Category: Our posts by Stefan Wolpers

Age of Product’s Food for Thought of August 14th, 2016—shared with 3,929 peers—finally explains why Scrum sucks, sort of, and whether agile is really about change. We learn to better understand Scrum aficionados, and that we have had so far a completely twisted understanding of technical debt.

We also learn how to build teams that can cope with today’s complexity, and that we should avoid falling for the innovator’s bias. The good news is, though, that poker is great training for product management. (I knew it…)

We then dive deep into product roadmap strategies, and that the senior leadership needs to embrace Steve Blank, too, and get out of the building to test new ideas.

Last, but not least, we revisit the state of holacracy at Zappos.com, and get a better understanding of what companies can learn from the human immune system to last at least a century. Enjoy a great Sunday!

Age of Product’s Food for Thought of August 7th, 2016—shared with 3,817 peers—lets you steal agile insights from BMW, and encourages you to redefine your attitude towards technical debt.

We also learn why the CSM certification originally was created, why public roadmaps with release dates are bordering on being moronic, and why the art of product management requires empathy. (I know, you thought that A/B testing and Analytics would suffice—sorry for breaking the bad news…)

We then dive deep into creating happiness at work, and this even seems to work in the software industry, given the lastest DZone poll among developers on agile methods.

Last, but not least, we are getting the price of our product right, at least we could fix it now, and we have an in-depth look at a place where pair programming is the norm, and not an exception. Enjoy a great Sunday!

Age of Product’s Food for Thought of July 31st, 2016—shared with 3,722 peers—explores Scrum frustrations, we ask whether the Agile Manifesto’s time may have come, and why agile scaling frameworks so often are not delivering on their promises.

We also learn eight ways to say “No” with grace & style, and ten proven tactics on how to improve talking to stakeholders.

We then dive deep into dark design patterns, how to make data-backed decisions, and why the lean mantra of “failing fast” shouldn’t be a badge of honor.

Last, but not least, we listen to an interview with Zappo’s transition lead on how a flat, self-managed organization works in practice, and we learn how Pokémon GO’s Hanke turned his company into Earth’s most popular location-based game creator. Enjoy a great Sunday!

Age of Product’s Food for Thought of July 25th, 2016—shared with 3,558 peers—offers a rich summer buffet of topics: Spotify wants to be good at failing, or—one of my favs in this issue—how to apply Scrum to relationships. (Better start stocking Post-Its…) And you should consider joining the revolution and kill backlogs and roadmaps, or at least be inspired to make them usable.

We also learn how to avoid being driven into bankruptcy when estimating software projects, and someone’s actually claiming that sales guys can be more than a coin-driven pain in the [fill in the blanks].

We then dive deep into marketplaces and network effects, kudos to a16z for that, and learn that customer centricity is the new Agile—courtesy of the guy who made Hubspot a unicorn.

Last, but not least, I could not restrain myself from adding at least one Pokémon Go article, and to offset this childish behavior, we end with the story of an underdog, challenging its industry’s behemoth. Will there be a happy ending? Read on and have a great Sunday!

Age of Product’s Food for Thought of July 18th, 2016—shared with 3,410 peers—reports on the recent resignations from the Scrum Alliance board over strategy, and dares to ask the heretic question: Is there actually a place where “Waterfall” might be useful?

We then learn how to kick-off your agile transition—absolutely Waterfall-free—, talk about cognitive biases and how these interfere with our perception of velocity, and check the anti patterns that relate to each of the twelve principles of the agile Manifesto.

We also dive really deep into product strategy—from the role of product vision to herding stakeholder—, understand why yelling at developers offers room for communicative improvements, and we discover seven product owner archetypes.

Last, but not least, we learn about the future of work from the guys at Oxford University, and which industries automation will turn upside down first from McKinsey, and whether we will still have a job in 2021. Have a great Sunday!