Food For Thought #71: Brainless Agile, Everyone’s Agile, Speedy Agile, PM Survey 2016, UX 2017

Age of Product’s Food for Thought of December 11th, 2017—shared with 5,182 peers—offers a selection of “Agile”: from brainless agile — why is it practiced as a dumb process in most cases? —, to how to apply agile to other tasks that software creation.

We also dive deep into how you can improve the speed of product delivery, we check out the results of Mind the Product’s 2016 survey — remuneration for product managers is increasing, your’s too? —, and we get a sneak preview on UX trends of 2017.

Looking for a new PM job? Well, as we are closing in on 2017, a senior PM at Google shares tips how to ace your upcoming job interview.

Last but not least, Stanford’s ECorner provided a great video with Facebook’s vice president of product design on how to build the right features.

Enjoy a great Sunday!

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Food For Thought #70: Agile Myths Busting, Trust, Product Discovery, Listening to Customers

Age of Product’s Food for Thought of December 4th, 2017—shared with 5,066 peers—focusses on agile myth-busting, team dysfunctions, and how trust among teammates influences creativity.

We then dive deep into why switching to Kanban will not fixing your Scrum problems, and how to keep stakeholders and agile teams aligned.

We then support David Cancel’s notion that listening to customers is king and learn how the Kano model supports product discovery. Speaking of which: Marty Cagan identifies key risks that you should better tackle during the discovery work.

Last but not least, Om Malik reflects on Silicon Valley’s distinct lack of empathy for “normal people”.

Enjoy a great Sunday!

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Food For Thought #69: Scaling Agile, LeSS Huge, Ruthless Prios, Good Metrics, Comfort Zones

Age of Product’s Food for Thought of November 27th, 2016—shared with 4,912 peers—pays tribute to an all-time favorite: scaling agile. Jeff Sutherland shares a recent presentation on the Shu Ha Ri principle, and we learn that you can build 22 teams at once. LeSS can be indeed Huge.

We then dive deep into best practices for agile retrospectives—cardinal sins to avoid, dealing with strange behavior—, and once again we refer to our velocity-is-not-a-suitable-agile-metric mantra.

Speaking of metrics: Laura Klein shares a chapter of her new book, addressing suitable product metrics, we embrace the ideas of ruthless prioritization and continuous product discovery, and learn again that diversity is good for product & profits. (By the way, can anyone explain to me why this seems to be so hard to understand?)

Last but not least, innovation and personal growth don’t seem to flourish in comfort zones. Maybe, seeking discomfort intentionally could help? Well then, read what Lyft’s director of product design has to say…

Enjoy a great Sunday!

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Food For Thought #68: 100 Agile Techniques, Machiavelli and Dopamine for PMs, Scaling Lean

Age of Product’s Food for Thought of November 20th, 2016—shared with 4,841 peers—provides 100 agile techniques, explains why output is obsolete, and why open floor plans suck at making the creative worker productive.

You are looking for a new product management job? We got you covered: 10 actionable tips how to improve your LinkedIn product.

We then dive deep into how to use Machiavellian principles and happiness hormones like Dopamine for product issues. We also learn how to create shared understanding, and what “Scaling Lean” in the enterprise requires at project, program, and portfolio level.

Last but not least, we join VCs Mark Suster and Brad Feld when they teaching entrepreneurship to inmates from the California State Prison in Lancaster.

Enjoy a great Sunday!

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Agile Workspace: The Undervalued Success Factor — Agile Transition (Part 4)

TL; DR: Agile Workspace Means Choice Among a Diversity of Spaces

If you want your organization to become agile, adding more whiteboards to the workspace will not suffice. You have to abandon the idea that the workspace is an assembly line for white-collar workers. You need to let go Taylorism. We are now in the age of the creative worker.

To become agile – and reap its benefits such as becoming more innovative –, you need a diversity of workspaces to support all forms of creative work: focus, collaborate, learn, and socialize. Also, you have to let your creative workers choose which space is best suited for a task.

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