Food For Thought #63: Agile Big Picture, Healthy POs, Product Demos, F*** You Startup World

Age of Product’s Food for Thought of October 16th, 2016—shared with 5,085 peers—finally simplifies the agile big picture from product discovery to product delivery in two great posts. We even explore how to get rid of estimations.

We then learn how to organize and run a company-wide product demo across three countries, and how to deal with prospective clients who keep asking you, how much the upcoming agile project will cost them.

We also dive deep into the journey from business person to Product Owner, and what keeps the PO happy, healthy, and productive. We also learn the relaunching legacy products doesn’t have to be a nightmare, making your PO unhappy, unhealthy, and thus unproductive.

Last but not least, you need to read Shem’s epic rant about the startup world. (Note: it’s sort of bordering on #NSFW.) We also hear from a new obsession of the nouveau riche: is our existence Matrix-like just an algorithm? (Before you read the post: is it the red or the blue pill?)

Enjoy a great Sunday!

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The Big Picture of Agile: How to Pitch the Agile Mindset to Stakeholders

TL;DR: The Big Picture of Agile

Let’s face it: While your enthusiasm for the big picture of agile practices is admirable, your stakeholders will most likely be moved by one thought only at the beginning of the transition: “What’s in for me? How will I now have my requirements delivered?”.

Read on and learn about one way how to kick-off the transition to a learning organization by pitching a simplified version the big picture of agile practices to your stakeholders first.

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Food For Thought #62: Scrum Anti Patterns, Spotify Scaling Fallacy, 10 X Products, #mtpcon

Age of Product’s Food for Thought of October 9th, 2016—shared with 4,932 peers—requires you to be strong: you will face the worst example of Scrum anti-patterns in years. Speaking of dark times, Ron Jeffries also reminds us why developers sometimes feel unsafe in agile environments.

We then have to let go of the idea that the route to scaling agile means adopting the “Spotify model”. Spoiler alert: you have to figure that out on your own. We provide you with 10 principles for the transition, though, as well as a great video with Alex Osterwalder from our friends at Podojo.

We then dive deep into how to find the 10 X product worth building, for example, using Drift’s “Burndown Framework”. If you now have doubts about whether your product delivery organization is up to the task, check John Cutler’s list of 30 issues when considering its health status. You didn’t attend “Mind the Product 2016”? Don’t worry, we have the executive summary for you.

Last but not least, we learn how Didi defeated Uber in China, and ask: Are Facebook, Twitter & co. aging utilities, powering an outdated version of the social internet?

Enjoy a great Sunday!

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Food For Thought #61: Fake Agile, Cargo Cult, Agile Idiots, 50 PM Blogs, Addictive Apps

Age of Product’s Food for Thought of October 2nd, 2016—shared with 4,804 peers—deals with fake agile, façade agile, agile idiots, and cargo cult in the cradle of disruption: Silicon Valley.

We then have fun with a “Scrum master” job posting, get access to notes from the original Agile Manifesto meeting, and are sold on the idea that team building is not just everybody’s concern, but actually can be fun and productive at the same time.

We also understand how to build awesome offline boards and the science behind making apps addictive. Finally, we can fill all the idle time in our lives with content from 50 must-read product management blogs.

Last, but not least, we learn about the endless bombardment of news and gossip, and images that have rendered us manic information addicts.

Enjoy a great Sunday!

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How to Build Offline Boards – Agile Transition (Part 3)

TL;DR: On the Benefits of Offline Boards

Offline boards lift a team’s level of collaboration significantly. They are great information radiators for stakeholders, and they massively benefit from the psychology of getting haptic. Learn the best practices of getting started with your own offline boards in this third post of our series on how to kick-off an agile transition.

Age of Product: Agile Transition - How to create offline boards Agile transition part 3

Note: see the latest version of the board below.

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Food For Thought #60: Remote Agile Teams, Coaching, Become a Better PM, Drift’s Product Framework, How to Go Lean

Age of Product’s Food for Thought of September 25th, 2016—shared with 4,698 peers—asks: Where does agile coaching start and end? In addition, we explore proven tactics to work with remote agile teams, and question the “stable team” dogma.

We then dive deep into an important engineering question for agile teams: Is there something like an agile architecture? We also remind us of typical agile failure patters in organizations, and we learn more about the future of agile delivery.

We also understand how to become better at product management, picking up some tricks from Ellen Chisa and John Cutler. Drift is so kind to share their customer-centric product creation framework with us, and Barry O’Reilly provides great insights in how to transition a large organization to a lean enterprise.

Last, but not least, we learn from The Economist why companies make their products deliberately worse—microeconomics is great, just saying—, and that we should dump the secrecy that surrounds remuneration.

Enjoy a great Sunday!

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