Category: News

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.”]

Age of Product’s Food for Thought of September 11th, 2016—shared with 4,435 peers—again turns to the question: What is Agile, agile, or probably “Agile”. With 70+ agile practices, we have a look at meaningful agile metrics, and how Scrum helps the FBI to track the bad guys. Nevertheless, we need to ask: What’s wrong with Scrum?

We then dive deep into product managers fooling themselves prior to burning out, and what you can do about it.

We also learn, what features a “good” team at Google—spoiler alert: being smart doesn’t suffice—, and why zero bullsh*t Lean is good product management. (If your backlog feels like a black hole, you want to listen to that podcast.)

Last, but not least, we deconstruct Theranos’ precocious “founder” in an epic story. And we learn that the former Apple engineer who led the transition of the Mac to Intel processors wasn’t considered a match for a Genius Bar job in an Apple store—at the age of 54.

Welcome to the era of ageism and enjoy a great Sunday!

[bctt tweet=”Food For Thought #58: Selling Agile, Agile Peer Recruiting, Cheat-Sheets.”]

Age of Product’s Food for Thought of September 4th, 2016—shared with 4,331 peers—explains the two agile camps—Manifesto-based agile mindset vs. selling packaged “Agile”, so to speak—, ventures out into hostile territories, and brushes up your framework knowledge with a handy cheat-sheet.

We then dive deep into learnings from Fortune 500 product teams running lean experiments, and what the modern product designer role covers. We enjoy the 100+ cognitive biases cheat-sheet—no more fooling yourself—, and finally have to ask: Do we really need Product Managers?

Last, but not least, we learn how Trello builds & scales its fabulous tool, and why management is too important to be left up to managers alone. Enjoy a great Sunday!

[bctt tweet=”Food For Thought #57: Selling Agile, Agile Peer Recruiting, Cheat-Sheets.”]

Continue reading Food For Thought #57: Selling Agile, Agile Peer Recruiting, Cheat-Sheets, Building Trello, Happiness

Age of Product’s Food for Thought of August 28th, 2016—shared with 4,165 peers—checks in on the state of autonomous teams from Dublin to Africa, and how team membership is usually managed in organizations.

Arrrgh! We also learn that pirates were pretty agile, true examples of self-organization, the application of which nowadays needs to be explained by a Harvard Business School professor.

We then try to better understand the cultural habits of highly effective (cross-functional) product teams, that allow, for example, AirBnB to spearhead the assimilation process of Cuba into the international tourism industry. (Product borgs, so to speak.)

Last, but not least, we need to come to terms with the idea, that work can actually fulfilling and fun, and not just pain and misery, at least at Menlo Innovations. Enjoy a great Sunday!