Agile Development Blog

Never back down from an intelligent debate - or whatever these idiots are doing

The question over product management vs. product ownership is a huge issue that many companies face as they try to scale Agile. Dean Leffingwell just finished up a great series on Agile Journal in which he makes the case that the Enterprise Product Manager is Likely NOT the Agile Product Owner.

The Agile Journal article series is a great place to jump into the debate, but his blogging on Scaling Software Agility is also excellent and very deep – what Dean tends to call “pithy.” I am sure some of you will call foul with some of Dean’s points, but his methods have proven to be very effective with large-scale agility. I’d ask, are you skeptical based on personal bias or real Agile principles?

Here are four other resources that are great at analyzing product management and product ownership:

1. Enthiosys – I highly recommend their “Product Bytes” newsletter (Luke, Scott and Rich’s leadership here)
2. Pragmatic Marketing – They are shutting down my favorite Tuned In blog, but the others are also good and Tuned In has excellent archived topics
3. On Product Management – I love their lens on product management overall, not purely Agile
4. Accidental Product Manager – Very pithy blog on product management and timely topics

Final note to readers: Dean is a good friend of mine, and he helped me start Rally.  He is an investor and worked for us between 2003 and 2005.  Now he does his own consulting on large-scale Agile and continues writing for Prentice Hall.  I cannot thank him enough for his personal support in shaping my thinking around large-scale software development, building a network into some of the world’s best practitioners, and coaching me as an entrepreneur.  He is a passionate software craftsman.

Thanks, Dean, and very nice work on this critical topic.