So, you are the Product Manger and the development team has decided to go all the way.  Yes, the team has gone Agile.  Good for them, you think.  Good for you?  No longer would you have to write long requirement documents, know all the details in advance and commit on schedule and content to the customers and the sales team, right?

In the hi-tech industry, we see a gradual transition in software development methodology from Waterfall to Agile.  More and more companies are no longer going through the Waterfall process of setting requirements, designing, coding, verifying and releasing.  Instead, they use Agile methodology in which the functionality is developed in short iterative cycles, or “sprints”.  By the end of each “sprint” another set of functionality is ready for release.

For the Product Manager cause, this enables flexibility in adapting the product in development to a changing market environment.  It also allows getting faster feedback from customers which prevents long development cycles of the wrong functionality.

However, as the title of this post implies, the situation is not simple. While the development team has gone Agile, customers, in many cases, have not.  In most industries, customers demand to see a clear product roadmap and know in advance the content of the next release, what will be included in the next release and what in the one that follows.  Those same customers do not accept monthly versions of a product for providing rapid feedback and neither they are willing to test half baked functionality.

Dear product manager, you are now trapped between an “Agile Development Team” and a “Water Fall Customer”. The situation is even worse, not only the customer is a “Water Fall Customer”, the entire organization is “Water Fall”-ed. The sales team, the pre-sale engineers, the marketing and communications, the technical writers, they all want you to define a “Water Fall” release. You need to tell them what they get and when and you must tell them that in advance.

What should you do? The first step in solving a problem is acceptance, admitting it is a problem.  . The second step is looking for someone to play the role of an Agile to Waterfall mediator. Someone should mediate between the Customers of Mars and the Agile team from Venus.

As the product manager, this role is yours!