Food for Thought’s issue #101—shared with 10,065 peers—focusses on how to get ‘agile’ to work in your organization. We learn that an old OSS manual on do-it-yourself organizational sabotage still sounds very familiar today. We then get advice on how C-level manager may become more agile, and why we should replace Taylorism’s mindset of command & control with trust.
We also listen to John Cutler explaining his feature factory concept and embrace the importance of mental models to improve the way we learn. Speaking of stepping up the game, you can do so, too, with your next set of A/B tests. Kevin Shanahan provides a step-by-step guide.
Finally, we follow Piyush Tantia when he describes a new way for engineering applications and human interactions: behavioral design.
Food for Thought’s issue #100—shared with 9,957 peers—focusses on how to figure out what to build. We learn how to apply continuous product discovery, how to achieve product-market fit, how to use empathy mapping, and why a hypotheses backlog helps to avoid cluttering the product backlog.
We also discover Scrum misconceptions by analyzing job ads for scrum masters, and what cross-functional means with regard qualifications of individual team members. Moreover, we understand ways to improve your Kanban—by Mr. Scrum Jeff Sutherland himself—, and how the principles of the agile manifesto can be matched to change management.
Finally, there is an entertaining interview with Atlassian’s head of R&D on messiness, anarchy, structure, and what all of this has to do with creativity.
Food for Thought’s issue #99—shared with 9,744 peers—deals with hiring scrum masters, why applying the theory of constraints improves the agile mindset, and why a passive-aggressive behavior is bad for business, and not just for your culture. We also learn how to deal with difficult stakeholders, and what the ‘mental model’ fuzz is all about.
On the product side, we understand the power of proper agile roadmaps for collaboration and communication across an organization, and how a successful lean and agile journey looks like. (Courtesy of Telia TV in Sweden.)
Finally, Sebastian Deterding, a research fellow at the Digital Creativity Labs at the University of York, challenges us to consider the moral dimensions of our work as product people in a beautifully narrated presentation from MTP Engage.
Food for Thought’s issue #98—shared with 9,655 peers—deals with understanding complexity and agile transition challenges. Finally, there is an introduction to Cynefin that’s readable. We also learn that abandoning ‘project thinking’ and embracing ‘product thinking’ is at the heart of transforming an organization.
We then turn to Cost of Delay and its tricky quantification problems. And Ron Jeffries muses about a new software development framework.
On the product side, we cherish an epic curriculum of 75-plus product management related articles, and we get to know the difference between the product manager and the product owner role.
Finally, we gain insight into prototype planning by user story mapping, and we address how to overcome passive resistance from stakeholders.
Food for Thought’s issue #97—shared with 9,483 peers—deals with abandoning Scrum in favor of Kanban, how effective teams work, and why they need psychological safety to get the job done.
We also try to understand why the people from the executive level—despite their best intentions—fail to understand agile, and what enterprise agility is all about.
On the product side, we come to understand why crappy product roadmaps still exist. (Let’s start at the requirements level, shall we?) Perhaps, a public roadmap might solve the problem, check out 50 plus of those aggregated by Federico Wengi.
Finally, we have a sneak preview at the first chapter of ‘Product Leadership’ by Martin Eriksson and Nate Walkingshaw.
Age of Product’s Food for Thought of June 18th, 2017—shared with 9,329 peers—clarifies why agile is by no means a silver bullet, and why there are no Scrum heroes. (Yub, Scrum is a rockstar free zone as there is no I in ‘team.’)
We then learn about flow theory, the theory of constraints, systems thinking, as well as lead and cycle time first hand from the example of Henry Ford and the Model T.
On the product side, we come to understand that measuring of what customers want is impossible, and that ‘idea debt’ needs to eliminated to be creative. We also learn when to say and how to say no to our bosses.
