TL; DR: Patton’s Product Vision — Food for Agile Thought #379
Welcome to the 379th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 36,703 peers. This week, we follow Jeff Patton when he revisits his beliefs on the product vision. Also, Henrik Kniberg reflects on the ‘Spotify Model,’ if there is such a model, to begin with, how it started, what its principles are, and whether copying it is a good idea, and Reforge engages in more Scrum bashing with little knowledge of how Scrum works in practice when not run by dogmatic lunatics. Moreover, we sketch how to help your stakeholders build trust in your delivery capabilities and point to twelve success principles of employing a Definition of Done to ensure that.
Then, we learn why Rebecca Ackermann fears that, instead of democratizing access to design, Design Thinking accomplished the opposite, and we reject the idea that ‘90% of product managers are incompetent or lazy or quietly quitting’ because stakeholders consider them unresponsive to their product requests. Our weekly dose of AI is provided by Lenny Rachitsky and Marily Nika, who delve into the importance of artificial intelligence concerning the future of product management.
Finally, we enjoy Tanmay Vora’s illustration of ‘six components of creating a culture of change acceptance based,’ from ownership to relevance, and listen to Jocko Willink diving into decision-making and why people closest to problems need a voice in how to solve them. Lastly, Dan Shipper details how he used GPT-3 and the content from a newsletter archive to create a niche chatbot.
Did you miss the previous Food for Agile Thought’s issue 378?
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Join your peers on April 5, 2023: Hands-on Agile #50: The Product Community of Practice w/ Petra Wille.
🏆 The Tip of the Week: Product Vision
: Product Vision is Science Fiction – Help your organization focus on successful outcomes
Jeff Patton revisits his beliefs on product vision — a ‘story we tell about how people use our products in the future’ — and what it isn’t, for example, a plan, a growth target, or a business goal.
➿ Agile & Scrum
(via Crisp): 📺 Henrik Kniberg’s Thoughts On The Spotify Model
In this video, Henrik Kniberg reflects on the ‘Spotify Model,’ if there is such a model, to begin with, how it started, what its principles are, and whether copying it is a good idea.
(via Reforge): What is a Scrum Master? Why the Role is no Longer Relevant
Reforge engages in more Scrum bashing with little knowledge of how Scrum works in practice when not run by dogmatic lunatics.
: How to Create Partnerships Instead of Using Stakeholders
Building on an earlier post from John Cutler, Johanna Rothman sketches how to help your stakeholders build trust in your delivery capabilities.
🎓 🖥 🇬🇧 Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills Class — March 23, 2023
The Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills (PSFS) training by Berlin Product People is a one-day official Scrum.org class for advanced Scrum practitioners and agile coaches, including the industry-acknowledged PSFS certification. This PSFS training class is in English.
Enjoy the benefits of an live-virtual immersive class with like-minded agile peers from 09:00 – 17:30 o’clock CET.
Learn more: 🖥 🇬🇧 Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills Class — March 23, 2023.
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🎯 Product
(via MIT Technology Review): Design thinking was supposed to fix the world. Where did it go wrong?
Rebecca Ackermann fears that, instead of democratizing access to design, Design Thinking accomplished the opposite.
: Why Product Request SLAs Fail
Rich Mironov rejects the idea that ‘90% of product managers are incompetent or lazy or quietly quitting’ because stakeholders consider them unresponsive to their product requests.
and : 🎙 AI and product management
Lenny Rachitsky and Marily Nika delve into the importance of artificial intelligence concerning the future of product management.
📯 Definition of Done: Business Agility Abhors Technical Shoddiness
Most of the time, stakeholders are not interested in how we solve their problems as long as we ethically play by the rules. Instead, they are interested in the regular delivery of valuable Increments as these pave the road to business agility. However, there is no business agility without technical excellence, which brings us to today’s topic: the importance of an actionable Definition of Done.
Learn more about twelve success principles of employing such a Definition of Done as a Scrum team to help your organization become agile.
👉 Learn more: Definition of Done: Business Agility Abhors Technical Shoddiness
🛠 Concepts, Tools & Measuring
: How to Create a Culture of Change Acceptance
Tanmay Vora illustrated ‘six components of creating a culture of change acceptance based on a recent HBR article,’ from ownership to relevance.
: High Variance Management
Sebastian Bensusan encourages abandoning the path of Scientific Management, which seeks to limit variances for better predictability, in favor of allowing more variance when developing new software products.
: Technical Debt Ratio
George Georgovassilis relates the total cost of ownership to the cost of an improvement task, thus quantifying technical debt.
🎶 Encore
: 🎙 Jocko Underground: Calandra’s Barometer. Good Questions VS Bad Ones
Jocko Willink delves into decision-making and why people closest to problems need a voice in how to solve them.
and : I built a Lenny chatbot using GPT-3. Here’s how to build your own.
Dan Shipper details how he used GPT-3 and the content from Lenny’s newsletter archive to clone Lenny as a chatbot.
📅 Scrum Training & Event Schedule
You can secure your seat for Scrum training classes, workshops, and meetups directly by following the corresponding link in the table below:
See all upcoming classes here.
You can book your seat for the training directly by following the corresponding links to the ticket shop. If the procurement process of your organization requires a different purchasing process, please contact Berlin Product People GmbH directly.
📺 Join 4,000-plus Agile Peers on Youtube
Now available on the Age-of-Product Youtube channel to improve learning, for example, about product team performance:
- 🆕 Hands-on Agile 47: How much Product Discovery Is enough? The Confidence Meter Explained with Itamar Gilad.
- 🆕 Hands-on Agile 46: The Agile Fluency Model ® with Diana Larsen.
- Hands-on Agile 44: Honey, I Shrunk the Backlog with Allan Kelly.
- Hands-on Agile 43: Outcome-Based Product Planning with Jeff Gothelf.
- Hands-on Agile 42: Lean Roadmapping and OKRs with Janna Bastow.
- Hands-on Agile 38: The Product Owner with Roman Pichler.
✋ Do Not Miss Out and Learn more about the Product Vision — Join the 12,000-plus Strong ‘Hands-on Agile’ Slack Community
I invite you to join the “Hands-on Agile” Slack Community and enjoy the benefits of a fast-growing, vibrant community of agile practitioners from around the world.
If you like to join all you have to do now is provide your credentials via this Google form, and I will sign you up. By the way, it’s free.
Help your team to deal with the product vision by pointing them to the free Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide:
