Christian Bale And Matthew McConaughey Teach Product Managers About Agile Development

Yesterday we summarized “Reign Of Fire” In 10 Screencaps Or Less™. Now let’s extract a product management lesson from 2002’s most dragontastic action/sci-fi film.

One of Reign’s big conflicts is between Quinn (played by Christian Bale) and Van Zan (played by Matthew McConaughey). Quinn is trying to keep innocent people alive; Van Zan wants to kill the sole male dragon and drive the dragons to extinction.

The ongoing argument between product management and agile development is pretty similar, just minus all the incinerating.

To make sure we’re on the same page, we should first describe agile development:

The tenets of agile development are basically rooted in “uncovering better ways of developing software”. Their values are:

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
• Working software over comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Responding to change over following a plan

If you’re hearing a giant groan–that’s the sound of many traditional product managers responding viscerally to those thoughts. Frankly, it’s easy to see why: What we just described, to many PMs, sounds like complete CHAOS. And it could be.

When you boil things down, agile development seems to be a response to something other than just developing software. It looks like a direct response to ineffective management.

What’s ineffective management? Having engineers write documentation rather than code. Or having engineers generate time estimates for features that a) haven’t been thought out, so b) there’s now way anyone could reliably generate an accurate estimate on how long it will take to develop.

It’s easy to see how that kind of management could lead people to seek a different path, a different way to Get Things Done.

At the end of the day, the developers MUST make what the product managers have specified–that’s not up for debate. But that does put a greater emphasis and responsibility on the PM to make sure you’re doing a good job–both for the product, and also for your team.

If smaller iterations will help your team adapt to change more quickly, try it. If there’s a sense that there’s too much process or too much of a focus on perfect documentation, ease up on those things.

In Reign Of Fire, Quinn and Van Zan are most successful when they’re working together to defeat the dragons. They’re at they’re weakest when they’re competing for resources and working at cross-purposes.

Are product management and agile development natural born enemies? Not necessarily. Like anything you need to keep that balance: You need to complete the projects, and create product that meet the demands of your target market.

If pure agile development does that, great! If not, find another path together that leads where the product needs to be.

Remember: Keep the balance. Otherwise, someone’s going to be gobbled up by a dragon, and that’s no good for anyone.

Additional Resources

• Keep your mind open to agile product development
• Webinar: Living in an Agile World – The Role of Product Management When Development Goes Agile
• Agile development isn’t product management
• What’s Product Management like a Year after Implementing Agile?
• How Agile is Your Product Management?

How are agile development and product management balanced in your organization? Are they complementary or competitive?