The 3 Agile Practices Every Product Manager Must Adopt

In the fast-evolving landscape of software development, product managers must harness the power of agile methodologies to stay ahead. This article delves into the three critical agile principles that drive success: continuous improvement, integrated development practices, and strategic deployment techniques. By embodying these core pillars, product managers can lead distributed teams to deliver quality software swiftly and efficiently, ensuring a competitive edge in the market.

Practice #1: Embrace Continuous Improvement

Continuous improvement is the bedrock of agile software development. Product managers can cultivate an environment where incremental changes lead to significant advancements by adopting a mindset geared towards ongoing enhancement. This philosophy is reflected in the ethos of lean manufacturing. It can be seen in the success stories of elite performance teams, such as British Cycling, where small, consistent equipment, nutrition, and strategy improvements led to monumental gains. Product managers should make frequent, minor enhancements to their processes and products, capitalizing on the compound effects of marginal gains.

Practice #2: Integrate Development

Continuous integration and delivery are pivotal in the agile development process. These methodologies aim to minimize integration issues and facilitate faster release cycles by allowing developers to merge code changes into a shared repository regularly. This practice, supported by robust test suites, helps safeguard against bugs and ensures that every code commit is production-ready. Product managers should encourage their teams to adopt either trunk-based development, with its feature toggles, or feature branching with asynchronous reviews to maintain a healthy and deployable codebase.

Practice #3: Strategize Deployment Techniques

The final pillar is the strategic approach to deployment. Continuous deployment, building, testing, and releasing software automation allows for an almost real-time development cycle. However, product managers must balance the need for rapid deployment with the practicalities of their customers’ experiences. Not every product benefits from continuous deployment, and sometimes, the stability of less frequent releases may better serve the user base. Finding the sweet spot between agility and user convenience is essential, as is ensuring software updates are beneficial and not burdensome.