It has been a little while since I’ve been in a good rhythm with my blogging but I am trying to get to one now. I want to work through the remaining posts in the current arc about Agile planning. Believe it or not I work hard to keep my blog posts concise. I think a lot about product development and have many ideas I am eager to share, but I try to keep each individual post relatively short and focused.
My next post has grown beyond that. As I tried to summarize my thoughts on how to handle some of the conflicts that can emerge around Agile planning I found I had too much to say to write a brief post. I looked for ways to break it into smaller chunks but could not come up with a coherent way to separate the ideas I wanted to express. So unfortunately my next entry is going to be a bit long, and there are a couple of lingering issues that I will put into a separate post beyond that one.
For those tempted to dismiss the next entry with a TL; DR (that is, too long; didn’t read) I give you the highlights here. Hopefully this whets your appetite for digesting the full post later. Thanks.
When conflicts emerge in the planning for the development of inter-related products there are four keys to navigating these conflicts successfully:
- Facilitating communication
- Articulating trade-offs
- Recognizing opportunities for leverage or cross-product benefits
- Taking a dispassionate perspective that helps the entire team weigh the relative merits of competing plans
Good product owners can help with these, but of course, in truth it’s not that simple.
