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.
Age of Product’s Food for Thought of June 11th, 2017—shared with 9,176 peers—doubts that Jeff Sutherland’s “Twice the Work in Half the Time” was helpful for the agile cause. We also join John Cutler who is growing tired of the agile bashing where agile is being made responsible for everything your organization fails at. Probably—just a thought—an agile transition needs more time than the suits were willing to allocate in their proposal to the board.
On the product side, we learn about twelve principles of running experiments, and how to gather feedback from stakeholders while avoiding that your product is caught between a rock and a hard place.
Lastly: Do you remember the workshop when you built a lego duck for the first time? We have a great story on how Lego managed to return from the brink of collapse.
Age of Product’s Food for Thought of June 4th, 2017—shared with 9,041 peers—praises Scrum Alliance for the new edition of its “State of Scrum Report.” We also address the real goal of “agile,” and why running experiments is essential to get there. At an organizational level, we talk about the problem with Taylorism, and why people don’t care for what is imposed on them.
On the product side, Scott Sehlhorst defends the relevance of the product owner role, and we talk about analysis paralysis. We also appreciate the support of OK Go to help others understand why brainstorming sucks as an ideation tool.
Lastly: Mary Meeker published the “2017 Internet Trends Report”—355 pages of background information any agile practitioner should at least thoroughly browse.
Age of Product’s Food for Thought of May 28th, 2017—shared with 8,891 peers—revisits W. Edwards Deming 14 points of good (agile) management after 35 years. We also learn 40 tactics to empower resilient agile teams, we understand the importance of outcome drivenness for scaling agile successfully, and we analyze patterns of resistance of the corporate innovation process.
On the product side, it is all about identifying the right feedback by focusing on the signal and ignore the noise. We are getting skeptical about the innovation potential of personas, and we demystify Reddit as we learn how to use it for customer research.
Lastly: When was the last time that you thought a new technology is no more than a toy? Drones? You are not alone. Let Benedict Evans elaborate on the many ways and the increasing pace in which people dismiss technology.
