Blackblot PMTK Methodology and Agile Software Development
Introduction
The Blackblot Product Manager's Toolkit® (PMTK) is a consistent and holistic managerial approach to product management that represents a practical and comprehensive methodology (tasks, processes, deliverables, and roles) covering all aspects of product management.
This review outlines how to apply the Blackblot PMTK Methodology™, a market-driven approach to product management, with lightweight software development practices.
Lightweight Software Development
The concept of lightweight software development is based on iterative and incremental development principles and promotes continuous planning, development, and testing work.
The core idea of lightweight software development is to deliver a product in stages, providing additional validation or fine-tuning of the product's feature set with each delivery stage.
Lightweight Software Development was simultaneously introduced in the 1960s with Heavyweight Software Development (waterfall, stage-gate, spiral).
Modern perspectives on doing lightweight software development began to re-emerge in the mid to late 1990s with method variations such as Extreme Programming (XP), ICONIX, Crystal Clear, Scrum, Feature-driven Development (FDD), Adaptive Software Development, and Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM).
Lightweight Software Development was rebranded as Agile Software Development in 2001, with the publication of the Agile Manifesto.
After this rebranding, lightweight development methods were collectively referred to as Agile, sometimes erroneously as Agile methodologies.
The Agile Manifesto
The Agile Manifesto, a proclamation document listing preferred values and principles for software development, was published in 2001.
The context of the Agile Manifesto was custom software development.
The Agile Manifesto's objective was to provide a better way of building custom software to be productive and reduce undue negotiations with the customer.
The Agile Manifesto's values, principles, and background are firmly rooted in lightweight software development.
Some philosophical interpretations attempt to extract deeper meanings of the Agile Manifesto, characterizing the manifesto's core as a Mindset that promotes Business Agility (adapting and responding to change). These efforts are not part of this review.
The Problem and Solution Spaces
Agile at its core is an incremental and iterative software development technique that is confined to the solution space.
Agile methods, which all reside in the solution space (designing and building a product), are not product management methodologies since only the product management domain resides in the problem space.
The second PMTK foundation rule states that 'Product management resides solely in the problem space'.
The product management domain resides in the problem space and is responsible for identifying and articulating market problems from a product planning perspective.
The separation between Product Management (problem space) and Product Development (solution space) is critical.
Suppose one function simultaneously holds complete ownership of roles in both the problem and solution spaces. In that case, this will most likely create a conflict of interests (primarily between the product's delivery schedule and the product's feature scope) and result in over-engineered products that could be misaligned with market needs.
PMTK and Agile
Queries have been made to Blackblot by several notable product leaders on how to best merge the Blackblot Product Manager's Toolkit® (PMTK) methodology with Agile practices.
The principles of product management according to the Blackblot PMTK Methodology™ are universal. This allows PMTK to easily adapt to linear, iterative, or continuous product development, whether software or any other product or service type.
With the introduction of Agile to the company, the relationship between product management and product development now hinges upon the Agile team receiving market requirements from the product planner, a primary role in PMTK responsible for identifying and articulating market problems.
PMTK employs an efficient and robust method to create a Market Requirements Document (MRD), effectively a written understanding of the market problem.
PMTK does not enforce the idea of a singular, complete, and voluminous MRD.
PMTK processes work well with mini-MRDs or an MRD that constantly grow while relaying small sets of market requirements to the product development team.
Depending on their chosen software development method, the product developers can then do what they wish with the MRD information sets. They can create user stories, product requirements, use cases, build a product backlog, etc.
So it is possible to implement PMTK with any Agile method.
A PMTK/Agile alignment is a powerful combination because it enables a combined product/development team to run a continuous delivery process that would start with identifying customer needs through releasing the product to market to capture feedback from the actual product use.
So PMTK with standard MRDs or mini-MRDs would enable a fully Agile-aligned process with Agile methods, e.g., Scrum, Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), and Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD).
This Agile-aligned process potentially shortens the product development lifecycle. This approach enables activities to start in the solution space before product management activities that have extended lead times are fully completed.
And this Agile-aligned process, employing a PMTK/Agile combination, would likely serve companies far better with a supported and efficient implementation of a market-driven product management methodology.
Summary
Blackblot's market-driven Blackblot Product Manager's Toolkit® (PMTK) product management methodology provides the processes and tasks to support the problem space and connect it to the solution space.
This also means reshaping the relationship and connecting product management with product development to work together more efficiently.
Consequently, Blackblot's PMTK market-driven product management methodology coexists well with any heavyweight or lightweight development methods.