Which is more important to first get right: Effectiveness or efficiency? Intuitively many choose first to be effective: Just get it done, worry about doing it properly later. This approach may produce short term gain but it is disastrous in the long run. Even though some things may get done, doing them inefficiently takes away from the enjoyment of our work, depletes our energy and momentum, and causes ineffectiveness; this is true for individuals as well as teams.
Yet a principal responsibility of managers—shareholder proxies—is to ensure the long term sustainability of the businesses entrusted to our care. We give ourselves every chance of success when we focus on efficiency first, and then effectiveness. Form before function. Quality before quantity. How before what. Efficiency results from following the correct form. Effectiveness produces an intended result. [click to continue…]
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Following on from the Doing the Business post, which discussed the relationship between product owners and stakeholders, what kind of responsibilities rest on product owners with regard to their product’s market?
1. Identify, aggregate, prioritise user needs.
2. Study and assess new markets, applications, products, and partners.
3. Perform gap analyses.
4. Follow commercial, technological, and legal trends.
5. Develop and maintain access to customer and industry evangelists.
6. Produce innovative, needs-based solutions.
7. Possess a strong understanding of customers’ issues and priorities.
8. Champion the product to internal and external audiences.
9. Study the product domain.
Do you know where you’re going to?
One of the benefits Agile offers is greater transparency, although too often this is only felt inwardly – inside the company.
I like to encourage product owners and their organizations to become comfortable publishing a product road map externally, to customers. This document creates an effective way for the market – as well as internal stakeholders – to view and interact with the product development pipeline.
On this basis, informed and unemotional discussion can be had about priority before inappropriate choices develop into crises.
In my experience, the benefits arising from your market being settled in the knowledge that you have a strategic direction for the product, for which they can plan, often result in customer loyalty.
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