TL; DR: Product Team Performance — Food for Agile Thought #376
Welcome to the 376th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 36,564 peers. This week, we listen to our two product heavyweights, Lenny Rachitsky and John Cutler, delving into the performance of product teams. We continue with suggesting abandoning the popular framing that Waterfall is the opposite of Agile and that moving from one to the other requires a transformation, and identify four roles, at least one which you will play in a moment of injustice: person harmed, upstander, the person who caused harm, or leader. Moreover, we learn how a major Toyota program was saved by descaling and applying Scrum.
Then, we enjoy Marty Cagan sharing his approach to how teams and companies “can best deal with the challenges of complexity.” Also, we explore “three popular models for product teams,” and point to stakeholder alignment factors, from not trapping yourself to not confusing roadmaps with release plans to treating stakeholders as customers. Moreover, the ProdPad folks compiled a comprehensive list of questions your team may engage in identifying what is worth building.
Finally, Petra Wille shares the first findings from her 2022 survey into what drives thriving communities of practices for product people. Next, JTBD Toolkit released the JTBD Canvas 2.0, and there are new ChatGPT prompts for Scrum Masters, Product Owners, and Developers. Lastly, Tami Reiss has a candid conversation with Rich Mironov on product ethics and the corresponding responsibilities of product managers and leaders.