem context, their motivations and the problem that the product is trying to solve in the persona\u2019s context.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Good persona building involves carefully observing and synthesizing a proper representation of users. The skills required to do that are different from the analytical, technical and organizational skills for building the solution \u2013 inquiry based research, ethnographic observation, awareness of biases, consolidation and facilitation skills<\/a>play a key role here. These can be learnt and developed through practice. Understanding and building personas better is a vast topic by itself and we will cover some of it in subsequent blogs. We will just get introduced the outcome of such a persona building exercise (Visual story telling and user story mapping)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Visual stories about personas and their motivation are powerful. These stories provide a platform for strangers to be part of the journey, sharing their anecdotal experience, learn from the story and enrich the overall story narrative. Visual stories that are available on the floor of a agile project or a place where research validation is being done becomes a conversation magnet \u2013 around which problems and solutions are discussed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n(Rock paintings at Bhimbhetka; dated late stone age, about 30000 years ago. Visual story telling is natural and gets people to quickly gather around an idea and form opinions)<\/em><\/h6>\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n(Rock paintings at Bhimbhetka; dated late stone age, about 30000 years ago. Visual story telling is natural and gets people to quickly gather around an idea and form opinions)<\/em><\/h6>\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n(Rock paintings at Bhimbhetka; dated late stone age, about 30000 years ago. Visual story telling is natural and gets people to quickly gather around an idea and form opinions)<\/em><\/h6>\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n(Rock paintings at Bhimbhetka; dated late stone age, about 30000 years ago. Visual story telling is natural and gets people to quickly gather around an idea and form opinions)<\/em><\/h6>\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n(Rock paintings at Bhimbhetka; dated late stone age, about 30000 years ago. Visual story telling is natural and gets people to quickly gather around an idea and form opinions)<\/em><\/h6>\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n(Rock paintings at Bhimbhetka; dated late stone age, about 30000 years ago. Visual story telling is natural and gets people to quickly gather around an idea and form opinions)<\/em><\/h6>\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n(Rock paintings at Bhimbhetka; dated late stone age, about 30000 years ago. Visual story telling is natural and gets people to quickly gather around an idea and form opinions)<\/em><\/h6>\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n(Rock paintings at Bhimbhetka; dated late stone age, about 30000 years ago. Visual story telling is natural and gets people to quickly gather around an idea and form opinions)<\/em><\/h6>\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n(Rock paintings at Bhimbhetka; dated late stone age, about 30000 years ago. Visual story telling is natural and gets people to quickly gather around an idea and form opinions)<\/em><\/h6>\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n(Rock paintings at Bhimbhetka; dated late stone age, about 30000 years ago. Visual story telling is natural and gets people to quickly gather around an idea and form opinions)<\/em><\/h6>\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n(Rock paintings at Bhimbhetka; dated late stone age, about 30000 years ago. Visual story telling is natural and gets people to quickly gather around an idea and form opinions)<\/em><\/h6>\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n(Rock paintings at Bhimbhetka; dated late stone age, about 30000 years ago. Visual story telling is natural and gets people to quickly gather around an idea and form opinions)<\/em><\/h6>\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n(Rock paintings at Bhimbhetka; dated late stone age, about 30000 years ago. Visual story telling is natural and gets people to quickly gather around an idea and form opinions)<\/em><\/h6>\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n(Rock paintings at Bhimbhetka; dated late stone age, about 30000 years ago. Visual story telling is natural and gets people to quickly gather around an idea and form opinions)<\/em><\/h6>\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n(Rock paintings at Bhimbhetka; dated late stone age, about 30000 years ago. Visual story telling is natural and gets people to quickly gather around an idea and form opinions)<\/em><\/h6>\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n(Rock paintings at Bhimbhetka; dated late stone age, about 30000 years ago. Visual story telling is natural and gets people to quickly gather around an idea and form opinions)<\/em><\/h6>\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n(Rock paintings at Bhimbhetka; dated late stone age, about 30000 years ago. Visual story telling is natural and gets people to quickly gather around an idea and form opinions)<\/em><\/h6>\n\n\n\n
