TL; DR: Beneficial Pre-Mortems, Scaled Feature Factories — Food for Agile Thought #347
Welcome to the 347th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 35,417 peers. This week, we delve into five success-critical topics for every product manager, from the benefits of pre-mortems to prioritizing your time to ROI and opportunity-cost thinking. Also, we explain code cruft in a metaphor for non-technical people to help the looming conflict between developers and management, and we share learnings from supporting agile transformations at three companies in the insurance and automation industries.
Then, we detail a pattern of non-tech companies heavily investing in digitalization: Despite good intentions, they end up as big feature factories. Moreover, we point out a) how iterating behavioral changes and applying experiments help build the right products and b) the often overlooked signal-to-noise ratio critical for innovation, or: asking for ideas is a bad idea.
Finally, we embrace a simple process that allows everyone on a team to start writing user stories: the Product Backlog Building Canvas. Also, the folks at ProductLed asked 600-plus SaaS businesses about their paths to product-led growth and core metrics such as free to paid accounts conversion rates.
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🏆 The Tip of the Week: Beneficial Pre-Mortems
and : 🎙 Pre-mortems, the LNO Framework, 3 Levels of Product Work, [and] why most Execution Problems Are Strategy Problems
In this podcast, Shreyas Doshi delves into five success-critical topics for every product manager, from the benefits of pre-mortems to prioritizing your time to ROI and opportunity-cost thinking.
➿ Agile & Scrum
(via Agile Alliance): Optimize Your Organizational Structure for Agility
Wolfgang Steffens shares learnings from supporting agile transformations at three companies in the insurance and automation industries.
(via Industrial Logic): How To Understand Refactoring
Tim Ottinger explains code cruft in a metaphor for non-technical people to help the looming conflict between developers and the management.
: Succeeding with OKRs in Agile Infographic
Allan Kelly shares Noel Warnell’s visualization of how to make OKRs achievable for your team.
🎓 🖥 💯 🇩🇪 Professional Scrum Product Owner Training w/ PSPO Certificate — Online: June 28-July 1, 2022
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🎯 Product
: Scaled Feature Factories
John Cutler details a pattern of non-tech companies heavily investing in digitalization: Despite good intentions, they end up as big feature factories.
and : 🎙 Teams Should Celebrate Learning Fast, Not Failing Fast
In this podcast, Janel Wellborn shares how iterating behavioral changes and applying experiments help build the right products.
: 3. Asking for Ideas is a Bad Idea
Stephen Shapiro points at the often overlooked signal-to-noise ratio critical for innovation.
📖 Scrum Developer Anti-Patterns
After covering the anti-patterns of the Scrum Master, the Product Owner, and the stakeholders, this article addresses Scrum Developer anti-patterns, covering all Scrum Events and the Product Backlog artifact. Continue reading and learn more about what to look out for if you want to support your teammates who build the Increment.
Read more: Scrum Developer Anti-Patterns.
🛠 Concepts, Tools & Measuring
: Product Backlog Building Canvas
Paulo Caroli shares a simple process that allows everyone on a team to start writing user stories: the Product Backlog Building Canvas.
✂️ Cutting Room Floor
(via ProductLed): 📈 Product-Led Growth Benchmarks 2022
The folks at ProductLed asked 600-plus SaaS businesses about their paths to product-led growth and core metrics such as free to paid accounts conversion rates.
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Now available on the Age-of-Product Youtube channel to improve learning:
- 🆕 Hands-on Agile 40: The Best Team Ever with David Burkus.
- 🆕 Hands-on Agile 38: The Product Owner with Roman Pichler.
- Agile Camp Berlin 2021: The Power and Pains of Autonomy with Jimmy Janlén.
- Hands-on Agile 31: The Zones of Value Framework with Valerio Zanini & Zeina Zeitouni.
- Hands-on Agile 35: Designing Powerful Questions to help you Coach & Create with Daniel Stillman.
- Hands-on Agile 34: Core Protocols for Psychological Safety with Richard Kasperowski.
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