Food For Thought #36: State of Agile, MVPM, Bloatware, PM for IoT, Tesla v. Apple

Age of Product’s Food for Thought of April 10th, 2016 covers 10th Annual State of Agile™ report, dives deep into how to build trust with engineers; we also shed some light on habits of agile people.

We also show how to manage creativity (yes, it’s doable), dive into Agile Fluency, introduce the MVPM, and learn the reasons behind bloatware.

Last, but least, we go for product management for IoT and platforms, and changing the roadmap mid-course. Finally, it’s about Tesla & Apple, why disruption is initially often dubbed “a toy” and the dark side of the culture fit hype and why it’s posing a threat to creativity and innovation.

Sunday Essays

Ben Thompson: It's a Tesla

Ben sets Tesla’s success with its model 3 in the right perspective and shares his take on disruption and the similarities to Apple.

Steven Sinofsky (via Medium): “[…] is a toy”

Steven shares a great list of perceived ‘toys’ that turned out to be not just innovative, but often disruptive changes to technology.

Cameron Conaway (via The Modern Team by Flow): The Trendy New Form of Discrimination

Cameron on why experience and education are no longer the most important determining factors in hiring decisions. “Culture fit” is the new one and it has a dark side.

State of Agile

(via Version One): 10th Annual State of Agile™ Report: What's the State of Agile Today?

VersionOne provides for free the 2016 edition of the State of Agile™ Report.

Ron Lichty (via Mind The Product): Product Owners: How to Get Your Development Team to Love You

Ron shares some of the key things that truly motivate developers, e.g. helping them see the difference they can make in the world, ensuring they have opportunities to learn and grow, and giving recognition and praise.

Adam Sigel (via Medium): Building Trust with Engineers

Adam shares lessons learned from three engineers on how to best write user stories to build trust.

Mattias Skarin (via Crisp): 12 seemingly normal things Agile people do

Mattias shares 12 habits, small everyday things agile practitioners do without thinking about it too much.

Louise Brace (via Happy Melly): The Seven Principles Of Managing For Creativity

Louise shares lessons learned on how to manage something so abstract as innovation.

David J Anderson: Agile Fluency & Organizational Maturity

David shares a mapping of his organizational maturity model and patterns of Kanban maturity, to Jim Shore & Diana Larsen's Agile Fluency model.

Product & Lean

Brandon Chu (via Medium): MVPM: Minimum Viable Product Manager

Brandon on what the role of the product manager at the intersection of UX, business and tech is comprised of: the Minimum Viable Product Manager (MVPM).

Emin Gün Sirer: How Software Gets Bloated: From Telephony to Bitcoin

Emin shares his view that software bloat almost always comes from smart, often the smartest, developers who are technically the most competent.

Daniel Elizalde (via Mind The Product): Product Management for the Internet of Things

Daniel explains his IOT decicion framework which provides a structured way to organize the product strategy, identify gaps, and build an IoT roadmap.

Wyatt Jenkins (via Medium): Making the Shift to Platform Product Management

Wyatt describes the shift in product management philosophy required to make the transition from product to a platform.

Juan Pablo Vazquez Sampere (via Harvard Business Review): Why Platform Disruption Is So Much Bigger than Product Disruption

Juan on how disruptive innovation differs when it’s applied to a product versus a platform.

Kevin Steigerwald (via Medium): Making mid-course corrections to your roadmap

Kevin on the need to adjust any roadmap dynamically based on new insights delivered by data.

Linnéa Strid (via Medium): Product Design & The Asshole Contingency

Linnéa on why not all users are your friend and you need to deal with it.

(via Combustible): The definitive Guide to Improve Your Ecommerce Conversion Rate

Combustible shares a great, extensive free PDF on how to reduce cart abandonment and optimize conversion rates.

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