Fads and Fashions in the World of Product
Introduction
This review recaps trending fads and fashions in the world of product. Some trending models and frameworks are unsupported by rationales, lack methodological foundation, and thus can be easily invalidated.
According to second foundation rule of the Blackblot PMTK Methodology™, anything related to product development resides in the solution space and therefore is in no way part of product management.
Agile
Lightweight Software Development (rebranded as Agile in 2001) has been in existence since the 1960s and is based on iterative and incremental development principles, and promotes continuous planning, development, and testing work.
Modern lightweight software development gradually fell out of favor but later re-emerge in the late 1990s with method variations such as Extreme Programming (XP), Crystal Clear, Scrum, and Feature-driven Development (FDD).
Agile Manifesto
The Agile Manifesto, a proclamation document listing preferred values and principles related to custom software development, was published in 2001.
The context of the Agile Manifesto was custom software development and its objective was to provide a better way of building custom software for customers in a manner that would be productive and would reduce undue negotiations with the customer.
Business Model Canvas
The Business Model Canvas is essentially a schematic representation of a traditional business plan.
Design Thinking
Design thinking is a rebranded and overly simplified version of the classic product delivery process, combined with basic market-driven product management concepts, notions of the Voice of the Customer (VOC) process, and later on some ideation techniques.
Design thinking is more of a framework than a method, and can be ostensibly viewed as an elaborate and more structured approach to brainstorming.
DevOps
DevOps is a collective term that describes practices geared at efficiently building and deploying software products.
Indirect benefits of DevOps include fostering a collaborative and more streamlined relationship between development and operations, and generating internal feedback to improve the product.
ProductOps
Product Operations (ProductOps) is a collective term that describes best practices, effective tools, and efficient processes to streamline the communication and collaboration between product teams and their internal counterparts (sales, marketing, UX, development) in the organization. The Product Operations Manager is the responsible role for product operations.
Lean Startup
Lean Startup is a general framework for building products that is inspired by market-driven product management.
Lean Startup advocates iterative development and frequent incremental product releases; as opposed to engaging in preliminary, thorough and systematic market research that is followed by a phased and pre-planned product development cycle.
Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
The MVP is a renamed and rebranded term for what the software industry has known for decades as a Beta Product.
Beta Product means a software product with a complete feature set which is ready for actual users to try out and comment on. Through a phase called Beta Testing, actual feedback from users is gathered about their needs and the product's features, performance, bugs, or anything.