You’ve paid for that product license. JIRA Align. Copilot. ChatGPT. Maestro. Pendo. Gong. ServiceNow. Snowflake. Cascade. Monday. Clickup. (Engineering|Product|Rev|Whatever) Ops. IT. Take your pick. OKRs. Scrum. Agile. SAFe. Force Mgmt. The latest framework/process you’re deploying. Now you’re trying to maximize the usage of that product/process. You want to show ROI. You create playbooks of what …
What’s the future of Agile? Agility? Agile as a career choice? Yesterday, I joined Jonathan Stark on his podcast Ditching Hourly to discuss the current state of Agile as a platform, how it has evolved over the years, and what practitioners should consider as the platform matures. Jonathan primarily focuses on advice for freelancers/consultants on …
Alice wants her product organization to adopt a product operating model because she believes it’s the future of working. She’s been an early adopter of agile and lean startup methods and is constantly looking for better ways to work. Bob wants their product organization to adopt a product operating model because they have an expensive …
Back in 2006, calling my product delivery organization a factory would have been a compliment. We were struggling to deliver predictably. Quality was such a big issue that I joked about asking one of our QA engineers to take a vacation during our final hardening week so that we would have a chance to get …
Engineers excited about LLMs, Agentic AI, RAGs, spending time going to the vendors, playing around like kids with new toys. Without a real problem in mind. Without the ability to deploy any of it in the organization (the engineers don’t talk to the legal folks much…) Can you think of where so much time and …
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. …
This article is inspired by recent conversations I had with Product Leaders about product operating models, how to bring them to life using Product Playbooks, and how to approach developing these Product Playbooks. Vered. A Product playbook is a repository of best practices, processes, and tools that streamline product management. It ensures that products meet …