Importance of software management

You'll learn how to manage your project efficiently and collaboratively, so, 
like a ninja, everyone on your team is aware of what's going on, and 
you'll learn about what's currently being done in industry so 
that, like a ninja, you become a master of your craft.
Business today runs on software. 
Every company has internal applications for controlling day to day operations. 
And a growing number of companies are reaching externally to customers through 
websites and mobile apps.
To be successful in meeting business goals, 
companies need competent software product management professionals that can deliver 
the digital assets necessary to operate in the 21st century. 
Welcome to Software Product Management. 
This could be an exciting journey, and we hope you'll learn a lot along the way. 
We're really looking forward to having you with us.

Role of software product manager

Success of your product also depends on solid teamwork.
Programmers, testers, interface designers, graphic artists, must work together. 
Your role is to empower them to bring their best efforts to your project.
Software product management is a leadership role. 
Let's take a look at a few interviews of what those already 
in the industry feel about this role. 

The product manager meets with the customer, 

they get an idea, they get a vision for how something could be, they articulate 
that vision back to their engineering team and the associated stakeholders, and 
then they actually see it be produced as working software. 
And it's tremendously satisfying for the product manager to see it actually 
delivered and to then see the impact that has on the customer and their reality.

Great managers are sought after for 

their track record of successful product deliveries. 
Whether you want to make a move from developer to product manager, or
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you understand the business side and you want to move to more of a hands-on 
role in shaping the software, or maybe you want to look for a career change and 
work more in software project management. 
So whatever your reason for starting this path, this specialization will guide you 
step by step to become a competent, confident software product manager. 
So what are you waiting for? 
Check out our next lesson to see an overview of this specialization.
What is agile and why agile ?
Agile practices are guidelines that suggest how software development should 
occur to get the best results.
Agile covers a large part of what you will do as a product manager. 
In fact, most of the concepts that we will cover in this specialization 
are a part of Agile.
In this lesson I'm going to cover what it means for a project to be successful and 
why you should use Agile.
Software product management professionals will often use schedule, budget, and 
user requirements as benchmarks for defining success

For having success

Is there another way that you can find success? 
What about by developer satisfaction? 
Sometimes it's easy to forget that software is created by humans. 
It almost seems as if these apps and programs just appear. 
But behind the scenes, development teams are spending countless hours and 
many sleepless nights to produce these products. 
So shouldn't their satisfaction count for something? 
I mean, without them, there is no product.
Although it seems much harder to find statistics on developer satisfaction, 
does that make it any less significant?
Project success could also be measured by the number of post-release bugs, 
the support needed after a release, 
the product's customer rating, the revenue generated, or the client satisfaction.

No matter how you decide to measure project success, 

Agile can help you achieve it.
Now we've talked about how to measure success. 

Software development is all about iterations and evolutions. 

Just because you succeed or 
fail one week does not guarantee that the next week will be the same.
As you learn agile and gain confidence in its practices, 
you're developing skills that are in demand by many major tech companies. 
Companies such as Adobe, Amazon, Microsoft, and 
Yahoo all function on a popular Agile methodology called Scrum.
Agile manifesto
They established four core value statements about what is most important 
in software development. 
To further expand on the core values, 
the Alliance also agreed on 12 supporting principles.
Let's look at what they came up with.
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.
Working software over comprehensive documentation.
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation. 
Responding to change over following a plan

Agile manifesto is divided into 12 parts

And they are further divided into 3 parts: 1. Delivering a working
software
2. Flexible Design
3. Collaborative communication

Delivering a working software

first principle. 
It states, "Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and 
continuous delivery of valuable software".
The second principle is about frequency of deliveries. 
It states, "Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks 
to a couple of months with a preference to the shorter timescale".
third principle. 
It states, "Working software is the primary measure of progress". 
Since your team will be focused on delivering working software, 
your progress should be measured by that.

Flexible Design and adapting to change

A good way to make your product more responsive to change 
is to have a flexible design and an adaptable process