Agile Product Management with Scrum

Author:        Roman Pichler

Published:    2010

Publisher:    Addison-Wesley Professional

Paperback: 160 pages

A Product Owner (PO)  is one of the key roles in Scrum framework. POs  are responsible for maximizing the value of the product being developed and the work of the development team. Clearly the role of a PO is a very challenging one. This book is a much needed guide for the POs to excel in their roles and to ensure the launch of products that the customers will be delighted to have.

This book consists of six chapters.

Chapter 1 Understanding the Product Owner Role - explains the roles, responsibilities and the authority of a PO.

Chapter 2 Envisioning the Product - discusses how a PO can create  a shared vision of the product being developed.

Chapter 3 Working with the Product Backlog - discusses the techniques for effectively maintaining a Product Backlog. It also provides suggestions for handling nonfunctional requirements and scaling the Product Backlog for large projects.

Chapter 4 Planning the Release - discusses the essential concepts and techniques of release planning.

Chapter 5 Collaborating in the Sprint Meetings - provides tips for effectively collaborating with the rest of the Scrum team during Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum,  Sprint Review and Sprint Retrospective meetings.

Chapter 6 Transitioning into a Product Owner Role - provides guidance for people moving into Product Owner roles from more conventional roles like that of a project manager or a product manager.

The book is very concise, highly readable and contains lots of real life examples to illustrate the points made by the author.

Each chapter has a section called "Common Mistakes" which highlights the pitfalls  that  Product Owners need to avoid.

Another important section in every chapter is "Reflection". This section poses a set of "moment of truth" questions to the Product Owners and other managers in an organization. These questions will enable them to objectively asses their current practices and situation and serve as prompts  to improve them.

There is no denying the fact this is an extremely useful book for Product Owners. However the title of the book "Agile Product Management with Scrum" sets a much higher expectation among the prospective readers. The book is written only from a Product Owner's perspective. Other aspects of product management are not dealt with. A more apt title of this book could have been something like "How to be an Effective Product Owner in a Scrum Project" or "A Guidebook for Product Owners".

There may not be much new in this book for a highly experienced and effective Product Owner who may be already aware of and even following many of the useful techniques discussed in this book. 

But for a novice Product Owner, other members of  the Scrum Team, and the management of an organization taking baby steps towards implementation of Scrum, this book should be a mandatory read.

Links:

•  Table of Content
• Foreword, Preface and Chapter 1
• Author's Website

Inbound Marketing

Authors:     Brian Halligan, Dharmesh Shah

Published:  2010

Publisher:  John Wiley and Sons

Hardcover: 250 Pages

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The traditional way of marketing is Outbound Marketing where the businesses bombard the prospects with promotional brochures, TV advertisements,  spam mails, telemarketing calls and so on. The authors are of the opinion that  the prospects have become smart enough to avoid such interruptions and get the information they need through online searches. In this book they propose Inbound Marketing as a solution to this problem. Inbound Marketing is all about the businesses creating an effective online presence which results in their "getting found"  by the prospects (vs searching for prospects) through online searches and social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn etc.

The book consists of  four parts.

Part I - Inbound Marketing

This part stresses the need for matching the way one markets the product with the way the prospects learn about and shop for that product. This can be done through inbound marketing. First and foremost the website of the business must change its marketing mode from a one-way sales message to a collaborative hub for its  marketplace. 

They should  focus on creating communities outside of their web site for people to connect with them and others within the community. 

This “outside” focus will drive people back to the website of the business. 

This involves adding some collaborative tools like a blog and creating lots of compelling content (not  overt sales pitches) which people want to consume. 

This should be followed by creating a presence in  Google,industry blogs, and social media sites. 

Through internet one can  reach many more prospects and much more quickly as compared to traditional mode of communication. 

To take advantage of such a reach and speed, one should think beyond the competitors and create alternatives to conventional marketing. 

Also one should strive to offer the best product/service within the market.

Part II - Get Found by the Prospects

This part offers umpteen number of  useful ideas, tips, tools and techniques for creating a remarkable content and getting discovered in blogosphere, in Google through Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and in social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon and YouTube.

Part III - Converting Customers

Visitors drawn to the business website need to be converted into leads by encouraging them through some compelling call-to-action to further engage with the business.

Good calls-to-action  involves giving them helpful and useful information to enable them to do their job better or improve their job prospects. 

This can be asking them to register or subscribe for free Webinars, White papers or reports, short consultation sessions, demos, or trial offer etc.

This part also talks about  various ways of nurturing the leads to convert them into customers.

Part IV - Make Better Decisions

Better marketing investment decisions can be made using the Marketing Funnel technique introduced in this part  to define various levels - prospect, lead, opportunity, and customers - and measuring the conversion rates to  calculate the Return on Investment (ROI) of various marketing channels. 

This part also advises the reader on how to hire  marketing staff  and PR agencies for inbound marketing.

Tools to keep tabs on the competition are also dealt in this part.

Finally the book concludes by reinforcing that age of inbound marketing has dawned and the days of outbound marketing are over. 

However inbound marketing requires commitment, patience and continuous learning. The benefits will be slow in coming initially but the floodgates will be opened once the tipping point is reached.

The book consists of 16 short chapters written in a very simple and easy to understand language, illustrated with several real life examples. In every chapter there are recommended measurements to track the progress in inbound marketing journey.

The chapters also have short case studies in inbound marketing. 

These case studies covered  include - the presidential campaign of Barack Obama, the music group The Grateful Dead, Wikipedia, and Google.

As a bonus there is a fairly comprehensive list of 26 Inbound Marketing tips for the Startups.

Overall a very good introduction to Inbound Marketing..

Useful Links:

• Inbound Marketing - Wikipedia Entry
• Hubspot - Website of the company founded by the authors.

 

The Myths of Security

Author:         John Viega
Published:     2009

Publisher:     O'Reilly Media Inc.

Paperback:   252 pages

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The author John Viega, an IT security expert  is of the view "... and the (IT security)  industry as a whole is broken ". This viewpoint coming from a person who is the CTO of SaaS business Unit at McAfee, a leading security product vendor, is bound to grab attention of the readers who are worried about the security and privacy of their digital information stored in the confines of their computers. 

According to the author, the internet users are at heavy risk, which can be mitigated to a great extent  if the security industry examines itself and changes for better. It is not only the hackers or lay users who are to be blamed for security disasters. Security industry needs to come out with products which provide  the promised security but without  impacting  the performance of the  user's system (most of the security products tend to slow down the system !).

Through 48 short yet interesting articles (4-5 pages average, 10 pages maximum.) , the author provides his  perspectives on the security industry, identifies glaring problems, shows what the industry can do differently to give the end users more value for their money.  He promises no "silver bullet", but hopes that  the security industry takes note of  his criticism and correct the things which are fundamentally wrong. 

The articles in this book gives the author's opinion on a wide range of security subjects and issues like :

• Anti-Virus (AV) products -   why they are slow; why they do not work well; what AV companies should be doing;  is it true that  AV companies create viruses they detect. 
• Is vulnerability research community helping to improve security ?
• Are Macs more secure than Windows PCs ?
• Open Security Standards
• Phishing, Identity Thefts
• Personal Firewall problems
• Why most people shouldn't run intrusion prevention system ?
• Google is Evil - it takes only half-way measures  to check click fraud in its online advertisements. Stringent measures are actually in conflict with its business interest.
• VPNs usually decreases security
• HTTPS sucks: lets's kill it
• CAPTCHA and the Usability/Security Tradeoff

Each article can be independently read, however I felt that the order of the articles could have been better organized - for e.g. AV related articles are scattered throughout the book (widely separated  chapters -6,8,12,22,23,39). Instead all the articles related to a subject could have been ordered closely.

I am not a security expert so I am not in a position to either support or oppose the author's views expressed in this book. But I found the articles written with a sense of humor a very good read and understood around 75 % of what he has to say.

Links:

• Table of Contents