The following diagram overviews the major workflows that your Disciplined Agile® Product Management activities are associated with. Note that feedback is implied in the diagram. For example, where you see the Business Roadmap and Priorities flow from Product Management to Portfolio Management there is an implied feedback loop from the portfolio managers to the product managers. Also note that the workflows do not necessarily imply that artifacts exist. For example, some of the work items provided to solution teams may be via discussions with their product owners.
Figure 1. The External Workflow of Disciplined Agile Product Management (click to enlarge).
The following table summarizes the workflows depicted in the diagram.
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Process Blade |
Workflow with Product Management |
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The continuous improvement activities will provide potential improvement suggestions for improving enterprise architecture efforts. Similarly, the Product Management team may have insights to share with the rest of the organization. |
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Product Management will provide product data to the data management activities, which in turn provides intelligence about the marketplace and your organization’s activities. |
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Product management defines minimum business increments (MBIs) for delivery teams to work on, and provide product roadmaps to help guide prioritization decisions made by the team. |
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Product management provides product roadmaps to various DevOps activities, such as data management and IT operations, as input into their prioritization and planning decisions. |
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Enterprise architecture will provide the organization-level business and technology roadmaps to product management which is an input into evolving the vision for a product and identifying new potential features for products. Product management provides product roadmaps which is are as input into evolve the enterprise architecture. |
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The governance efforts will provide guidance to your product management activities. |
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Product Management provides product roadmaps to portfolio management, which are used as input into identifying potential business value. Portfolio management provides funding for valuable initiatives identified by product management. |
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Product Management will provide product roadmaps and definitions of MBIs for a program team to work on. |
The activities associated with these process blades are often very highly related. For example, in some organizations the activities associated with product management and portfolio management are fulfilled by a single group. In other organizations some product management activities are performed by the portfolio management team and some by the enterprise architecture team. Some organizations may be large enough that it makes sense to choose to have a separate group for product management. And of course the organizational structure will evolve over time as your various teams learn how to work with one another.