TL; DR: Product Waste, Little’s Law & Forecasts — Food for Agile Thought #344
Welcome to the 344th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 35,342 peers. This week, we delve into the patterns of product waste resulting from an ‘organizational and conceptual gap’ between product and engineering teams on the one side and sales and marketing teams on the other side. Also, we outline how to support your teams emotionally in challenging times, and we visualize the mental model of developers as systems thinkers, from inner and outer loops to flow states to context switching. Moreover, we reflect on those who ‘dodge gatekeepers and dance around policies, doing whatever it takes to get the job done.’
Then, we provide insight into Stripe’s product strategy, resulting in a ‘microcosm of product-led, developer-centric growth.’ Moreover, we guide the reader from JTBD to user-centered design to the CCVC framework, and we listen to Chad McAllister interviewing Mike Mace on how to get customer insights quickly to counter demands from your resident HiPPO or a pushy sales team.
Also, we show how the application of Little’s Law can support your team’s forecast quality, and, finally, we address the widespread belief that Kanban is nothing more than some columns on a board and a handful of cards to push around, resulting in highly complex boards of little value.
