Agile is recognized as a system-software development approach used to get quick feedback to keep the customer involved at every stage, build a disciplined team, and have working software at any given point in time. Sameer Arora writes on how things can fall out of place when agility on the programming side is ignored.

A written user story is a very short narrative—a sentence or two—describing some small piece of functionality that has business value. User stories are intended to foster collaboration and communication, but writing these short narratives poorly can negate agile’s flexibility. Charles Suscheck and Andrew Fuqua explain some common failure patterns that will help you focus on the right role, value, and business functionality when writing stories.

Kent McDonald introduces us to Arthur, a middle manager and product owner in a medium-sized insurance company who has been assigned to take on an agile project. For those unfamiliar with agile, the terminology and techniques of agile approaches can seem strange and often a little silly when not accompanied with an explanation as to why those techniques exist. Kent explains the challenges product owners like Arthur face and how to make product owners understand agile better.

In this podcast, Bob Payne speaks with Jonathan Chashper about a variety of topics in the world of product management consulting. Jonathan brings a wealth of knowledge to companies of all sizes, in hopes of boosting revenues on any project.