Age of Product’s Food for Thought of August 21st, 2016—shared with 4,036 peers—points to 15 simple phrases from great leaders that boost team engagement. Which might prove to be helpful, when Agile will break your organization.
We also learn why removing “Agile Coach” from your profile might make the resulting 100% Scrum master more authentic, and how to land your next Scrum master position in the first place. Or your dream product manager job.
We then try to weight the benefits and potential risks of Spotify’s product squad concept and finally have to admit that not every great product automatically creates great business. Speaking of which: What is also not creating a great business, is a bunch of 50% solution.
Last, but not least, we come back to the question if we will have a job in ten years from now, given the advances of machine learning, and hear from Mr. Facebook himself how to build a better tomorrow. Enjoy a great Sunday!
Agile & 100% Scrum Master
: From 50% Agile Coach to 100% Scrum Master
Barry Overeem on him being authentic by removing “Agile Coach” from his profiles on LinkedIn and Twitter, and replacing it with “Scrum Master”. 100% Scrum Master.
(via Age of Product): I Am an Engineer and This Is Why I Don’t Despise Agile
Meghana Bendre, a senior engineer herself, replies to my earlier post “Why Engineers despise Agile”.
: Getting Hired As A Scrum Master
Rob Wortham shares a list of ten tips and insights that hopefully will help you in your job search.
: Why Agile Breaks Your Organization
Jason Little shares his experience why Agile breaks your organization: It tries to turn the way-things-get-done, and all the unspoken rules, into the official process.
(via Agile Alliance): Videos: Keynotes and Industry Analyst Panels from #Agile2016
The Agile Alliance provides four videos of the keynotes and industry analyst panel from the recent Agile 2016 conference—no membership required.
Summer Reading List
- Ash Maurya: Scaling Lean: Mastering the Key Metrics for Startup Growth
- Stephen Bungay: The Art of Action: How Leaders Close the Gaps between Plans, Actions, and Results
- Daniel H. Pink: Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
- L. David Marquet: Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders
Product & Lean
(via ProductPlan): Can Product Squads Improve Your Agile Development Process?
Greg Goodman on the benefits and possible problems of (functional) product squads—a relatively new methodology for product development popularized by Spotify.
(via Intercom): Not all good products make good businesses
Des Traynor, co-founder and chief strategy officer of Intercom, on the fallacy we like to believe that if you solve a real problem with a good product, a successful software business is magically created.
(via Y Combinator): Users You Don’t Want
Michael Seibel, Y Combinator partner, on users that hijack your product, and why you shouldn’t let just any user that walks in the door steer your product roadmap.
: The Product Roadmap and the Release Plan
Roman Pichler explains the difference between a release plan and a product roadmap, and how the two tools fit together, so you can apply the two planning artefacts effectively.
: How To Ace Your Product Management Interview
Sachin Rekhi shares a set of sample questions for job interviews he might ask and what he is specifically evaluating on to discern whether a candidate has potential to become a great product manager.
(via mixpanel): Steven Sinofsky on product leadership
Christine Deakers interiews Steven Sinofsky, board partner at venture firm a16z and former president of Windows, on scaling product groups and lessons learned as he rose from engineer to executive at Microsoft.
Essential Reads
(via TED Talks): The jobs we'll lose to machines -- and the ones we won't
Anthony Goldbloom, co-founder and CEO of Kaggle, explains that machine learning isn't just for simple tasks like assessing credit risk anymore. And with these advances comes an uneasy question: Will a robot do your job in the future?
: Sam Altman sits down with Mark Zuckerberg to talk about how to build the future.
Sam Altman, president of Y Combinator, interviews Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, on the how to build a better tomorrow.