Apr 29, 2017
Food For Thought #89
Age of Product’s Food for Thought of April 30th, 2017 features two heavyweight agile champions on why scaling agile is futile. We also can confirm: the further east you go the less Scrum works. Sorry, we needed to address the elephant in the room.
On the product side, we dive deep into how to kill features and why this is important for any aspiring creator of a great product. (Spoiler alert: those embrace simplicity.) We also talk about the “cigarettes” of the B2C web industry, and what it takes to get ‘lean startup’ as a concept going in an enterprise.
Lastly: we learn about the unfortunate trend of creating local maxima due to a lack of long-term thinking. Enjoy Labor Day!
Scaling Agile Is Futile & Scrum
Ron Jeffries: Implications of Enterprise Focus in Scrum
Ron Jeffries on scaling agile, SAFe & Co and Scrum Alliance generating new certificates as rapidly as their PDF formatters can produce.
Source: Implications of Enterprise Focus in Scrum
Author: Ron Jeffries
Dave Snowden: SAFe: the infantilism of management
Dave Snowden’s notion of SAFe is simple: It seemed to be PRINCE II camouflaged in Agile language.
Source: SAFe: the infantilism of management
Author: Dave Snowden
Joshua 스크람 Partogi: Scrum does not work here in Asia
Joshua Partogi explains why agile does not work in Asian cultures where people expect to be told what to do because hierarchy is what keeps the universe working.
Source: Scrum does not work here in Asia
Author: Joshua Partogi
(via AgileConnection): 4 Balanced Metrics for Tracking Agile Teams
Joel BancroftConnors outlines four suitable metrics for agile teams.
Source: AgileConnection: 4 Balanced Metrics for Tracking Agile Teams
Scott Adams: Cultural Fit
You might be too smart to work here.
Source: Cultural Fit
Author: Scott Adams
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Product & Lean
Steli Efti and Hiten Shah: How to Kill Features in Your Product
In this episode of the Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about the process of killing features in your product.
Source: 201: How to Kill Features in Your Product
Authors: Steli Efti and Hiten Shah
Adam Risman (via Intercom): Airtable’s Andrew Ofstad on maintaining simplicity at scale
Andrew Ofstad explains why complexity slowly creeps up on product builders, and what we can do to preserve the original simplicity of a product.
Source: Intercom: Airtable’s Andrew Ofstad on maintaining simplicity at scale
Author: Adam Risman
(via Board of Innovation): The 9 Biggest Challenges for Corporates to implement Lean Startup
Arne Van Balen shares the nine biggest challenges for corporates to implement lean startup and 23 great best practices to tackle them.
Source: Board of Innovation: The 9 Biggest Challenges for Corporates to implement Lean Startup
Nir Eyal (via Medium): The Morality of Manipulation
Nir Eyal points at the consumer web industry as a manipulation business based on a wave of habit-forming technologies.
Source: Medium: The Morality of Manipulation
Author: Nir Eyal
Vince Law (via Hackernoon): WTF is Strategy?
Vince Law provides a simple, yet comprehensive explanation of “strategy” as a concept.
Source: Hacker Noon: WTF is Strategy?
Author: Vince Law
The Essential Read
Andrew Kortina: Metrics, Incrementalism, and Local Maxima
Andrew Kortina observes now more often a failure pattern of becoming trapped in local maxima. It is easier to identify and measure metrics for short-term wins than for long-term investments.
Source: Metrics, Incrementalism, and Local Maxima
Author: Andrew Kortina
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