The theme of this week’s Product Thinking Podcast is agile development, and Melissa Perri’s guest this week is Jeff Patton of Jeff Patton & Associates. Jeff is one of the first agile product managers, and his company helps other companies use product and customer- centric thinking to improve their market and the way they work. Jeff and Melissa to discuss agile development in this week’s show, including what’s currently going wrong with it.

Here are some key points you’ll hear Melissa and Jeff talk about in this episode:

How both Jeff and Melissa got into agile development. [01:10]

The issues agile development was created to mitigate. [7:01]

How agile development was understood when it was first created. [14:15]

The difference between agile development now and agile development in the past is understanding what an outcome is. “[Product] outcome is measured by whether the customers and users see you try and use it, and keep using it,” Jeff tells Melissa. [14:51]

Product development is about prototyping, experimenting, and spending time with customers. [19:12]

Three things you should never not do in agile development. [21:54]

Companies are now conducting more business via technology which requires them to become more agile. However, they’re not adopting the agile manifesto in the right way. [30:55]

Jeff hopes that agile development will morph and become what it needs to be in the future. [39:09]

Resources

Jeff Patton | LinkedIn | Twitter

Jeff Patton & Associates