Agile Product and Project Management: A Step-by-Step Guide to Building the Right Products Right

Use this comprehensive Agile product and project management guide with real-world case studies and examples for self-learning or as a student textbook. Whether you are a CEO or a student, this book will take you from Agile delivery to team topology and product-market fit.

Agile delivery is becoming a mainstream project management framework, increasing demand for an understanding of modern related concepts. Agile Product and Project Management covers IT delivery and project management basics while approaching IT as a customer-centric product delivery ecosystem.

The book covers two major topics: building the RIGHT product and building the product RIGHT. Each chapter builds on the materials in the previous chapter. Terminology and exercises are introduced sequentially. The book takes you on a journey from identifying a product using Agile principles to delivering and iterating on this process, step-by-step. The final chapter provides practical advice on role-based interviews, career progression, professional certifications and affiliations, and communities of practice.

You’ll Learn

• The Objectives and Key Results (OKR) framework, which explains why every project has to align with organizational objectives and how these objectives are used to measure project success
• Agile (Scrum, Kanban, XP), Waterfall, and hybrid product and project management practices, and how to apply the "working backwards" framework from the customer to IT projects
• The Lean Startup framework of product design, based on the "build-measure-learn" feedback loop, and compared with Waterfall requirements gathering and project scope management
• Design Thinking and customer research practices
• The product backlog taxonomy (epic, user story, subtask, bug, etc.), prioritization techniques, ongoing backlog maintenance, and stakeholder communication
• Major aspects of IT delivery, including Agile teams, roles, frameworks, and success criteria
• Waterfall planning and Scrum, in detail, including its Sprint structure, artifacts, roles, and ceremonies (meetings) as well as a comparison of Agile scaling frameworks
• Case studies of modern technology leaders, from startups to FAANG
• Examples of release plans and delivery reports based on actual projects in a wide range of companies, ways to minimize technical debt, implement DevOps, and establish quality management practices for software products
• Effective ways of managing dependencies and delivering products that delight customers and made the Silicon Valley giants successful and allowed for rapid business growth

About the Author

Dr. Mariya Breyter is an educator and a practitioner who brings 20 years of leadership experience to the Agile and Lean community. Her passion for managing complex business initiatives and delivering superior products to clients through efficient, Agile and Lean processes has produced success after success in companies ranging from Big 4 consulting and Fortune 100 insurance and financial services firms to mid-sized educational businesses and startups.

Dr. Breyter has a PhD in Computational Linguistics from Moscow State University followed by a Post-Doctorate scholarship at Stanford University. She has built her career optimizing and improving software delivery and instilling Agile and Lean values at multitudes of companies while keeping the primary focus on the people within those processes. The list of her certifications includes CSP, SPC, CSM, PMP, PMI-ACP, ITIL 3.0, Agile Facilitation, and Agile Coaching from ACI.

Dr. Breyter is an Agile project management thought leader and a frequent presenter at Agile conferences, from the Lean IT conference in Paris to the Agile Conference in San Diego, CA, and a popular blogger. Dr. Breyter’s free educational and coaching websites were nominated for multiple Agile and Lean professional awards.