TL; DR: Product Thinking — Food for Agile Thought #401
Welcome to the 401st edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 47,937 peers. This week, we join Murray Robinson, Shane Gibson, and Jeff Patton to delve into product thinking. Also, we highlight misconceptions around Agile adoption, clarifying that the term “faster” is not mentioned in definitions of “Agile” or “agility” before we move to combine Wardley Mapping, Domain-Driven Design (DDD), and Team Topologies to develop “adaptive socio-technical systems.” Moreover, Peter Stevens created an informative and concise 15-minute animated presentation introducing Scrum.
Then, we explain why opting for agile coaches instead of product coaches as a cost-saving alternative often falls short, and John Cutler suggests that product leaders must establish their product’s investment and governance framework to avoid one being imposed on them. Moreover, we emphasize the importance of finding product-market fit in a startup, pointing to a comprehensive guide that provides valuable lessons from six pivots and achieving product-market fit. Another goodie comes from Paweł Huryn, as he delves into the implications, exploring the distinction between product management and product marketing.
Finally, we highlight the importance of post-mortem meetings to uncover lessons from failed projects. Learn more about running them, including their definition, timing, benefits, conducting methods, etc. The DORA 4 metrics, derived from Accelerate, help engineering teams understand what it means to operate as an elite team. However, there is a problem with typical implementations. Lastly, Dean Peters explores how ChatGPT can aid product managers in formulating user stories, providing a fictional example of a product manager, and we take another shot at the perils of an oversized Product Backlog.