Product Development vs. Project Management

Question

A colleague of mine is going to be starting on a consulting gig where she is being asked to overlay and/or weave program/project management processes over/into a company's product development life cycle. While there are some touching points I understand they are independent processes. She doesn't want to make it overly complex or cumbersome but they want her to bring some additional order into their shop because they feel they are not as agile and orderly as they can be and are failing in time management etc. Does anyone have any experience doing this who could offer some advice?

Sasha Teller · Answer

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Lisa Schneider · Answer

If I were her I would ask a lot of questions to both sides (management and product folks): Is there a project manager role now? Meaning, is the person or people in the role not getting to where management wants, or is there a gap because product managers (or someone else, or no one) are doing both? How do they define 'failing in time management?' Do the product and engineering teams feel the management expectations are realistic? Is there scope creep?  'Agile' and 'orderly' are not necessarily the same thing. Do they mean Agile (cap A) like processes or agile (lc a) like responsive and flexible? Before she can go in and layer on processes, there has to be clarity and alignment on terms, goals/outcomes, gaps, etc.

Marquita Priester · Answer

As an engineer, my last company approached software and product development from a Lean, Extreme Programming approach. I'd be open to with talking to her from the perspective of an engineer who saw major gains in software development using this approach versus traditional agile/scrum.

Barb Hansen · Answer

I have been in Product Management (in tech) for over 25 years. Over those years I have done some Project Management and plenty Program Management.

I'm happy to help where I can. Ping me and I can send my contact information along.

Product Development vs. Project Management

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