TL; DR: Kodak’s Shirley Cards, Dark Side of Metrics — Food for Agile Thought #318
Welcome to the 318th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 33,565 peers. This week, we tell the story of a lack of diversity and its consequences for humanity, photography, and product design: Kodak’s Shirley Cards. Also, we share a long list of improv games to support team building and help prevent burnout and fatigue, and we point at five possible values you could provide when asked for an estimate, from optimistic to risk-averse to worst-case estimates.
We then ask whether uncertainty might establish a better foundation for product discovery and product design, and we listen to Melissa Perri interviewing John Cutler on the importance of product education. Moreover, we advocate thinking of ‘time as a blade, a tool that can sharpen focus and trim waste,’ detailing Honeycomb’s approach to planning, and we reflect on how to overcome the annual planning waste while pointing at the reasons continuous planning fails in practice.
Lastly, we name the dark side of metrics: Companies expose themselves to metric corruption when optimizing those at the cost of all else, and we share an epic list of resources to further your change agent skills.