Dive into the Product Model’s key insights (focus on outcomes), and core idea (the empowered engineer) to re-invent your teams to become Empowered Teams.

Joakim’s Note: You can reach me at https://joakimsunden.com/ Spotify is an exceptional company, the best I’ve ever worked for. When I left the company after more than six years, I wanted to help other companies become more like Spotify. However, I didn’t believe companies could merely copy the organizational structures of tribes, chapters, and squads

Q: For years now our technical architecture and platform have limited us to use component teams. We are excited by empowered product teams, but because of this setup we experience barriers to getting started. What can we do to change this? Each of our teams is typically responsible for one or a few modules in

Where are we heading? What’s the future going to look like for our product? Let’s pause here. There is a sad truth. Most companies don’t answer these questions in a meaningful way. Being fortunate to meet many diverse companies in the world, the top struggle is direction. Commonly, talking to individual contributors, managers, and senior

Q: What is the best way to get customers and empowered teams closer so they could understand each other? And keep up with it so it is not a one time thing. In our organization we have done a few experiments with customers, but we have been struggling to make it a regular and deliberate

Q: How can we get better at throwing away ideas that our teams have already started to develop, but do not see market traction from? In our organization we often miss out on the discovery part of building products. We often have a sense of urgency to get on with it and start to develop

The following is an excerpt from the recently released book by Martin Christensen and me titled Holistic Product Discovery. It’s been a 3-year journey that started with a 20-page draft. Numerous iterations later, here we are. Thank you to the fantastic community of readers for your invaluable feedback. Let’s begin. A story about a product

How to prepare and align as a leadership team for a major change in your organization

You are a senior leader in your organization, and you are facing some challenges. You have had that slow hunch for some time now that there are plenty of things that are just not right. Things beyond just individual isolated problems. People in your organization often bring up small things that should be looked at because they seem to be connected to plenty of recurring friction points in several places that hold people back.

You have also come to realize that there are a few big things we have to change to really tap into our potential. If we don’t, our goals may never come within reach. Maybe even worse, we may risk losing ground.

You feel you share this view with some of your colleagues on your senior leadership team. But you are not certain to what extent they see what you see and how they would explain what needs to change.

You want to take the initiative, but you are not sure about how.

This is the second article in my series on integrating discovery and delivery. In the first article I outlined some common challenges I have seen holding organizations back from benefiting fully from both.

In this article I will introduce some patterns that will help you integrate product discovery and product delivery in a way that works. These patterns have all been field tested in practice.

Most organizations that I meet in my work are struggling to integrate product discovery and agile delivery in a simple practical way that works.

I will illustrate what I mean by giving you examples of a couple of very common issues.

In my consulting and training engagements I get to see the impact where planned delivery dates are missed. It’s never because people just aren’t trying or working hard enough. This post gives you my top 3 real reasons traditional Agile planning and the dates produced by them fail.

Number One Reason: The Assumed Start Date is Missed

Sounds obvious right. To give an estimated delivery date you add the estimated duration to a starting date. Rarely do I see anyone track or adjust for the eventual start date for any initiative. Often the definition of “started” isn’t clear. 

Design studios are useful for helping a group of people converge on an idea. This post provides a PDF presentation for facilitating a design studio workshop, including an additional optional section for refining ideas when the desired result is to generate multiple ideas. The general pattern is:

• Generate ideas
• Present
• Get feedback
• Refine and converge the ideas

Agile 2019 in a nutshell: Jam packed with inspiring, informative talks! I tried to sum up my experience when I came home from DC a couple of weeks ago, but there were just too many good things to say! So I’ll leave you with the graphic above with some of the highlights, and I’ll share what I’ve actually followed up on since I’ve been back.

I see many versions of product roadmaps in my work. Unfortunately very few pass this agility test. Does your product roadmap pass the Product Roadmap Agility checklist?

Download the checklist here.

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