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Food for Agile Thought #293: Success Metrics, Maker-User-Gap, Strategy and Outcomes, Stakeholder Map Templates

by Stefan Wolpers | 2021-05-23 News

TL; DR: Success Metrics, Maker-User-Gap—Food for Agile Thought #293

Welcome to the 293rd edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 31,307 peers. This week, we delve into why picking success metrics is so challenging yet critical, and Henrik Kniberg shares some vital insights after years of working with Spotify, LEGO, and Minecraft development. Also, we point at how sociotechnical architecture and systems thinking are key to enabling product thinking in organizations.

We then share an eight-step strategy workshop; we understand why ‘going deep’ is Stripe’s core product principle, and we wonder why some product managers hold on to timeline-based planning while product roadmaps have evolved so rapidly in recent years.

Lastly, we analyze the idea of ‘autonomy’ in the workplace, particularly regarding two challenges: the air sandwich and politics.

Food for Agile Thought #293: Success Metrics, Maker-User-Gap, Strategy and Outcomes, Stakeholder Map Templates — Age-of-Product.com

Food for Agile Thought #292: The Bottom of Agile, Efficiency is the Enemy, Nijute to Solve Impossible Problems, The Velocity Forecasting Spreadsheet

by Stefan Wolpers | 2021-05-16 News

TL; DR: Bottom of Agile, Velocity Forecasting Spreadsheet—Food for Agile Thought #292

Welcome to the 292nd edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 31,223 peers. This week, we get to the Bottom of Agile; we point at the benefits of journaling regarding modern leadership competencies, and we delve into the advantages and psychology of slack time. Additionally, we appreciate Troy Magennis’ updated ‘Throughput or Velocity Forecasting Spreadsheet’ for easy Monte Carlo forecasting of agile work.

We then address five PO anti-patterns what you can do about them; we introduce the three-step ‘Not Impossible, Just Too Expensive’ approach to problem-solving, and we point at the danger of merely copying what other companies do without understanding the why behind them.

Lastly, we note that Lean UX principles such as customer centricity or evidence-based decision making do not exist in SAFe. (See also: Survey Results: The Net Promoter Score® of SAFe® as a Scaling Framework is –52.)

Food for Agile Thought #292: The Bottom of Agile, Efficiency is the Enemy, Nijute to Solve Impossible Problems, The Velocity Forecasting Spreadsheet — Age-of-Product.com

Food for Agile Thought #291: Hypotheses Validation, Authentic Feedback, Measuring Productivity, The Art of Removing Features

by Stefan Wolpers | 2021-05-09 News

TL; DR: Hypotheses Validation, Measuring Productivity—Food for Agile Thought #291

Welcome to the 291st edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 31,152 peers. This week, we delve into hypotheses validation, and we shine a light on why it is often hard to have an authentic conversation and what you can do about it. We also stress the importance of modeling and measuring culture and analyze critical problems at the leadership level of organizations that result in a 70 % failure rate of transformations.

We then wonder why so many product managers want to create strategies while we derive all the signals for further product growth from the operational work in the trenches. We appreciate a new ebook on dealing with difficult stakeholders and critical situations, and we learn a simple approach to measuring team productivity: Don’t touch velocity!

Lastly, we learn that Gitlab identified a new DevOps maturity model.

Food for Agile Thought #291: Hypotheses Validation, Authentic Feedback, Measuring Productivity, The Art of Removing Features — Age-of-Product.com

Food for Agile Thought #290: Design Thinking Scrum, Product vs. Project Teams, Agile Leadership Practice Library, Disrupting Disrupters

by Stefan Wolpers | 2021-05-02 News

TL; DR: Design Thinking Scrum—Food for Agile Thought #290

Welcome to the 290th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 31,083 peers. This week, we delve into Design Thinking Scrum, and we note that most frameworks pay a lot of attention to decision making, less, though, to understanding decisions. We also share the agile leadership practice library, and we point at the12th principle of the Agile Manifesto: A self-managing team also needs to be a self-learning team.

We then point at the advantages of product teams over project teams, and we learn when and how to get involved with Lean, Agile, and Design Thinking regarding your product lifecycle. Moreover, we enjoy describing a hiring process based on auditioning, not interviewing, the best candidates.

Lastly, we appreciate ThoughtWork’s latest version of its tech radar, and we ask: Who Disrupts the Disrupters?

Food for Agile Thought #290: Design Thinking Scrum, Product vs. Project Teams, Agile Leadership Practice Library, Disrupting Disrupters — Age-of-Product.com

Food for Agile Thought #289: FAST Agile, OKRs’ Dark Side, PM Competency Framework, Breaking into Product Management

by Stefan Wolpers | 2021-04-25 News

TL; DR: FAST Agile, OKRs’ Dark Side—Food for Agile Thought #289

Welcome to the 289th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 31,016 peers. This week, we delve into FAST Agile to fill the gap for a purely complex agile method. We examine the Boeing 737 Max crashes through the lens of industry and corporate culture, and we point at OKRs’ dark side—their dual-use nature and the inherent prospective misuse potential in the hands of traditional performance management protagonists.

We then share the open-source template of the ‘Product Management Competency Framework;’ we explore the topic of design justice, and we enjoy a teacher’s story of breaking into product management without a CS degree.

Lastly, we point at the pre-requisits of shifting from a traditional management style to genuinely remote leadership, from remote-first to avoiding the rookie mistake of applying controlling tools.

Food for Agile Thought #289: FAST Agile, OKRs’ Dark Side, PM Competency Framework, Breaking into Product Management —Age-of-Product.com

Food for Agile Thought #288: Product-Led Is Also Bad, Improving Code Reviews, 4 Questions From CTO to CPO, Rapid Design Thinking

by Stefan Wolpers | 2021-04-18 News

TL; DR: Product-Led Is Also Bad, From CTO to CPO—Food for Agile Thought #288

Welcome to the 288th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 30,952 peers. This week, we counter the popular complaint from product folks that their organization’s sales-drivenness impedes the creation of better products. We also explore the secret ingredients of building high-performance teams, and we suggest a few improvements for a critical step in creating useful software.

We then answer four questions regarding modern product management, from skills to metrics to how engineering can be supportive. Moreover, we share a guide on how to figure out the level of customer satisfaction that allows for sustained growth, and we select product metrics that matter—beyond the usual suspects like NPS.

Lastly, we follow Bill Wake’s reflections on “half-waterfall,” a blend of practices based on upfront planning and agile.