Death by Daily Stand-Up - a Chaotic Transition to Agile

When your development team goes agile, what happens to Product Management?

Too often, I talk with Product Managers who are now sucked into the internal world of development. They are taking part in daily stand-ups, helping to translate market requirements into feature sets and even sprints.

I am all for improvements in development methods, and I have seen agile work really well. I can also understand how development teams would prefer to have the Product Manager in the room – after all, we are the ones who know the market that Development’s trying to please. So, it’s not too hard to see how Product Managers end up spending every day interfacing with Development.

At what cost?

If the Product Manager is in the daily stand-up – if they’re learning enough about the technology to help plan the contents of sprints, if they’re participating faithfully in daily decisions – who is going to figure out what comes next?

If we expect Product Managers to focus internally, aren’t we dictating the eventual end of our companies? If Product Managers are in the building, who’s out finding the next big opportunity? The market’s going to change – how will we know what it needs next?