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Product Backlog Problems: Why Your Hierarchy Is Broken

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Re: Product Backlog Problems: Why Your Hierarchy Is Broken

#21

Post by tclancy »

jonstewart wrote: post #9

A strong whiff of AI writing.

Which sucks because I feel there is some good stuff but it’s buried. This is going to be like every “era” on the web, isn’t it? We must be 2-3 months away from sites that people threw up simply to create the Reader Mode of the AI era, where we will all link to articles via an intermediary 12 Foot Ladder type site that runs the content through a different AI taught to boil the article to its essence and then tersely rewrite those bullet points in something close to human language.

Re: Product Backlog Problems: Why Your Hierarchy Is Broken

#22

Post by tomveber »

squidlib wrote: post #19

This is an ad, so it's going to be fluff, but the example use cases really stood out to me as not being very real/practical. Right off the bat: It assumes the team has a cluttered and completely unmaintained backlog already. Even with an unmaintained backlog, Jira and other tools already have great built in tooling to help a backlog stay visually clear (priority indicator, epic tag, and the ability to make placeholde…

[flagged]

Re: Product Backlog Problems: Why Your Hierarchy Is Broken

#23

Post by claw-el »

I think introducing hierarchy is slightly helpful, but does not solve the core problem. The core problem is that everyone in the company have an opinion on what should go into the backlog and their personal proposal should be the highest priority/hierarchy/urgency. The proposer frequently does not want to do the extra effort to research what is the deeper problem we can provide value for customers but still insists that their idea is immediately worked on. In the past, I would say 95% of the backlog dies in the status of “further research required”. Without the deeper research, the priority/hierarchy/urgency is just who is screaming louder…

Re: Product Backlog Problems: Why Your Hierarchy Is Broken

#24

Post by wrs »

alephnerd wrote: post #15
wrs wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A quick way to lose your engineers’ trust is to claim you “trust your engineers” and then unilaterally deprioritize an engineering task. Not saying there aren’t clueless or myopic engineers, just that you should be honest about the relationship. (And find better engineers or better product managers, whichever is needed.)

When I was a PM, I was brutally honest about my heuristics, thinking, and product vision and made sure to give as much visibility as I could to ICs without overstepping executive leadership mandates. And if an engineer thought I was talking shit, I'd give them the option to lead low risk customer calls with me shadowing and their manager's permission so they can see the tradeoffs a business deals with on a daily basi…

Yeah, that sounds great — the ideal is product and engineering engaged on a common and realistic view of what the business is trying to do. You want a staff meeting where everyone’s contributing their skills to the problem, not defending or imposing their siloed concerns.

If you have any function (product, engineering, legal, finance, whatever) able to, or even trying to, unilaterally impose their priorities without regard to the bigger picture, that’s not a good dynamic. Especially if it’s covered up with “teamwork” rhetoric that doesn’t match the reality.

Re: Product Backlog Problems: Why Your Hierarchy Is Broken

#25

Post by alephnerd »

wrs wrote: post #24
alephnerd wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was a PM, I was brutally honest about my heuristics, thinking, and product vision and made sure to give as much visibility as I could to ICs without overstepping executive leadership mandates. And if an engineer thought I was talking shit, I'd give them the option to lead low risk customer calls with me shadowing and their manager's permission so they can see the tradeoffs a business deals with on a daily basi…

Yeah, that sounds great — the ideal is product and engineering engaged on a common and realistic view of what the business is trying to do. You want a staff meeting where everyone’s contributing their skills to the problem, not defending or imposing their siloed concerns. If you have any function (product, engineering, legal, finance, whatever) able to, or even trying to, unilaterally impose their priorities without…

Yep! Totally agree with ya! We're all a team and no one is above or below each other, and I always made sure to manage out people who had a superiority complex - even if they were gifted (and they usually weren't) they would just make life hell for everyone else.

I also always fought for higher compensation - I'd rather have a couple really talented and well paid individuals rather than a mass of low paid and checked out ones.

I've mentored my PortCos this way as well.

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