Product management involves a high level of understanding team dynamics and often involves people, project and time management as a function in the role. Most teams cannot function independently to become self-functioning on their own regardless of the amount of commitment by the resources.
The best way to manage people and deal with all eventualities lies in the proposed framework that was initially used in software development but is now adaptable to almost all types of teams. The Agile framework can be used effectively to manage a team for ideal delivery of product/service.
Though it is a framework with no hard and fast rules enforcing its use, Agile can be seen as a way of life, especially by practicing Agile teams who refer to it as Being Agile its opposite being Doing Agile.
What is Agile?
Agile is a set of engagement principles for team management, put together as a framework, by a group of thinkers in management in 2001, Utah, USA. Their discussions and decisions revolved around giving the highest customer satisfaction in a timely manner and brought about 4 core paired values and 12 principles that were designed to keep teams on track,
Agile itself has other offshoots such as Scrum, Kanban and XP(eXtreme programming), which can be used to pinpoint more specific delivery needs from teams.
How does Agile help Product Managers?
Scaling a team to deliver value is one of the most important functions of a product manager. Agile helps with organizing teams to work more efficiently yet in a more decentralized manner. It makes use of team diversity and sets up cross-functional roles in a way that brings about the most focus and result oriented value.
Agile prioritizes working within fixed resource availability and time, with a more free approach to scope and involvement from stakeholders and business owners. It prioritizes learning and functions well in situations where product managers may not have enough clarity on the project.
What does Agile involve?
Agile aims to use most of the principles in the framework to make it work. It aims to build up an organizations value for respect, collaboration, quality assurance, improving the growth mindset, delivery and adaptability to change.
The 4 core-paired values of Agile are:
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan
These values appear different from the normal approach to business yet have proven to be the most effective. Agile uses them to improve and implement success.
Benefits of Agile
Agile when wielded by product managers has the potential to make the best of services and improve value for clients where it is not yet in play. Some ways in which it can bring about more efficiency for product managers is through its ability to scale seamlessly and bring about the best business value.
By delivering incrementally, Agile ensures a faster time to market. Unlike other means of product delivery, the product MVP can be delivered iteratively until the best value has been added to it
Building the right products is a real result of receiving constant feedback from the product owner after each delivery cycle, this in turn reduces the risk involved
Increases quality of product/service by constantly improving on it and by extension ensuring the best quality assurance
Ensures a higher ROI by enabling predictable delivery which eliminates most of the business conditions that prevent a timely and sustainable pace of delivery
Agile teams are more likely to satisfy the customer and give higher value in the shortest possible time
The framework can be customized to get the best out of it
Variations of the Agile Framework
Product managers use different Agile frameworks under the Agile umbrella to get the job done. After assessment of the project needs, the vision can be implemented using either Kanban, Scrum or XP. All of them work well on complicated and complex projects.
All share the core Agile foundations, yet each has its own set of values that it prioritizes to give optimal value to clients.
Kanban is a lightweight framework that prioritizes the LEAN methodology. This means that it prefers the last possible moment for decisions and aims to create knowledge on its teams. Its principles center on the flow of project activities.
Scrum is also a lightweight Agile framework, and one of the most popular. It prioritizes decentralization and increased quality from feedback during sprints. Its principles center on adaptability and inspection.
XP is primarily used in software engineering projects to ensure best practices. It prioritizes all the things that make software as a practice stand out: planning, whole team, collective code ownership, refactoring, etc.
Conclusion
Selection of the best framework is at the teams discretion. However, Agile is not for all situations. Discovering what is needed will determine if its use is justified.