Agile Product Development: How to Design Innovative Products That Create Customer Value

Discover what it takes to develop products that blow your users away—and take market share from your competitors. This book will explain how the principles behind agile product development help designers, developers, architects, and product managers create awesome products; and how to look beyond a shiny user interface to build a great product. Most importantly, this book will give you a shared framework for your product development team to collaborate effectively.

Product development involves several key activities—including ideation, discovery, design, development, and delivery—and yet too many companies and innovators focus on just a few of them much to the detriment of the product’s success in the marketplace. As a result we still continue to see high failure rates in new product development, be it inside organizations or startups. Unfortunately, or rather fortunately, these failures are largely avoidable.

In the last fifteen years, advances in agile software development, lean product development, human-centered design, design thinking, lean startups and product delivery have helped improve individual aspects of product development. However, not enough guidance has been available to integrate them in the context of the product development life cycle.

Until now. Product developer extraordinaire Tathagat Varma in Agile Product Development integrates individual knowledge areas into a field manual for product developers. Organized in the way an idea germinates, sprouts, and grows, the book synthesizes the body of knowledge in a pragmatic way that is more natural to the entire product creation process rather than from individual practices that constitute it.

In today’s hyper-innovative world, being first to the market, or delivering feature-loaded products, or even offering the latest technology doesn’t guarantee success anymore. Sure, those elements are all needed in the right measures, but they are not sufficient by themselves. And getting it right couldn’t be more important: Building products that deliver awesome user experiences is the top challenge facing businesses today, especially in a post-Apple world where user experience and design has been elevated to a cult status.

What you’ll learn

• How to stimulate creativity and prioritization of ideas in product design

• How to get early feedback on initial product idea iterations

• How to design and develop products using sound engineering practices

• How to apply principles of agility into software delivery

About the Author

Professional Bio: Tathagat has been involved with hi-tech software product development since 1991 with Defense Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), and subsequently with Seimens Telecon, , Philips Medical Systems, and Philips Digital Networks divisions, Huawei Technologies, McAfee,NetScout Systems and Yahoo ! prior to joining at (24/7) Innovation Labs in significant technical and leadership roles, including starting-up and heading India operations for NetScout Systems between 2004 and 2009. Most recently at Yahoo!, as Head of Business Operations, he was responsible for Strategic Programs, Outsourced Product Development and Business Operations, and additionally led center-wide adoption of Agile, Business Excellence and IP Programs.

At [24]7 Innovation Labs, Tathagat is responsible for Strategic Process Innovations. His core expertise is large-scale new product development, project management, strategic program management, software process improvement, agile software development, general management, leadership development, organizational change management, cultural transformation and outsourced product development.

Tathagat also holds the unique distinction of being the youngest member of 13th Indian Scientific Expedition to Antartica, where he participated as scientist and stayed at the Indian permanent station Maitri for a period of 16 months during 1993-95, and studied data communication between India and Antarctica, and the effects of unique weather conditions on life-support systems in Antarctica.

Tathagat holds an MSc Computer Science from JK Institute of Applied Physics and Technology, Allahabad University, a Post Graduate Certificate in HR Management (PGCHRM) from Xavier Labor Research Institute School of Business and Human Resources (XLRI), Jamshedpur and Certificates in Business Leadership Skills, Executive Leadership and Financial Management from Cornell University, USA. In addition, he is also certified PMP, PRINCE2 Registered Practitioner, CSP, CSM, CSPO, Scaled Agile Framework Program Consultant (SPC), and Sr. Member of IEEE and ACM.

Tathagat has volunteered with PMI Innovation and New Product Development Community of Practice and IEEE Technology Management Council and has been a visiting faculty on Project Management and Business Ethics courses. He has authored and presented multiple papers and talks at national and international conferences (AgileIndia2014, PMIPune2014, InnovationGermany2013, ScrumGatheringIndia2013, AgileColombo2013, AgileIndia13, ASIS12, PDMA12, GHC12, BSPIN12, Zinnov12, TEDx2012, AgileIndia2012, AgileTours12, PMO11, SPICON11, AgileHyderabad11) and is a sought-after speaker in the industry on these topics.