Category: News

Age of Product’s Food for Thought of October 23rd, 2016—shared with 4,369 peers—explains why slack time and saying “no” are integral parts of modern agile, and why status emails aren’t.

We also prepare you for the dreaded C-level talk on the benefits of moving from a patchwork of agile islands to an agile organization, and introduce estimating by back scratching.

We then enjoy a fair share of the ‘Mind the Product conference London 2016’ with Marty Cagan, we graduate from the ‘How to Create an MVP’ course, and get excited about an enormous repository of product management advice on Github.

Last but not least, we take away your angst that Google might ruin your latest product idea.

Enjoy a great Sunday!

Age of Product’s Food for Thought of October 16th, 2016—shared with 5,085 peers—finally simplifies the agile big picture from product discovery to product delivery in two great posts. We even explore how to get rid of estimations.

We then learn how to organize and run a company-wide product demo across three countries, and how to deal with prospective clients who keep asking you, how much the upcoming agile project will cost them.

We also dive deep into the journey from business person to Product Owner, and what keeps the PO happy, healthy, and productive. We also learn the relaunching legacy products doesn’t have to be a nightmare, making your PO unhappy, unhealthy, and thus unproductive.

Last but not least, you need to read Shem’s epic rant about the startup world. (Note: it’s sort of bordering on #NSFW.) We also hear from a new obsession of the nouveau riche: is our existence Matrix-like just an algorithm? (Before you read the post: is it the red or the blue pill?)

Enjoy a great Sunday!

Age of Product’s Food for Thought of October 9th, 2016—shared with 4,932 peers—requires you to be strong: you will face the worst example of Scrum anti-patterns in years. Speaking of dark times, Ron Jeffries also reminds us why developers sometimes feel unsafe in agile environments.

We then have to let go of the idea that the route to scaling agile means adopting the “Spotify model”. Spoiler alert: you have to figure that out on your own. We provide you with 10 principles for the transition, though, as well as a great video with Alex Osterwalder from our friends at Podojo.

We then dive deep into how to find the 10 X product worth building, for example, using Drift’s “Burndown Framework”. If you now have doubts about whether your product delivery organization is up to the task, check John Cutler’s list of 30 issues when considering its health status. You didn’t attend “Mind the Product 2016”? Don’t worry, we have the executive summary for you.

Last but not least, we learn how Didi defeated Uber in China, and ask: Are Facebook, Twitter & co. aging utilities, powering an outdated version of the social internet?

Enjoy a great Sunday!

[bctt tweet=”Food For Thought #62: Scrum Anti Patterns, Spotify Scaling Fallacy, 10 X Products, #mtpcon 2016″]

Age of Product’s Food for Thought of October 2nd, 2016—shared with 4,804 peers—deals with fake agile, façade agile, agile idiots, and cargo cult in the cradle of disruption: Silicon Valley.

We then have fun with a “Scrum master” job posting, get access to notes from the original Agile Manifesto meeting, and are sold on the idea that team building is not just everybody’s concern, but actually can be fun and productive at the same time.

We also understand how to build awesome offline boards and the science behind making apps addictive. Finally, we can fill all the idle time in our lives with content from 50 must-read product management blogs.

Last, but not least, we learn about the endless bombardment of news and gossip, and images that have rendered us manic information addicts.

Enjoy a great Sunday!

Age of Product’s Food for Thought of September 25th, 2016—shared with 4,698 peers—asks: Where does agile coaching start and end? In addition, we explore proven tactics to work with remote agile teams, and question the “stable team” dogma.

We then dive deep into an important engineering question for agile teams: Is there something like an agile architecture? We also remind us of typical agile failure patters in organizations, and we learn more about the future of agile delivery.

We also understand how to become better at product management, picking up some tricks from Ellen Chisa and John Cutler. Drift is so kind to share their customer-centric product creation framework with us, and Barry O’Reilly provides great insights in how to transition a large organization to a lean enterprise.

Last, but not least, we learn from The Economist why companies make their products deliberately worse—microeconomics is great, just saying—, and that we should dump the secrecy that surrounds remuneration.

Enjoy a great Sunday!

[bctt tweet=”Food For Thought #60: Remote Agile Teams, Coaching, Become a Better PM, @Drift’s Product Framework”]

Age of Product’s Food for Thought of September 18th, 2016—shared with 4,585 peers— turns to Dark Scrum, and how the agile revolution is falling victim to its own success. We learn why leadership is overrated, and how self-organization requires to rethink its role.

We then dive deep into how to navigate the dangerous waters of office and project politics, and we learn how to say “No” without killing ourselves in the process.

We also understand the importance of playing to improve your life & work, and we check out mental models for product managers, including the lastest “CynAgileanUXanbanicrumify” trend.

Last, but not least, we learn how to avoid building bad features by keeping our customer-centricity mojo and prioritizing in the right way, and we pick up Elon Musk’s inspiring view of future, and what we should be working on.

Enjoy a great Sunday!

[bctt tweet=”Food For Thought #59: Dark Scrum, How to Say ‘No’, Surviving Office Politics, Mental Models for PM.”]