We have a lot to be thank for for – amazing customers who continue to support us and great partnerships.   May your holiday be full of family, friends and lots and lots of food.

All of us at Accept wish you a very happy Thanksgiving.

Congratulations to April Dunford of Rocket Watch for winning the AIPMM’s Battle of the Bloggers event early this week.  Check out her winning presentation slides, and see why she deserved to win.

Also, congratulations to Ethan Henry of On Product Management, Tom Grant of The Heretech, Ivan Lybbert of My Product Management Opinion, and Ivan Chalif of The Productologist who were 1st, 2nd and 3rd runner ups’ respectively.

It was a huge honor to be even nominated with this esteemed group, and I feel very fortunate to have met so many smart, funny and genuinely nice fellow bloggers (a personal thank you to April, Brian, Michael, Ivan L., Ivan C., Tom, Marsha, Gavin, Janey, and Ethan for making me feel so welcome). I made new friends, and I know that I can learn so much from my fellow bloggers, and what makes them successful.

I have to say, it was the most fun, entertaining and hilarious event that I’ve ever participated in, and I think the bloggers might of even enjoyed it more than the audience could of.  Credit all goes to Therese Padilla of AIPMM for coming up with such a great idea.

I also heard a rumor that the AIPMM might also hold the 2nd Battle of the Blogger event next year, so don’t miss the chance to see the fun and antics first hand, and besides, Tom Grant might even make a repeat performance of bringing his teddy bear again.

Devolution of Whole Product Launch

One of the best practices I communicate in my client work is Whole Product Launch (WPL). I help companies define success by brainstorming on what it looks like, appears to be, customer satisfaction, etc. i.e. What needs to happen before customers get value not what needs to happen before we release the software.

However, I’ve noticed as companies embrace Agile this concept is difficult. The cross-functional team best practice in Waterfall is evolving to a product team that does delay stand-ups showing progress. However, many of the deliverables for WPL do not lend themselves to a daily stand-up. And many of the people in the cross-functional team are not really part of the new “product team”. Also, since some of these deliverables have long lead times they either devolve into lesser outcomes or are done “after” the release.

The result is poor or late sales enablement, customer training materials, press release, etc.

So how should one bring Whole Product through an Agile process? More on that next week…