Age of Product’s Food for Thought of April 17th, 2016 covers agile leadership in five sketches, in lessons from the US Marine Corps, and a podcast with Jeff Sutherland. We also dive deeper in Kanban and agile metrics.
We explore scaling agile, why women in product management are underrepresented, and how to create a Lean Startup culture in your organization. We also learn more about product managers vs. product owners.
Last, but least, we cover the surprising psychology of choice, and why you shouldn’t ship the org chart, but build great products instead. Also, Astro Teller explains why celebrating failure is so important for moonshots and why luck has got to do much more with success than you might believe.
Essential Reads
(via TED Talks): The unexpected benefit of celebrating failure
Astro takes us inside the "moonshot factory" at Google.
(via The Atlantic): Why Luck Matters—Much More Than You Think
Robert on why people — when they see themselves as self-made — tend to be less generous and public-spirited.
Agile Leadership & Scrum
(via Medium): Average Manager vs. Great Manager
Julie shares awesome visualizations of ten well-known situations from ‘assigning tasks’ to ‘dealing with turbulence’.
: What the Marine Corps Can Teach Us About Agility
Rob on agile leadership: learning Agile through osmosis: what behaviors were ideal, and which were counterproductive.
(via Financial Times): Business: How to topple bureaucracy
The FT on the short step from innovative start-up to a company overburdened by red tape and other organizational debt or hierarchy bloat.
(via Harvard Business Review): Understanding Agile Management
Jeff and Darrell Rigby of Bain explain the rise of lean, iterative management tactics, and how to implement them yourself.
: Kanban: What We Know About Duration: Workflows
David on the cost of delays in general and the effect of lead-time, and duration of workflows.
: Agile Metrics: Beyond Burn Up/Downs Onto Metric Driven Coaching
Troy on how metrics can be used safely in coaching Agile teams, avoiding the danger of using metrics to manage or motivate employees.
Tell me how you will measure me and I will tell you how I’ll behave
(via Scrum.org): What exactly are we Scaling?
Erik lists and explains five “scaling scenarios”.
Product & Lean
: Women in Product
Marty on under-represented groups and gender-based discrimination in the tech workplace.
(via The Lean Startup): How to Intentionally Design a Lean Startup Culture
Alex on how to create the right mindset to be successful with lean startup.
: Product Owner Manager
Scott on the differences and overlaps of the roles of product owner and product manager.
(via Fast Company): What Every Startup Needs To Know About The Psychology Of Choice
Brian on the paradox of choice and what two New York City bagel shops sitting 200 feet apart can teach you about customer loyalty.
(via Medium): Shipping the org chart
Dag on Conway’s law, where silo thinking & local optimization lead to inferior products and product debt.
(via GitHub): A curated list of product management advice for technical people
Nicholas provides a list product management resources for technical people. It is devided into cores such as product management, resources, interviews, case Studies, sample products/projects, communities, open source projects, free and paid services.
