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Food for Agile Thought #459: Challenging Assumptions, High-Performing Product Teams, Product Strategy Discovery, The Reason for Agile’s Decline

by Stefan Wolpers | 2024-09-06 News

TL; DR: Challenging Assumptions — Food for Agile Thought #459

Welcome to the 459th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 42,779 peers. This week, John Cutler suggests structuring organizations to become comfortable with challenging assumptions and thrive amid changing conditions, while Simon Powers examines culture’s impact on individuals and Agile’s decline. Bob Galen emphasizes the shift from rigid frameworks to flexible, context-driven agile patterns, Ted Neward highlights common ‘manager antipatterns’ in leadership, and Gustavo Razzetti stresses intellectual humility to prevent doubling down on poor decisions.

Next, Melissa Suzuno highlights how Botify’s transition to product-trio-supported enhanced collaboration and decision-making, while Todd Lankford offers a 5-step guide for teams to prioritize user needs over excessive planning. Stephanie Leue shares her approach to building high-performing teams, and Vlad Loktev, interviewed by Lenny Rachitski, discusses leadership insights from his decade at Airbnb, emphasizing chaos, impact, and balance in product development.

Lastly, Jacob Bennett shares his structured approach to work estimation for better outcomes, and Roman Pichler introduces product strategy discovery to minimize failure risk. Also, Pim de Morree critiques hierarchical team structures, advocating for more collaborative models, and Chris Stone presents the ‘Days Since Last’ metric for driving team accountability. Finally, Paul Graham reflects on the importance of a ‘founder mode’ approach to scaling companies, challenging conventional management wisdom.

Food for Agile Thought #459: Challenging Assumptions, High-Performing Product Teams, Product Strategy Discovery, The Reason for Agile’s Decline — Age-of-Product.com

Food for Agile Thought #458: Engineers in Customer Support, Product & Tech Debt, Product Launch Mistakes, Cynics Rarely Succeed

by Stefan Wolpers | 2024-08-30 News

TL; DR: Engineers in Customer Support — Food for Agile Thought #458

Welcome to the 458th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 42,762 peers. This week, Ian Vanagas advocates involving engineers in customer support to boost product quality through faster feedback and ownership. Maarten Dalmijn identifies six common pitfalls in using spikes in Agile, and Jamil Zaki warns that workplace cynicism diminishes success, while Joost Minnaar attributes Enterprise’s success to decentralization and a customer-centric approach. Lastly, Andy Cleff emphasizes the importance of leadership virtues—courage, resilience, alliances, gratitude, and vulnerability—in driving continuous improvement and change.

Next, Gregor Ojstersek and Robert Ta provide engineers with strategies to convince Product Managers to prioritize technical debt by aligning it with business goals. Aakash Gupta and Jason Knight shed light on the complexities of B2B product management, stressing the need for PMs to balance revenue-driven features and broader strategic influence, and Aatir Abdul Rauf identifies 15 crucial mistakes to avoid during product launches. Moreover, Yuri Berchenko offers guidance on optimizing subscription product pricing through regular adjustments and customer segmentation.

Lastly, Domenic Edwards presents a detailed list of essential Product Manager tasks, adaptable to any organization’s needs. Dirk Lässig offers strategies for managing “evil dependencies” in software development, focusing on minimization, mitigation, and coordination, and Gustavo Razzetti explains how teams can rapidly build trust by fostering transparency and clarity. Also, Mario Caropreso stresses the need to balance operational excellence with project delivery. Finally, Michael H. Goitein advocates shifting from a “waiter” mindset to a “doctor” approach in product development, emphasizing user-focused continuous discovery.

Food for Agile Thought #458: Engineers in Customer Support, Product & Tech Debt, Product Launch Mistakes, Cynics Rarely Succeed - Age-of-Product.com

Food for Agile Thought #457: Blaming Agile for Lacking Innovation, Structuring Product Organizations, Cost of Delay, Unhealthy Team Tension

by Stefan Wolpers | 2024-08-23 News

TL; DR: Blaming Agile — Food for Agile Thought #457

Welcome to the 457th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 42,744 peers. This week, Rupert Goodwins critiques Moxie Marlinspike’s view of blaming Agile, emphasizing innovation’s evolution and the need for fresh thinking, while Jim Highsmith urges a shift from productivity metrics to value creation. Dave Rooney highlights simple defect management, using an analog tool, and Jeff Gothelf advocates for trust-based leadership. Following up, Ant Murphy stresses the importance of healthy team tension and collaboration over fear for creativity and the effectiveness of teams.

Next, John Cutler and Leah Tharin emphasize the need for a well-defined operating model in product organizations, focusing on team structure and accountability during growth. David Pereira stresses aligning strategy, discovery, and delivery for value creation in product management, and Melissa Suzuno highlights Ramsey Solutions’ engineer rotation in product trios for balanced skill development. Also, Richard Mironov explains how a company’s price point shapes its organizational behavior, especially in B2C versus B2B environments.

Lastly, Johanna Rothman discusses using the Cost of Delay to prioritize work, emphasizing determining if the work is still valuable first. Chris Stone introduces the Lean Experiment Canvas, a tool for teams to design and test hypotheses in Retrospectives. Then, Jenny Wanger provides a checklist for influencing product managers, focusing on understanding their challenges and simplifying changes, and Rolf Mistelbacher highlights how generative AI helps creators rapidly prototype by bridging skill gaps. Finally, Shane Gibson, Murray Robinson, and Gene Kim discuss the importance of organizational wiring, including leadership and communication, in fostering high-performing DevOps and agile teams.

Food for Agile Thought #457: Blaming Agile for Lacking Innovation, Structuring Product Organizations, Cost of Delay, Unhealthy Team Tension — Age-of-Product.com

Food for Agile Thought #456: Strategy Creation, Product Model & Outsourcing, Agile Transformation Pitfalls, Derisking Daily Work

by Stefan Wolpers | 2024-08-16 News

TL; DR: Strategy Creation — Food for Agile Thought #456

Welcome to the 456th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 42,728 peers. This week, Rob Lambert offers a detailed guide to effective strategy creation, while Reddit user henbitcookies1 questions the value of Scrum, seeking ways to reduce its burdens. Willem-Jan Ageling identifies common pitfalls in Agile transformations, and Tobias Berggren Jensen and Elisabeth Naima Mikkelsen explore the challenges of radically decentralized self-managing organizations. Also, Todd Lankford advocates for abandoning upfront commitments in favor of continuous learning to achieve better product development outcomes.

Next, Marty Cagan and Josh Kerievsky discuss how outsourcing agencies can adopt the product model to enhance collaboration and client outcomes. Richard Mironov argues for retiring the term “prioritization” in favor of more precise communication between stakeholders and product teams. Additionally, UserPilot outlines strategies for identifying and solving customer problems, emphasizing continuous research and effective onboarding, and Roman Pichler explores the benefits and challenges of involving stakeholders in product teams, stressing strategic involvement and the role of coaching in improving collaboration and decision-making.

Lastly, on the personal side, Wes Kao shares strategies to mitigate risks at work by asking critical questions and preempting issues, and Lenny Rachitsky offers ten time management techniques to enhance productivity and reduce stress. Paweł Huryn introduces the Assumption Prioritization Canvas, refining traditional methods for prioritizing assumptions in Continuous Product Discovery, while Martijn Oost critiques the “Team Topologies” framework, advocating for context-specific strategies rooted in foundational principles like Conway’s Law. Finally, Gustavo Razzetti emphasizes the power of team culture over company culture, highlighting its role in driving change and fostering collaboration.

Food for Agile Thought #456: Strategy Creation, Product Model & Outsourcing, Agile Transformation Pitfalls, Derisking Daily Work — Age-of-Product.com

Hands-on Agile’s Upcoming Transformation

by Stefan Wolpers | 2024-08-12 Agile and ScrumNews

TL; DR: Reinventing Hands-on Agile

For years, I have supported the Agile community with a wealth of free resources and opportunities for growth. From the Food for Agile Thought newsletter to the Scrum Master Salary Report to tools like the Scrum Master Job GPT, and from ebooks like the Scrum Master Interview Questions Guide to the Hands-on Agile Slack and Meetup groups, I’ve consistently provided value without asking for anything in return than your support and participation. As for all communities, there is a simple rule: the more, the merrier; the benefit of being a member increases with the size of the community and those who contribute themselves. Giving back to the community is a win-win proposition.

However, the landscape is changing. The recent economic downturn and a noticeable backlash against Scrum have presented new challenges. As a result, the business model that has sustained these efforts—financing by subsidies through my Professional Scrum classes—has become increasingly unsustainable. Consequently, my approach to continuing to support this incredible community will need to evolve, too.

The Upcoming Transformation of Hands-on Agile: Embracing change by creating a new community and relaunching BarCamps — Age-of-Product.com

Food for Agile Thought #455: Creative Destruction Canvas, Identifying Digital Products, Descaling for Fun and Profit, Perfectionism

by Stefan Wolpers | 2024-08-09 News

TL; DR: Identifying Digital Product — Food for Agile Thought #455

Welcome to the 455th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 42,701 peers. This week, Jeff Patton explores how identifying digital products is crucial for adopting a product operating model, while Esther Derby, Diana Larsen, and David Horowitz discuss updates in their second edition of Agile Retrospectives. Barry Overeem addresses Agile Coach burnout and the importance of creating supportive environments, and Henry E. Pozzetta examines the impact of cognitive biases on Agile, offering strategies to mitigate them. Also, Shane Gibson and Murray Robinson interview Arnold Stroobach about the Buurtzorg model, showcasing the success of small, self-managed teams in delivering high-quality, cost-effective care.

Next, Janna Bastow and Leah Tharin discuss the evolving role of product managers in the age of AI, stressing that AI should enhance rather than replace human judgment. Todd Lankford offers a three-step guide to building effective product teams by fostering ownership and adaptability, and Alexandre Serrurier shares his experiences at ManoMano, highlighting the critical role of ProductOps in optimizing product environments with strong leadership and structured initiatives. Moreover, Marty Cagan clarifies that adopting a product model doesn’t require reorganization; organizational design should align with business strategy and product vision.

Lastly, Philipp Pelka and Johannes Schartau introduce the Creative Destruction Canvas, a tool to help teams trim bloated products by removing unnecessary features. Aakash Gupta delivers a comprehensive analysis of the product analytics market, emphasizing its importance in product management, and Gregor Ojstersek and Jordan Cutler discuss the detrimental effects of perfectionism on engineering productivity, advocating for progress over perfection. Then, dynomight7 explores why advice often fails, offering strategies to enhance its effectiveness through simplicity and practicality, and, finally, Pavel Samsonov examines Nike’s costly reliance on easily gathered data, stressing the importance of qualitative insights in product strategy.