We tend to take the fact that agility is important as a given, when the reality is that not everyone in the business world has reached the same conclusion. Thus, it’s important sometimes to take a step back and examine why agility actually matters, so that when we’re faced with people who aren’t as convinced as we are, we have salient points that we can raise to help them understand the value that agility brings with it. Here are a few important things to remember when thinking about why agility is important in our jobs…
10 Questions: Suzanne Abate
One of the benefits of teaching with General Assembly has been to build my network of talented, knowledgeable, and experienced Product Managers, not just in the Seattle area, but around the country and the world. One of my more recent connections was with Suzanne Abate, an LA-based product management coach who caught my eye with her latest project, 100 Product Managers — wherein she’s collecting the stories, advice, and experience of 100 product managers of all shapes, sizes, and backgrounds. Here’s what she says about herself:
Suzanne Abate is a seasoned product coach who has developed hundreds of digital products for clients like Jaguar Land Rover, Best Buy, and Warner Brothers, and helped dozens of startups go from idea to execution. She is the Co-Founder of The Development Factory, an LA-based product consultancy, and Chief Product Officer of 100 Product Managers, a free online resource and weekly podcast for new and aspiring product managers. Suzanne has been teaching part-time with General Assembly since 2015, bringing product management training and classroom fun to new students and enterprise teams alike.
And, without further ado…Suzanne’s responses to my 10 questions!
Stakeholders: Overcoming Passive Resistance
A recurring challenge that many Product Managers face is coping with stakeholders who attempt to block our efforts, either covertly or overtly. Sometimes these situations arise due to simple miscommunication, but other times they’re power plays, the results of internal politics, or even caused by grudges held from previous slights — real or imagined. To excel in Product Management, one must not only deal with these blockades as they arise, but you need to predict when, where, and how they’re likely to come up so that you can head them off before they even become an issue. To do that, though, we have to try to figure out what the most common reasons are for stakeholders to actively or passively interfere — and that’s what the Clever PM is here to share with you. In this first installment I’m going to focus on overcoming passive resistance, and we’ll address more active resistance in a future piece.
How Accepting Uncertainty Drives Successful Teams
If you’ve been reading this blog for awhile, you’ve probably noticed that accepting uncertainty is a a recurring theme when it comes to Agile and agility. While it’s never stated outright as a “value” in either the Agile Manifesto or the Twelve Principles of Agile, the concept itself underlies many of the points made in those documents. In my opinion, it’s the primary cultural distinction between organizations that still cling to the old, outdated “waterfall” approaches. Waterfall creates a false sense of security by defining everything possible up-front. Agile accepts that we don’t always know everything, and that new information will not only be discovered, but might alter the path. Here are a few specific reasons why accepting uncertainty is essential for teams to be successful.
Balancing Agility and Strategy
One of the common struggles that Product Managers are faced with is figuring out how to be “agile” while still managing to a vision or strategy that’s been established by the Executives or Board. The important thing to remember is that strategy and agility are not in conflict with one another — if a strategy is properly formed, it’s a long-term view of where you’re going, and not specific enough to tie your hands when approaching the execution side of things. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t tensions to be found in such a situation. Here are some thoughts on managing agility while executing against long-term plans…
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