Embracing a risk management posture that secures the fate of the project from inception through closure Putting Risk In Its Place We all get into this business because we love to build things. Building is fun, it often makes the world a slightly better place, and occasionally we even get paid to do it. …

Harness the tools of Iterative product development to drive your enterprise platform integrations with speed, transparency and control over risk With a lilt in her voice, one of the strongest technology leaders I’ve ever worked with recently said, “I love the Agile for new product development, but I’m still not convinced where platform integration is concerned…” It’s an understandable position, and addresses issues I have wrestled with in my own…

Conflict is a constant companion in the world of product development. Adopt an architecture that converts this liability into an asset to strengthen your team and the products it delivers to market Product development is tricky stuff. We are in the business of creating something from nothing, embedded within complex, global, collaborative enterprises. Conflict is endemic to that process. Indeed, there are those who believe that conflict is a critical attribute to the creation of great products. Count me among them.

For all the lofty goals and complex requirements of an enterprise program, the battle will be won or lost around our daily management of throughput. Mistakes at that granular level can telegraph to doom the entire initiative. Indeed — those are the mistakes that always do. Assembling the Conceptual Model The concepts we will be discussing in this post are complex and particular. Lots of theoretical mappings. I’ll be utilizing a library of terms and diagrams to help keep us on the same page along the way. …

Enterprise Platform Integration brings unique operational challenges. Master these with balance and momentum We in the technology program management business are expected to have broadly transferrable skills. This week may be focused on new product development, next month might be all about integrating an acquired portfolio, and next quarter gets gobbled-up with re-org of an existing business unit.

Project chartering, whether handled formally or informally, is the pivotal first step to initiative success I always begin the recurring seminars I teach at New York University’s School of Professional Studies with a model I describe as “ground zero” for projects. I draw two capital “P”s on the whiteboard, and define one as “Product” and the other as “Project”. Together, the class defines, from a…

Highly complex tech/ops solutions lend themselves to progressively elaborated business requirements. Ensure the team and leadership understands the effort and risk to fully define those, and the low efficacy of any estimates provided before that process is complete Enterprise Agile Transformation I have been lucky to engage in a bunch of Agile/ Digital Transformation work during recent years, and it is among the most gratifying work that I do. There is nothing quite like seeing stakeholders on both the business and technology sides tear a path straight through the labyrinth of…

Successful product development demands control of many factors, of which transparency, timing, and trust are the most crucial There is a dirty secret that we in the product development business don’t often discuss: our careers will be riddled with failure. The simple truth is that creating new things in the world, and having them adopted at a scale that moves the needle, is incredibly difficult. …

Grooming presents opportunities and challenges in successful Agile product development — I was indoctrinated early in the Agile movement, during a time that the methodology was not yet so universally adopted and today’s many tools didn’t yet exist. This was a time of index cards tacked to bulletin boards, around which teams actually stood for daily Stand-Ups. …