I’m starting to wonder whether the current focus on Product Operating Models is a distraction from the real opportunity of applying Product Thinking. The whole conversation is about empowered product teams. There’s minimal conversation about what’s the product. Models inspired by Silicon Valley Big Tech companies focus on tech-heavy products. But what if the product …
“How disappointed will you be if we won’t have this standing meeting anymore?” Let’s be honest – do any of you expect to see a “very disappointed” answer from the meeting participants? (If you do – let me know! I want to know your secret!) If there’s anything competing with Agile in terms of how …
These are interesting times. If you’re an agile practitioner (like me) you’re navigating a lot of uncertainty. What’s the right language? “Should I talk about Agile? Avoid it? Take a contrarian view of it?” “Is Agility better than Agile? Worse?” “Should I talk about SAFe? Scrum? or better to talk about Product?” Agilists are struggling …
It often feels like Continuous Deployment has become a bragging right for a technology organization. “We can deploy 13593 times a day.” “A developer can deploy the product on their first day at work.” “Our pets can deploy to production.” Even more often, I encounter organizations that don’t understand the intent behind being able to …
Something clicked for me over the last couple of weeks as I’ve been sharing my reflections on what I’m seeing in the trenches when it comes to the journey towards Product Organizations and Product Operating Models. As a reminder, The vision of the Product-oriented organization is to have product teams: This is a great north …
Three members of a PMO are asked what they are doing: Since we’re talking about a Product-oriented Portfolio, it makes sense to treat developing it as a Product Initiative. Making sure we’re focused on outcomes, rather than checkboxes. We might use patterns and frameworks (such as a Kanban Board, OKRs, and Portfolio Reviews), but we …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …