In too many organizations, the product and engineering teams operate in an adversarial, dysfunctional way. Great products never result from this setup. In this episode, Richard and Peter share the antidote to such a situation, clarifying where to draw the line on specific responsibilities for product leaders and engineering, and where (and how) to collaborate effectively. It’s a complex boundary, with lots of trade-offs, but great organizations constantly improve how they navigate those in service of their vision and strategy. Read More
It can be frustrating to find yourself in a situation where you see a problem but don’t have the power to fix—and the people who do have the power don’t seem to care. In this episode, we expand on the advice we often give our clients, “If you can’t fix it, make it more visible,” and we show how you can use that approach to influence a solution when you don’t have authority to just fix things. Read More
In a case of “drinking our own champagne,” we applied the tools we teach for dealing with resistance to change to a real conflict on our team. Peter wanted to make a big change to our WordPress theme. Richard had some strong resistance to that change. Something had to give. Listen in to see how we used that resistance as a resource to come up with a breakthrough solution. Read More
Is strategy part of the Product Owner role? Not just in theory, but in the real world? We interviewed POs to find out how strategy shows up in their responsibilities. In this episode, we share what we learned and what we recommend to our clients when it comes to POs and product strategy. Read More
In this episode, we’ll share how strategy connects with mission and vision, and how to communicate the key aspects of your strategy using our Strategy Steps Canvas. We use Tesla’s 2006 strategy as a real-world example, demonstrating how the strategy steps approach connects concrete outcomes to long term impact. Tune in to see how you can use our canvas to simplify and effectively communicate your strategic plans. Read More
In this episode, Richard digs into the causes and fixes for burnout and disengagement on Agile (or ostensibly Agile) teams. Agile teams should be the most motivating teams to be on—opportunity for autonomy, mastery, and purpose are built right in. But, too often, that’s not how it plays out. Tune in to learn how to avoid or address some common patterns that create burnout and disengagement. Read More
How we manage our work has to fit the nature of the work. And, too often, it doesn’t, which leads to waste and frustration. In this episode, Richard and Peter walk through 3 styles of process that go with 4 different kinds of work. Read More
A great vision statement can create alignment, increase engagement, and improve business outcomes. But too many vision statements are corporate-speak buzzword bingo. And those can be worse than no vision statement at all. In this episode, Peter and Richard explain what makes a vision statement worth writing and share a quick, collaborative process to create one for your product, team, or organization. Read More
In this episode, David J Bland, author of “Testing Business Ideas” joins Peter and Richard to talk about how to use Lean Startup-style experiments in any kind of business. Read More
One of the trickiest problems leaders face is getting org structure right. This is even harder in Agile orgs because there are strong opinions out there about the perfect team structure that often don’t apply easily in real orgs. In this episode, Peter and Richard share 6 principles you can use to reason about the right team structure for your context. Read More
