Category: News

Age of Product’s Food for Thought of July 31st, 2016—shared with 3,722 peers—explores Scrum frustrations, we ask whether the Agile Manifesto’s time may have come, and why agile scaling frameworks so often are not delivering on their promises.

We also learn eight ways to say “No” with grace & style, and ten proven tactics on how to improve talking to stakeholders.

We then dive deep into dark design patterns, how to make data-backed decisions, and why the lean mantra of “failing fast” shouldn’t be a badge of honor.

Last, but not least, we listen to an interview with Zappo’s transition lead on how a flat, self-managed organization works in practice, and we learn how Pokémon GO’s Hanke turned his company into Earth’s most popular location-based game creator. Enjoy a great Sunday!

Age of Product’s Food for Thought of July 25th, 2016—shared with 3,558 peers—offers a rich summer buffet of topics: Spotify wants to be good at failing, or—one of my favs in this issue—how to apply Scrum to relationships. (Better start stocking Post-Its…) And you should consider joining the revolution and kill backlogs and roadmaps, or at least be inspired to make them usable.

We also learn how to avoid being driven into bankruptcy when estimating software projects, and someone’s actually claiming that sales guys can be more than a coin-driven pain in the [fill in the blanks].

We then dive deep into marketplaces and network effects, kudos to a16z for that, and learn that customer centricity is the new Agile—courtesy of the guy who made Hubspot a unicorn.

Last, but not least, I could not restrain myself from adding at least one Pokémon Go article, and to offset this childish behavior, we end with the story of an underdog, challenging its industry’s behemoth. Will there be a happy ending? Read on and have a great Sunday!

Age of Product’s Food for Thought of July 18th, 2016—shared with 3,410 peers—reports on the recent resignations from the Scrum Alliance board over strategy, and dares to ask the heretic question: Is there actually a place where “Waterfall” might be useful?

We then learn how to kick-off your agile transition—absolutely Waterfall-free—, talk about cognitive biases and how these interfere with our perception of velocity, and check the anti patterns that relate to each of the twelve principles of the agile Manifesto.

We also dive really deep into product strategy—from the role of product vision to herding stakeholder—, understand why yelling at developers offers room for communicative improvements, and we discover seven product owner archetypes.

Last, but not least, we learn about the future of work from the guys at Oxford University, and which industries automation will turn upside down first from McKinsey, and whether we will still have a job in 2021. Have a great Sunday!

Age of Product’s Food for Thought of July 10th, 2016—shared with 3,258 peers—explores the shark-jumping nature of Scrum certifications, how cat herders and team therapists can make a living with Scrum, and how the Scrum master role evolves in organizations.

We then talk about carrots and sticks in agile ceremonies, Scrum personas, and the five new Scrum values of 2016. (Too much Scrum? Well, it’s summertime on the northern hemisphere…)

We also dive deep into the discussion between data-drivenness and UX, why A/B testing is a great management practice, and how to schedule meetings that don’t aggravate makers.

Last, but not least, we learn how to steal from the competition, embrace the holy grail of “the one metric”, and are blown away by the best list of mental models so far created. Have a great Sunday!

Age of Product’s Food for Thought of July 3rd, 2016—shared with 3,132 peers—starts with a video on how Spotify is scaling agile engineering, before we move on to dealing with problems of all kind: organizational debt, dysfunctional teams, and how to manage continuous delivery to legacy organizations.

We then explore the secrets of great teamwork, why movies like “Oceans 11” or “The Italian Job” can be watched for professional reasons, and how to scale the role of the product owner along the life-cycle of a product.

We also dive deep into the lean startup methodology, namely into “product/market fit” and the “minimum viable product”.

Last, but not least, we learn what basketball legend Wilt Chamberlain has to do with agile transition, and that solving problems with the tools at hand rather than inventing new solutions from scratch can be a license to print money. Have a great Sunday!

Age of Product’s Food for Thought of June 26th, 2016—shared with 3,010 peers—starts with a rant on Scrum slaves, aka Scrum masters being perceived as team secretaries, how to make people join the daily stand-ups joyfully, and preserve estimation accuracy over time. And still, when we talk about agile adoption the Borg way, resistance is futile.

We also explore a simple trick, how to plan for great retrospectives, utilizing Retromat to its full potential.

We dive deep into scaling lean product management with Ash Maurya, understand the importance of not falling for pleasing only your best customers and analyze the long-term product strategy of Mr. Musk.

Last, but not least, we enjoy Wally toying with the pointy-haired boss, and learn about Google’s epic undertaking of turning itself into “machine learning first” company. Have a great Sunday!