Age of Product’s Food for Thought of March 20th, 2016 covers how to get out of the feature bloat epidemic, Intercomâs product prioritization rules, and how to spot a problem worth solving.
Also: How to use basic psychology to build a customer base, product management at enterprise level, how to tame engineersâa 12 min crash course, scaling agile with LeSS, and the 9th Annual State of Agile⢠Survey. Speaking of which: is agile costing too much? And how to do spot new technology trends? And why will blockchain change the billions of lives?
Product & Lean
This Is Product Management): The Build Trap is Product Management
and (viaMelissa and Mike discuss how to balance getting to market quickly with validating that thereâs demand for what youâre building, the importance of focusing on outcomes rather than outputs, and how to squash a poor performing featur
Intercom): RICE: Simple prioritization for product managers
(viaSean introduces RICE â the four factors Intercom uses to evaluate each project idea: reach, impact, confidence, and effort.
Medium): The product before the business
(viaBram on product discovery: how to get an idea of viable productâwhat pain will it solveâbefore start building it.
First Round Capital): Build Your User Base with These Human Behavior Hacks
(viaPeople are unpredictable. And they are animalsâuse that psychological truth for your advantage and build a customer base.
Medium): Product Management for the Enterprise
(viaBlair outlines the different product management requirements for enterprise products by comparison to their hip B2C counterparts
Stanford ECorner): A More Tactical Way to Prototype
(viaAlberto on the challenge of knowing if what youâre building is exactly what customers want before youâve blown all that capital on hiring top talent and building the actual product
Mind The Product): Product Managers: Donât just Build Products – Build Bridges
(viaNikkiâs post on overcoming the organizational silos when building products by including not just product development, but also sales, marketing, customer success and customer service
Agile, Scrum & LeSS
Medium): How To Tame Engineers, Be A Rockstar, and Ship ****ing Product
(viaJohn provides a complete agile and product management training in a single blog-postâthe best invested 12 min of your career!
InfoQ): LeSS of a Story: An Introduction to Large-Scale Scrum (LeSS)
(viaAn hour long video with Bas, introducing the LeSS framework, how it was created and how it works: Scrum & LeSS.
(via Version One): The 9th Annual State of Agile⢠Survey
Recommended reading: Free download of Version One's 2015 edition of its great survey.
More companiesâand bigger companiesâare scaling and embracing agile as part of the larger vision to deliver software faster, easier, and smarter.
The most important lesson to improve software delivery
:Gojko on how important it is to spend time observing people actually using the software that we were building
Scrum Alliance): Conservatives, Liberals, and Agilists
(viaMichael on three categories of people in organizations, thatâby his observationâtend to fall into during the agile adoption process.
Conservatives are the folks who protect their turf and are loyal to a traditional culture. Conservatives are set in their ways and not interested in change. They will most likely resist Agile. The words empowerment, self-organization, and flexibility tend to make them cringe.
Medium): Is Agile Costing You Too Much?
(viaDavid looks at an alternative path to agility and identifies the problems that are evident in the market with Agile methods and their adoption, particularly at enterprise level.
The Sunday Essays
Andreessen Horowitz): Hunting Whatâs Next in High Tech
(viaSaku shares best practices how to spot important ideas for new technologies when those ideas come from the fringes.
FastCoExist): How The Technology Behind Bitcoin Is Going To Change The Lives Of The Bottom Billion
(viaBen on why blockchain will create huge benefits for the world's poorest people, from financial access to property rights to controlling their identities.
Medium): Silicon Valleyâs Unchecked Arrogance
(viaIn its mind, Silicon Valley creates the future, while the rest of the world will soon become the âidle class.â What if they instead helped people build wealth for themselves?