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Food for Agile Thought #367: The Power of Working Together, Product Leadership, No Learning w/o Closing Loops, Decisions under Complexity

by Stefan Wolpers | 2022-11-04 News

TL; DR: The Power of Working Together — Food for Agile Thought #367

Welcome to the 367th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 36,223 peers. This week, we enjoy an interview with Alan Mulally, former President and CEO of the Ford Motor Company, on working together. Also, we point at a critical element of the seemingly dull Deming cycle: incomplete execution loops result in zero learning. Moreover, we explore our need for certainty and how this influences decisions in complex systems, reflect on what it takes to create successful (engineering) teams, and close with a simple thought: When is it time to stop using Scrum?

Then, we describe a Product Owner’s startup journey from an enthusiastic start in a new position to figuring out that he was oversold to fixing the whole thing and how he did so. Also, we point to common backlog issues preventing you from reaping the benefits of the artifact and reflect on product leadership from leadership styles—are you a fixer or an artist?—to necessary traits.

Finally, we revisit Melvin Conway’s epochal discovery, delve into a list of metrics by product type that can inspire you to design your dashboards for discovery, and appreciate the first list of product conferences in 2023.

Food for Agile Thought #367: The Power of Working Together, Product Leadership, No Learning w/o Closing Loops, Decisions under Complexity — Age-of-Product.com

Food for Agile Thought #366: Taming Complexity, Agile Bureaucracy, Mapping Innovation at Scale, Good Activation Rates

by Stefan Wolpers | 2022-10-28 News

TL; DR: Taming Complexity — Food for Agile Thought #366

Welcome to the 366th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 36,188 peers. This week, we identify five practical ways of taming complexity to avoid feature creep and pushing away users and share “examples of organizations that operate beyond the traditional set of agile practices and have been able to break down the bureaucratic hierarchy by adopting radical forms of consent, participation, and self-management.” Also, we have a look at building high-trust teams at Shopify in a remote working world, and suggest shifting “from leading with goals to leading with questions,” referring to Nobel laureate Richard Feynman.

Then, we point out that many companies may run experiments to test product ideas with users and customers; however, they fail to follow up with meaningful action. Following this example of failing innovation, we share lessons learned from a 100-plus-year-old company that is still a market leader, trying to innovate itself out of decline. Moreover, we appreciate a global benchmarking survey on activation rates with participants from Expedia, Grammarly, Canva, Duolingo, and others and examine the Lean UX Canvas in detail, pointing to shortcomings such as the need for a root cause analysis or mapping dependencies.

Finally, we share a primer on why “interviewing stakeholders provides helpful information about their context, [allowing] us to identify business goals they are concerned with, and increases their support.” And we close this edition of the newsletter with a video that explains what it takes to successfully use OKRs and points to common anti-patterns in their application, from tying them to compensation to excessive use.

Food for Agile Thought #366: Taming Complexity, Agile Bureaucracy, Mapping Innovation at Scale, Good Activation Rates — Age-of-Product.com

Food for Agile Thought #365: Fixing Toxic Cultures, From Mission to Strategy to Tasks, Difficult Stakeholders, Go-to-Market Canvas

by Stefan Wolpers | 2022-10-21 News

TL; DR: Fixing Toxic Cultures — Food for Agile Thought #365

Welcome to the 365th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 36,117 peers. This week, we dive into the research on toxicity in the workplace and point to three means of fixing toxic cultures, from leadership to social norms to work design. Also, we detail how to collaborate with challenging people you need to include in your work and argue that principally ruling out discussions on productivity leads in the wrong direction. Additionally, we reflect on critical techniques for any transformation: learning, unlearning, and changing the habits of participants and stakeholders.

Then, we appreciate Lenny Rachitsky’s visualization of the hierarchy of goals in product management, and we share tips & tricks to start or grow your Product CoP, from starting at a minimum viable level to formalizing the CoP to expanding the community management team. Moreover, Janna Bastow shares how the unsuitedness of timeline roadmaps—based on deadlines—helped her design her approach to outcome-based planning.

Finally, we check out a new tool to “help facilitate your thinking when taking new products or ideas to market.” Also, we share a free ebook on identifying what is worth building, from involving your team members to communicating your research results with stakeholders, and we point to six critical elements of successful user journey mapping, from the business goal to mapping a specific user’s experience.

Food for Agile Thought #365: Fixing Toxic Cultures, From Mission to Strategy to Tasks, Difficult Stakeholders, Go-to-Market Canvas — Age-of-Product.com

Food for Agile Thought #364: Empowered Product Teams? Shifting Product Culture, Experimentation, Don’t Let ‘Done’ Be Misunderstood

by Stefan Wolpers | 2022-10-14 News

TL; DR: Empowered Product Teams? — Food for Agile Thought #364

Welcome to the 364th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 36,083 peers. This week, we share the real-life case of an organization embracing Marty Cagan’s ‘empowered product teams (EPT)’ model entirely—with underwhelming results. Moreover, we ask why the concept of “Done” seems to be constantly misunderstood in organizations while we explore why engineering speed drops over time and what you can do about it. Additionally, we delve into an “understanding of management (managing), self-managing, and the manager role.”

Then, we consider that many transformations fail because they lack a focus on product leadership and cover the challenges of managing a product in its mature state, from figuring out whether your product has achieved that stage to the four top-handling strategies. Also, Doc Norton analyzes the path from complexity to our need for certainty to experimentation based on observations, questions, hypotheses, methods, and results, and we illuminate the importance of Sprint Goals for a Scrum team’s success.

Finally, we listen to Allan Kelly proposing a seven-step, lightweight process to develop products, building on his previous work, and appreciate a new exercise from John Cutler to help teams to move from focusing on how they measure to what they measure. Lastly, Kellan Elliott-McCrea reflects on the annual planning ritual in engineering, from the futility of a bottom-up approach to constraints and dependencies.

Food for Agile Thought #364: Empowered Product Teams? Shifting Product Culture, Experimentation, Don’t Let ‘Done’ Be Misunderstood — Age-of-Product.com

Food for Agile Thought #363: Tracking Learnings, Impact Mapping for Fun & Profit, Games as Change Tools, DORA 2022 Accelerate Report

by Stefan Wolpers | 2022-10-07 News

TL; DR: Tracking Learnings, Impact Mapping for Fun & Profit — Food for Agile Thought #363

Welcome to the 363rd edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 36,042 peers. This week, we delve into tracking learnings and what to do with all the “stuff” that continuous product discovery produces. Also, we analyze the utility of agile games as change-supporting tools and share a decision-making approach to scaling, from “don’t scale” to “managing dependencies between work to be done.” Finally, we consider the fact that “simple” covers a vast ground and has the potential to cause confusion and misinterpretation. (You may want to reconsider your KISS approach.)

Then, we advocate getting comfortable with impact mapping when you have a “vague goal but haven’t yet done a good exploration of how to get there.” Again, we also stress the importance of product discovery, given that we all love “our ideas” when building new businesses, before we point out five practices that will enable your team to take full advantage of the Product Backlog as a tactical tool.

Finally, we appreciate Paulo Caroli’s curated list of popular practices for organizing meetings; he also provides a downloadable PDF and a Mural template. On top of that, Andrea Saez shares the “Customer Value Explorer,” a canvas to map customer value against business objectives. Lastly, Google Cloud published the “2022 Accelerate State of DevOps Report,” focusing on security.

Food for Agile Thought #363: Tracking Learnings, Impact Mapping for Fun & Profit, Games as Change Tools, DORA 2022 Accelerate Report — Age-of-Product.com

Food for Agile Thought #362: Agile Military, Product Strategy Failure Patterns, DesignOps 101, SAFe® for Decision Makers

by Stefan Wolpers | 2022-09-30 News

TL; DR: Agile Military — Food for Agile Thought #362

Welcome to the 362nd edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 36,013 peers. This week, we delve into lessons learned on leadership in the agile military. We also read a curated collection of articles, “facts, evidence, and opinions from relevant sources without vested interests” on the usefulness of SAFe® and analyze common reasons why organizations do not reap the expected benefits of becoming Agile. Moreover, we ask: Do we need a CUO, a Chief Unblocking Officer?

Then, we dissect strategy anti-patterns, from committing too early to prospective customers to dodging controversial calls while delving into product leadership, team objectives, and the importance of context and clarity. Also, Jon Moore and Marty Cagan continued their article series, detailing why consequential transformations to product-led organizations require different decision processes, and Kate Kaplan created an overview of the human side of DesignOps: who is doing what and talking to whom?

Finally, we sketch various mental models, concepts, and “laws” helpful to Scrum Masters and agile coaches and delve into the relationship between hypothesis-driven development, validation, and the minimum viable product. Lastly, we learn that just because your Sprint board has columns and cards does not mean it is a Kanban board.