“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 …
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 …
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 …
Picture BuzzCorp (Many of you won’t have to use too much imagination). They’ve invested significant efforts in developing software and products in an agile manner. They formed agile teams (but a deeper look shows those are the existing component/functional teams using agile methods) They manage Features/Stories in JIRA/ADO (but those are the functional slices that …
Is SAFe good? Is SAFe agile? What are SAFe’s strengths? Weaknesses? How does SAFe see the Scrum Master and Product Owner roles? What are the benefits and challenges of the PI Planning practice? Ryan Ripley and I recorded “Breaking The SAFe,” a series of videos deconstructing some of SAFe’s intent and choices, especially those that …
If you’re a healthcare provider, what is your product? This question surfaces when these organizations try to adopt a Product Operating Model or move from project management to a product-oriented organization (and yes, there’s quite an overlap between these two ) I like to consider this from the perspective of the customer—in this case, the …
Can you dance at all parties? Be the expert at the intersection? Sounds like an oxymoron—Jack of all trades, master of none. Beyond the fact that you need to be curious, open-minded, and a lifelong learner, I have a trick for you. You don’t need to be an expert in every snowflake when you’re a …
Working Software. Done Increments. Two related concepts in the agile world that people trying to leverage Agile/Scrum’s empiricism outside of the software/technology space struggle with. The intent behind these practices is to achieve transparency to validate/invalidate assumptions—you might call it managing based on evidence. The key idea is to get transparency as early and often …
“PMs work on the 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁. Product leaders work on the 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁 𝗼𝗿𝗴.” – Ed Biden Let’s take it one step further. Product Leaders should work on the Product Organization using a Product Approach. Successful Product Leaders I worked with applied their Product chops to working on their Org. They Hypothesize, Experiment, Keep options open, Inspect …
FlowImpact Yoga is a rising power in the fitness industry. A PE firm has just purchased it, and its leadership is hard at work, making the best of the holding period to grow and improve the business. There are many ideas on the table. The leadership team realized that 1. They need to focus, and …