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Food for Agile Thought #329: #NoCoaching, Opportunity Assessment, Supporting Team Decisions, What Is Good Monthly Churn?

by Stefan Wolpers | 2022-02-11 News

TL; DR: #NoCoaching — Food for Agile Thought #329

Welcome to the 329th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 34,503 peers. This week, we address #NoCoaching, pointing at situations and probable consequences when your work as a coach is rejected. We also elaborate on the benefits of having a capable Scrum Master at your side and what you can do as a product mensch if there is none, and we point out critical knowledge to become agile: maximizing the amount of work not done is essential.

We then provide a pragmatic, hands-on approach to deciding which ideas are worth further attention, and we delve into the effects of rushing to work before clarifying your team’s vision and mission. Moreover, we share Tendayi Viki’s take on how to move from being a corporate pirate—restrained by red tape—to a valued explorer, appreciated by the organization.

Lastly, we point at numbers for healthy (vs. deathly) churn for B2C and B2B companies serving various markets. Also, we explain why the habit of under-promising and over-delivering regarding OKRs is an anti-pattern, not a qualification, and we share an epic guide on how to ace remote work and why improving your writing skills is essential.

Food for Agile Thought #329: #NoCoaching, Opportunity Assessment, Supporting Team Decisions, What Is Good Monthly Churn? Age-of-Product.com

Food for Agile Thought #328: KPI Trees, The Product-Led Process, Scaling Agility in Real-Life, Experimenting w/ Netflix

by Stefan Wolpers | 2022-02-04 News

TL; DR: KPI Trees, Scaling Agility in Real-Life — Food for Agile Thought #328

Welcome to the 328th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 34,452 peers. This week, we advocate a simple tool to ‘help you foster alignment, transparency, and focus in your product organization:’ The KPI tree. Also, we share six real-life examples of extraordinary organizations and their path to business agility, from Vanguard to Bosch to Paypal, and we point at a simple lesson: You may likely accrue more technical debt first before efforts to reduce it bear fruit.

We then consider an idea about the ‘right’ way to build products by steepening the learning curve while helping customers reap benefits earlier. Next, Board of Innovation summarizes how it invalidated 100-plus business ideas last year, pointing at the importance of identifying weak spots early. Moreover, we enjoy a detailed history of Netflix, pointing at all the experiments it took to lift them to today’s level, and we reflect on probable anti-patterns when organizations start aligning humanity and the development process utilizing a seemingly intuitive practice.

Lastly, we learn from Dave West how his job as CEO unintentionally seems to affect his role as a stakeholder. Also, Shane Hastie interviews Patricia Kong of Scrum.org on how collecting empirical evidence supports decision-making in complex environments and how EBM supports that approach.

Food for Agile Thought #328: KPI Trees, The Product-Led Process, Scaling Agility in Real-Life, Experimenting w/ Netflix — Age-of-Product.com

Food for Agile Thought #327: Improve Learning and Maximize Retention, Failing Innovation Experiments, Value of an Agile Coach, PMs Don‘t Need Domain Knowledge?

by Stefan Wolpers | 2022-01-28 News

TL; DR: Improve Learning, Failing Experiments — Food for Agile Thought #327

Welcome to the 327th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 34,305 peers. This week, we explore the most critical meta-skill a knowledge worker can acquire: Learning how to learn by improving learning itself. Also, we ask: How do you assess the value of an agile coach, and we delve into the first principles of leadership in complex environments.

We then pursue the thought that a lack of domain knowledge forces a product manager to improve product discovery to compensate, thus contributing to value creation, or not? Moreover, we detail seven pitfalls of experimentation and validation and how to avoid them, and we explore UX designers’ many difficulties and challenges in SAFe®-driven organizations.

Lastly, we appreciate Jeff Gothelf sharing a ‘box-by-box breakdown of how to use the [Business Model Canvas and Lean UX Canvas ] as complementary tools in your business and product development process,’ and we suggest a formula to help you account for your team’s innovation efforts.

Food for Agile Thought #327: Improve Learning and Maximize Retention, Failing Innovation Experiments, Value of an Agile Coach, PMs Don‘t Need Domain Knowledge? — Age-of-Product.com

Food for Agile Thought #326: Enabling Great Work, Experimenting w/ Customers, The Better Listener, The Experimentation Mindset

by Stefan Wolpers | 2022-01-21 News

TL; DR: Enabling Great Work, The Better Listener — Food for Agile Thought #326

Welcome to the 326th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 34,017 peers. This week, we point out the patterns enabling great work. We also reflect on the essential pre-requisite of a high-performing team: Team members ‘feel free to express their questions, concerns, ideas, and mistakes,’ and we suggest building our listening mindset to escape the ‘surface listening’ trap.

We then delve into the need to balance discovery & delivery while establishing strong ethics of testing business ideas and share an approach to creating an experimentation mindset when the target organization values structure and process. Moreover, we have an interesting look at the top-down world of product management, where the team is just executing what’s put in front of them.

Lastly, we explain why product roadmaps may be roads; however, they are no road maps, and we try a simple quiz to get the self-management discussion going: Where do we stand as a team?

Food for Agile Thought #326: Patterns Enabling Great Work, Experimenting w/ Customers, The Better Listener, The Experimentation Mindset — Age-of-Product.com

Food for Agile Thought #325: Influencing w/o Authority, Leaps of Product Faith, DoorDash’s Dog Food, Coach—Don’t Fix

by Stefan Wolpers | 2022-01-14 News

TL; DR: Influencing Without Authority, Leaps of Product Faith — Food for Agile Thought #325

Welcome to the 325th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 33,942 peers. This week, we delve into influencing without authority, from framing to social proof to inception to storytelling. We also suggest that engineers also need to improve strategic decision-making skills instead of only focusing on technical execution skills, and we shed light on structural and instantiated dependencies and how they impede flow in an organization that scales agile practices.

We then reflect on a recent statement of a CPO: ‘I wouldn’t call it blind faith, but more like informed faith. […] But, really, there’s a leap of faith involved.’ We believe that DoorDash’s recent decision to have everyone ‘eat DoorDash’s own dog food’ once a month is merely empathy theater. Also, we point at the benefits of formalizing learning plans to keep your skills as a product person competitive and share how to do so.

Lastly, we explore the 9th principle of the Agile Manifesto: ‘Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.’ Moreover, we point out four beneficial leadership coaching techniques, from outcome shift to uncovering limiting beliefs.

Food for Agile Thought #325: Influencing w/o Authority, Leaps of Product Faith, DoorDash’s Dog Food, Coach, Don’t Fix — Age-of-Product.com

Dear Copyright Infringers: The Takedown Notices Have Been Filed

by Stefan Wolpers | 2022-01-09 News

I know, creating original content consumes a lot of time, resulting in massive opportunity costs, so why not take a shortcut and copy it?

Just let me mention that I file a takedown notice with Google whenever you do this because of copyright infringement.

Why would you care about this process, namely ITSkillsYouNeed.com?

Because approved takedown notices result in real trouble for your domain authority. Every time you copy my content, it will be harder to find your site via Google. In other words: It is a pretty effective way of shooting yourself in the foot digitally. Just saying, don’t complain later, okay?