Age of Product’s Food for Thought of October 16th, 2016—shared with 5,085 peers—finally simplifies the agile big picture from product discovery to product delivery in two great posts. We even explore how to get rid of estimations.
We then learn how to organize and run a company-wide product demo across three countries, and how to deal with prospective clients who keep asking you, how much the upcoming agile project will cost them.
We also dive deep into the journey from business person to Product Owner, and what keeps the PO happy, healthy, and productive. We also learn the relaunching legacy products doesn’t have to be a nightmare, making your PO unhappy, unhealthy, and thus unproductive.
Last but not least, you need to read Shem’s epic rant about the startup world. (Note: it’s sort of bordering on #NSFW.) We also hear from a new obsession of the nouveau riche: is our existence Matrix-like just an algorithm? (Before you read the post: is it the red or the blue pill?)
Enjoy a great Sunday!
Essential Reads
(via Medium): Fuck You Startup World
Shem, Android developer at @myrollgallery, hits the nerv of the startup community with an epic rant. Don’t miss out on it.
Fuck your crazy work hours. Nobody gives a fuck that Elon musk is working 100 hours a week, and that Marissa Mayer pulling in a 130 hour work week while still breastfeeding her newborns. You’re not Elon Musk- you ain’t Marissa Mayer, you’re not going to get to space, and you won’t build the next Space X. Do me a favor, put your fucking Mac away and go play with your kids.
(via Vanity Fair): Silicon Valley Questions the Meaning of Life
Nick Bilton on why the tech industry is increasingly consumed by whether our existence is actually an algorithm.
Many people in Silicon Valley have become obsessed with the simulation hypothesis, the argument that what we experience as reality is in fact fabricated in a computer.
Agile Big Picture & Scrum
(via Crisp): Poster on Agile in a Nutshell – with a spice of Lean
Mia Kolmodin provides a — free — poster that covers the background of agile, some problems as well as values and principles. It also covers the difference between waterfall development and basic Scrum.
(via XING Engineers): Why do we estimate and can we do without?
Albina Popova shares the results of a workshop at XING — the German LinkedIn competitor — on how to remove estimations without harming a team’s way of collaboration.
(via DZone): Visualizing Interruptions on a LEGO® Wall
Giulia Mantuano shares her experience with a LEGO® wall which can provide an idea of how much time your team can spend on working to deliver new value instead of working on problems inherited from previous sprints.
Trademark notice: LEGO®, the LEGO® logo, the Brick, DUPLO®, and MINDSTORMS® are trademarks of the LEGO® Group. ©2012 The LEGO® Group. (You can find further copyright information here.)
(via NDC Conferences): How to do a really good product demo
Katrin Grothues outlines in this video where her project of a company wide product demo started, what the main challenges were, how they measured progress and came up with a satisfying format.
: How much will this cost?
Evan Leybourn provides guidance and direction in this video on how to quote for and budget agile projects, as well as how to change the three standard customer questions in the first place: ‘How much will this cost?’, ‘How long will it take?’, and ‘What am I going to get?’.
(via Scrum Alliance): The Theory of Organization Explained
Erich Buhler describes the growth of a fictitious organization, scaling from startup to enterprise, explaining the theory of organizational design along the way and its consequences in an agile context.
From the Blog: The Agile Big Picture
Let’s face it: While your enthusiasm for the big picture of agile practices is admirable, your stakeholders will most likely be moved by one thought only at the beginning of the transition: “What’s in for me?”
Read on and learn about one way how to kick-off the transition to a learning organization by pitching a simplified version of the agile big picture to your stakeholders first.
Read on: The Agile Big Picture: How to Pitch the Agile Mindset to Stakeholders.
Product & Lean
: John Cutler Talking to 100+ Product Teams About Data
John Cutler, senior product manager at Pend.io, summarizes in this video his learnings from talking to over one hundred product team about data.
: Even Happier Product Owners
Len Lagestee explains his ideas how to create a happy and healthy environment for product owners and teams to do their work.
and (via InfoQ): The Journey from Business Person to Product Owner
Pete Cohen and Chris Bignoux discuss in this video how a new product owner should tackle agile projects, exploring techniques for informing stakeholders and facilitating decision-making.
(via Strategyzer): 11 Corporate Habits That Kill Your Company’s Innovation Engine
Alex Osterwalder, Mr. business canvas, founder and CEO of Strategyzer, points at eleven execution habits of big companies, that can easily kill any potential new growth engines inside the corporation.
(via Postmark): From roadmap to shipping: effective product management for remote teams
Rian Van Der Merwe reports on the progress Postmark has made transitioning from an exciting grand vision to make that vision finally a reality — with remote teams.
(via Mind The Product): Tactics for Redesigning and Relaunching Legacy Products
Adam Ghahramani shares in this video his lessons learned from the successful relaunch of ICv2.com — a popular trade website for the comic, graphic novel, board game and toy industries.
