How can an Agile Product Operating Model (APOM) enhance how organizations use SAFe? I had several conversations with product leaders this week where this question came up. Organizations that are struggling with SAFe Theater and want to see much more empowerment, outcome orientation, and evidence-driven decision making and steering. They realize SAFe has helped them …
Persistence Pioneers UI Architects Embedding Engineers Refactor Rebels Sprint Sprinters Integration Innovators Audio Overview Creators Mind Map Builders YouTube Insights Team Scalability Savants Podcast Summarization Squad Knowledge Connectors Can you guess which product these teams are working on? Which of these team names helped you more than others? Let’s say your organization has more “UI …
Ever feel like your product organization is stuck in the mud? You’re not alone. Many teams start strong, laser-focused on delivering value and achieving product-market fit. But as success scales, things get messy. Dependencies pile up, alignment fades, and suddenly, you’re running a feature factory instead of an empowered product organization. Why Do Product Organizations Stall? Here’s …
Leading an agility journey can often feel lonely. These days, especially, there’s plenty of complexity, and rapid change—what we’ve come to know as VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous) or even the newer BANI framework (Brittle, Anxious, Nonlinear, Incomprehensible). Building and growing a consulting/advisory business in the agility/product/scaling field also provides plenty of VUCA and BANI. …
A CEO asked me last week why I’m using the term Organizational Traction. I got the inspiration from Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business (Gino Wickman’s book introducing EOS – here’s my take on it from a while ago). Here’s how I explained it in the conversation yesterday: Imagine you established a strategic vision. You know where …
I see some practitioners and leaders using these terms interchangeably. I thought I’d take the time to clarify the overlaps and differences, first of all for myself. Product-Led Organization—As opposed to Sales/Engineering/Marketing/Professional Services-led organizations, a Product-Led organization is structured to deliver value through the product. These organizations often have product-oriented leaders at the helm. Some …
“Can we just start with day 2? (Fast forward the WHY/WHAT)” If only I had a dollar for every time I heard this statement in an agile workshop (and was smart enough to invest in NVDA at the time…) Even before we became addicted to short-form content, we never had the patience for the history …
I recently joined Adam Mattis on the “Business Agility Now” podcast for a conversation about scaling agile and product operating models. It’s always a pleasure to chat with Adam about the realities of applying agility at scale and some of the trends I’m seeing in the field. We covered various topics, drawing from our experiences …
Should you focus on mastering organizational traction or on establishing portfolio agility? Let me tell you a secret: In my experience, mastering organization traction involves realizing you have a portfolio of investments you’re managing. So actually the paths converge… The difference is that mastering organizational traction extends beyond the IT/Product world. It intercepts business initiatives …
“Agile is so great we need to use it for EVERYTHING” “Agile is so much overhead, we stopped using it for ANYTHING” Are you also trying to navigate what to do with Agile? Whether it’s worth the overhead? After years of helping a diverse group of organizations figure out where and how to use agile …