Discover to Deliver: Agile Product Planning and Analysis

by Ellen Gottesdiener, Mary Batchelder Gorman

Discover to Deliver: Agile Product Planning and Analysis is a practical guide for rapidly discovering product needs in your lean/agile project. Ellen Gottesdiener and Mary Gorman, leading agile practitioners and consultants, share key concepts, practices, examples, a case study, tips, and powerful planning and analysis tools. This book is for professionals who need to collaboratively conceive, deliver and support software products and systems. You'll learn how to continually discover and deliver high-value products. Gottesdiener and Gorman introduce a visual language and employ navigation aids to engage readers. The case study is woven throughout the discussion of concepts and detailed practices and is the subject of 80 examples. The "Structured Conversation" section details how to explore and evaluate each of the 7 Product Dimensions, an analysis framework designed to streamline planning and development. The "Adapting Your Practices" section offers ways to calibrate and adjust planning and analysis for a variety of contexts. Some 41 essential tools and techniques are explained and illustrated with case study examples. See how to: Rapidly discover product needs to deliver valued results; Engage stakeholders to enable shared understanding of product needs; Collaborate continually to discover and deliver an evolving product; Holistically analyze requirements using the 7 Product Dimensions; Guide planning with the Business Value Model; Use structured conversations to make value-based decisions about product options and allocate them to planning horizons. Whatever type of software product or system you build, whatever your area of expertise-product or project management and leadership; business analysis; development, testing and quality assurance; or business management-Discover to Deliver explains essential practices you can use in your daily work as you collaborate to rapidly discover product needs and deliver valued results.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction

284 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2012

Reviews

[Jeff Dalton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting book that I consider more of a reference than a how-to. The book is a deceptively simple read due to the publishing style. The content is so distilled that you feel like you are browsing powerpoint slides at times. However there is a lot of power in those distilled words so it is important to read and meditate on what is being explained.

This book will not make a good IT practitioner nor a good business analyst. It will give you some tools and tips that you can add to your knowledge bag. With some practice the the items suggested in this book will most likely improve the overall quality of your requirement artifacts.

I have to say that I was really disappointed after my first reading. I felt like the book had betrayed my sense of purpose, but after 2nd and 3rd read I began to appreciate the structure and form. So if you read this book once and feel disappointed give it another try (it is a quick read so you will not loose much time).

[Ulrika Park · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good introduction to backlog process with nice method of exploring needs/backlog candidates from different perspectives.
A bit repetitive even for beginners. And introductive case example is way too simplified and ideal to be perceived as realistic.
Ellen is a great speaker, I recommend to go when she speaks somewhere :-)

[Matt Block · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good book providing some good processes and tools to use during the discovery phase of a project. It provides you with a good framework and set of questions to follow when trying to think through a new application and discover the needs.

[Matvey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Clearly with many examples and howto's.

[Amy Hustead · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great reference for work. Provides many examples and is easy to understand. Highly recommend to all BA's