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
: 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.
(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.
(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.
(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.
(via Medium): Building Trust with Engineers
Adam shares lessons learned from three engineers on how to best write user stories to build trust.
(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.
(via Happy Melly): The Seven Principles Of Managing For Creativity
Louise shares lessons learned on how to manage something so abstract as innovation.
: 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
(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).
: 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.
(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.
(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.
(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.
(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.
(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.