Food for Agile Thought #318: Kodak’s Shirley Cards, Prediction & Uncertainty in Product, Change Agent Leadership, Dark Side of Metrics

TL; DR: Kodak’s Shirley Cards, Dark Side of Metrics — Food for Agile Thought #318

Welcome to the 318th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 33,565 peers. This week, we tell the story of a lack of diversity and its consequences for humanity, photography, and product design: Kodak’s Shirley Cards. Also, we share a long list of improv games to support team building and help prevent burnout and fatigue, and we point at five possible values you could provide when asked for an estimate, from optimistic to risk-averse to worst-case estimates.

We then ask whether uncertainty might establish a better foundation for product discovery and product design, and we listen to Melissa Perri interviewing John Cutler on the importance of product education. Moreover, we advocate thinking of ‘time as a blade, a tool that can sharpen focus and trim waste,’ detailing Honeycomb’s approach to planning, and we reflect on how to overcome the annual planning waste while pointing at the reasons continuous planning fails in practice.

Lastly, we name the dark side of metrics: Companies expose themselves to metric corruption when optimizing those at the cost of all else, and we share an epic list of resources to further your change agent skills.

Food for Agile Thought #318: Kodak’s Shirley Cards, Prediction & Uncertainty in Product, Change Agent Leadership, Dark Side of Metrics — Age-of-Product.com
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Food for Agile Thought #317: Underperforming Dev Team, PO vs. PM Madness, Failure Cultures Reward Failure, 2022 Product Conference List

TL; DR: Underperforming Dev Team, PO vs. PM Madness — Food for Agile Thought #317

Welcome to the 317th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 33,471 peers. This week, we share advice on how to support an underperforming dev team. Moreover, we listen to Richard Kasperowski and Woody Zuill talking about leadership, and we reflect on the agile mantra of failing fast. Could it be wrong?

We then delve into the Product Manager vs. Product Owner debate; we express concern about the rise of the third class beyond makers and managers in product teams: the process people, and we share Teresa Torres’ first version of her 2022 conference list.

Lastly, we explain three simple ways of getting a grip on splitting user stories, and we point out a surprising truth: the number of people needed for an interview study is often smaller than expected.

Food for Agile Thought #317: Underperforming Dev Team, PO vs. PM Madness, Failure Cultures Reward Failure, 2022 Product Conference List — Age-of-Product.com
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Food for Agile Thought #316: Fixed Scope & Date, Yet Agile? Taking a Wedge to the Market, Agile Hangover, Value Stream Mapping Best Practices

TL; DR: Fixed Scope, Yet Agile? Agile Hangover — Food for Agile Thought #316

Welcome to the 316th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 33,419 peers. This week, we ask: Fixed scope & date, yet there is agility? Moreover, we sum up some observations regarding agile transformations, from the beginning of the party to the probably ‘inevitable.’ We also list five stupid yet still popular management practices, from stack ranking to open offices, and we share seven principles and five steps to enhance your change leadership skills.

We then delve into a successful product strategy pattern that made Shopify, Tesla, or Airbnb successful: wedge yourself into the market, then expand, and ask: “What happens when your biggest strength and greatest asset as a product development organization becomes your biggest weakness?” Additionally, we elaborate on the Use Case Frequency Spectrum and how it applies to growing products that customers use once a year or less.

Lastly, we share a helpful infographic with the core elements of VSM to kickstart continuous improvement and a framework to improve user research, leading to better-informed decision-making.

Food for Agile Thought #316: Fixed Scope & Date, Yet Agile? Taking a Wedge to the Market, Agile Hangover, Value Stream Mapping Best Practices — Age-of-Product.com
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Food for Agile Thought #315: Fulfilling Working Experiences, Sustainable Disruption, Toxic Company Culture, Jira: Razor Blades?

TL; DR: Fulfilling Working Experiences, Sustainable Disruption — Food for Agile Thought #315

Welcome to the 315th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 33,364 peers. This week, we will learn how kindness, consideration, and respect can transform any team into a fulfilling working experience. We also look at using our current knowledge to nudge the post-pandemic world into a better place. Finally, for the sake of contrast, we also list six attributes of a dysfunctional corporate culture, from information hoarding to recreational complaining to high top performer turnover.

We then refer to Star Trek’s transporter tech to visualize software creation in an agile context. (Okay, it is about many backlog items turning into a releasable Increment.) Moreover, we delve into successful decision-making, pointing at drivers, constraints, and floats, and we propose a pivot for startups from technical diligence to product diligence before funding rounds and deliver a framework for the task.

Lastly, we analyze the evaporating illusion of long-term planning when you start using OKRs to target outcomes, and we summarize the whole story point thingy. (Maybe, some people will learn this time.)

Food for Agile Thought #315: Fulfilling Working Experiences, Sustainable Disruption, Toxic Company Culture, Jira: Razor Blades? Age-of-Product.com
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Food for Agile Thought #314: Tech Revolutions, Benefits of Negative Feedback, Better Scrum w/ Cards & Games, The Art of Interviewing

TL; DR: Tech Revolutions, Benefits of Negative Feedback — Food for Agile Thought #314

Welcome to the 314th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 33,281 peers. This week, we offer a summary of Carlota Perez’s 2002 book ‘Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital;’ a must-read to understand innovation and disruption. We also share free cards and games to help Scrum teams get better at using Scrum to its full potential, and we explain the critical importance of pre-mortems for unearthing unknown unknowns regularly.

We then refer to Elon Musk and the importance of welcoming negative feedback, whether some egos are bruised in the process or not, and listen to an interview with Ash Maurya — Mr. Lean Canvas — on enabling continuous improvement innovation. Moreover, we introduce the subtleties of learning when practicing user interviews, from the basics to common mistakes, providing a guide to improve your interviewing skills.

Lastly, we share a list of free innovation tools, from the ‘Innovation Maturity Assessment’ to the ‘Eight I’s of Infinite Innovation,’ and we delve into the most common mistakes made when gathering data from agile teams by employing surveys and how to avoid them.

Food for Agile Thought #314: Tech Revolutions, Benefits of Negative Feedback, Better Scrum w/ Cards & Games, The Art of Interviewing — Age-of-Product.com
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Food for Agile Thought #313: The Problem-Solving Trap, Suitably Detailed Roadmap Items, Beloved Definition of Done, Miro’s Product Alignment Framework

TL; DR: The Problem-Solving Trap, Beloved DoD — Food for Agile Thought #313

Welcome to the 313th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 33,207 peers. This week, we offer valuable advice on staying cognitively open, thus avoiding the problem of killing new ideas too early while being open to feedback at the same time. We also point at five good reasons to embrace the DoD, from having a quality standard to simplifying communication to providing clarity, and we delve into a well-known fallacy of decision making and how we confuse probability with propensity.

We then share a compact introduction to user stories, covering the “card, conversation, confirmation” approach to templates to the importance of keeping the Pareto principle in mind when creating new things. Moreover, we walk you through the appropriate levels of detailing product roadmap items, from “thing happening now” to “far-off things” to avoid creating noise, and we talk about bugs, refactoring, and their implication on product strategy and the flow within your product team.

Lastly, we talk about metrics and goals on the path to becoming an agile organization, and we introduce the tool Miro used to weather the pandemic-driven massive influx of new users by structuring product discovery and retrospectives in the process.

Food for Agile Thought #313: The Problem-Solving Trap, Suitably Detailed Roadmap Items, Beloved Definition of Done, Miro’s Product Alignment Framework — Age-of-Product.com
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