Age of Product’s Food for Thought of July 10th, 2016—shared with 3,258 peers—explores the shark-jumping nature of Scrum certifications, how cat herders and team therapists can make a living with Scrum, and how the Scrum master role evolves in organizations.

We then talk about carrots and sticks in agile ceremonies, Scrum personas, and the five new Scrum values of 2016. (Too much Scrum? Well, it’s summertime on the northern hemisphere…)

We also dive deep into the discussion between data-drivenness and UX, why A/B testing is a great management practice, and how to schedule meetings that don’t aggravate makers.

Last, but not least, we learn how to steal from the competition, embrace the holy grail of “the one metric”, and are blown away by the best list of mental models so far created. Have a great Sunday!

Age of Product’s Food for Thought of July 3rd, 2016—shared with 3,132 peers—starts with a video on how Spotify is scaling agile engineering, before we move on to dealing with problems of all kind: organizational debt, dysfunctional teams, and how to manage continuous delivery to legacy organizations.

We then explore the secrets of great teamwork, why movies like “Oceans 11” or “The Italian Job” can be watched for professional reasons, and how to scale the role of the product owner along the life-cycle of a product.

We also dive deep into the lean startup methodology, namely into “product/market fit” and the “minimum viable product”.

Last, but not least, we learn what basketball legend Wilt Chamberlain has to do with agile transition, and that solving problems with the tools at hand rather than inventing new solutions from scratch can be a license to print money. Have a great Sunday!

Age of Product’s Food for Thought of June 26th, 2016—shared with 3,010 peers—starts with a rant on Scrum slaves, aka Scrum masters being perceived as team secretaries, how to make people join the daily stand-ups joyfully, and preserve estimation accuracy over time. And still, when we talk about agile adoption the Borg way, resistance is futile.

We also explore a simple trick, how to plan for great retrospectives, utilizing Retromat to its full potential.

We dive deep into scaling lean product management with Ash Maurya, understand the importance of not falling for pleasing only your best customers and analyze the long-term product strategy of Mr. Musk.

Last, but not least, we enjoy Wally toying with the pointy-haired boss, and learn about Google’s epic undertaking of turning itself into “machine learning first” company. Have a great Sunday!

Age of Product’s Food for Thought of June 19th, 2016 provides the argument for agile autonomy and manager-free agile shops and lets Basecamp’s CEO explain that the noble purpose of leadership is to establish autonomy, not control. We learn that team happiness is overrated, and how to fix some prevailing Scrum master anti-patterns.

We also explore, why open office spaces may not spark creativity—it’s okay if you want your cubicle back—, but make sure, that everyone can steal your work anyway. Speaking of which: scaling is no excuse for losing your product mojo, and that the CEO turn back the clock and fight bureaucracy. (Listen to Nancy Duarte’s great story.)

Last, but not least, we learn about a framework that might turn brainstorming finally into something useful, and that going Lean works in large organizations, too. Finally, we enjoy The Atlantic’s portrait of Ev Williams of Medium and learn about AI and machine intelligence from Mr deep learning at a16z, Frank Chen. Have a great Sunday!