Blog

Embarking on Your Product-Oriented Lean Portfolio Management Journey

Are you at the stage where traditional portfolio-level processes and behaviors present the most significant impediment to agility? I see this often. The organization spends six or seven-figure amounts on an agile transformation.  Teams and Teams of Teams are working in Agile/Scrum/SAFe.  Still, the promised land of outsized value creation and improvement of time to …

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Stop focusing on Utilization. Start Focusing on Flow (with a background of smooth flow in a river)

Stop Focusing on Utilization. Start Focusing on Flow

Does it make sense to aim for 100% utilization across the organization? Is that efficient? Whether it’s an ad agency, a factory, a product development organization, or any organization – it has a constraint. The constraint/bottleneck should be optimized, but other areas of the process shouldn’t aim for 100% utilization since that would create waste …

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The Pricing Page for Your Change Product

You’ve seen it before. The pricing page. With the three options. Silver. Gold. Platinum (nobody wants bronze) DIY. DWY. DFY. Starter. Professional. Enterprise What if you tried using “Pricing Options” when selling/marketing internal change? Revolutionary. Evolutionary. Safe. Extreme. Fast. Meeting-heavy. Meeting-less. Invitation-based. Mandatory-change based. Pull. Push. Here’s the thing Multiple pricing options create choice. Choice …

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Navigating Strategic Change using Breadcrumbs (A Halloween Story)

Meet change approaches F and S.  S is a revolutionary change for people. It requires new roles and totally new ways of working. It is shock therapy.  It requires such a leap that people often resort to faking it because it is so hard for them to change.  F is evolutionary. It starts with where …

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Using the PMF Survey to gauge Company Fit For Purpose

How would you feel if you could no longer work the way we work here? Sean Ellis, the OG Growth Hacker, came up with the PMF survey question, which has become one of (if not the) established ways to gauge Product Market Fit: If more than 40% of your existing customers answer “Very Disappointed,” you …

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AARRR Pirate Metrics for Change Adoption

“We trained 1359 people!” “we transformed 127 teams” Enough with the vanity metrics. Ever wonder how your change initiative is REALLY doing? Think of your organization as an internal market for the change. Consider Pirate Metrics (AARRR) to see how your change “Product” is doing in this market. Acquisition (or awareness) – are people discovering our …

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Operations Teams / Value Streams and the Agile PRoduct Operating Model

Product Operating Model and Shared Services / Business Operations Teams

While the Product Operating Model focuses on developing new Products, it has implications and potential benefits for the teams operating the business and supporting these products. (These work in the Operational Value Stream, as defined in SAFe.) Improving the Interface between Product Development and Business Operations The handoff point between development and operations is a common …

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From Inclusive to Focused Goals using Even Over statements

Do you ever feel like your goals are too inclusive? Being inclusive is essential for culture but not so good for setting goals. You want your goals to mean something. They shouldn’t be an excuse to enable you to continue to spread your attention all over. A question you can ask about your goal/s is …

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It’s all in the Name

Shifting from projects/solutions to a product/outcomes mindset is hard. And the Names we use for our Epics / Features / Stories make it even harder. Too often than not, those names are a relic of the original ask, which is typically of the “build it and they will come” nature. Even as we work on …

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Product Ownership – To Be Or Not To Be – The Product Leader’s bind

Meet Alice. Alice is the CPO at BuzzCorp. As BuzzCorp tries to move from “Agile Theater” to product-oriented agility, Alice is trying to figure out the appropriate structure for the Product organization. Beyond the Product Managers in her group, BuzzCorp also has about three times as many Product Owners working closely with its Agile Teams, …

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Scaling w/ Agility Insights For Leaders

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