Product Management Challenges in Working with Agile Team

  Companies are adopting agile methodology for more than a decade. So, I believe that Agile project management approach should be applied during the transformation process. Agile transformation needs thoughtful planning and practical approach. It  further requires the business goal of the company that includes the training and  skill development of the organization in addition to track the progress.  I highlight the core area of agile product management that a company can adopt to accomplish its goal.

• The product owner  should be the voice of the customer. They ensure that agile team work with certain business objective in their mind. The project manager writes user stories from the customer and put it in a  product backlog.
•  You can go for a cross-functional team for your product. This group can provide valuable support and feedback for all its members. The cross-functional team is a group of people who represent the entire organization’s interests in a specific product or product family. The product and customers are benefitted from cross-functional team because it improves the product quality. The team is just like a support group. The group member can get any updated information from the team and members can also bring up the issues to them. 
• Many agile experts talk about two different type of roles. A product owner (a scrum term) who sits within the agile development team and figures out the requirements, removes any obstacle and researches new functions.  The second role belongs to a product manager who sits outside of the development team but who has ultimate responsibility for the product that will be sold in the market. Sometimes the two roles can be covered by a single project manager.
• Agile product management is not an easy task. You may not be used to work so closely with the development team or to deliver your product in an iterative manner. You may not also so sure what to deliver at the end of the iteration.  So it is a good idea to have somebody in the initial phase who has gone through the cycle before.
• As a product manger, the main responsibility is to build a prototype or user story that your development team can work with. You can replace functional specs with prototype and user story.  Have some new idea and use it for each iteration until you can buld something satisfactory.
• Please, make sure that the product manager and the designer attend daily standup meeting. This is where the communication process starts. The detail discussion of the product is done there. Designer shows the functionality of the product to the developers and QA people. Developers discusses the code among themselves, QA people and the designer.
• You need to break the design and specs into small and independent pieces. The idea is to build a minimal product out of the pieces. In agile environment, the designer may need to work faster than what they are comfortable with.
• You should not release every sprint ( an agile term for group of tasks) until you have enough functionality that was warranted by the product manager for the new release. Most of the customers would like to see fewer release in comparison with constant change.
• You should hire a consultant to get your team trained for agile product development. Make sure that the trainer has ample experience in product development environment.