Phillip Starke
How to deal with an organization that has no interest in helping a new (Scrum) team succeed
5 ways to deal with the challenge of attempting to establish a Scrum team (actually any new team) within an existing organization.
Phillip
Clearing the confusion: product manager vs. project manager vs. product owner vs. program manager
Product Manager, Project Manager, Product Owner, Program Manager: a lot of managers, a lot of words that start with the letters Pr. Maybe that is at the heart of why so many people seem to confuse the roles. They all…
The two keys to building a successful, empowered Scrum team
Let’s be honest, many companies do not implement the best practices of agile, lean, or other frameworks as they were intended. Organizations, human nature, and processes get in the way of the best intentions. Thus, companies often end up with…
Why you don’t need a mentor – you can create your own!
Not all of us have a "real" mentor. Formulating your issues and imagining the mentor's advice works as well! It is surprisingly easy.
Continuous Discovery Habits by Teresa Torres- what this awesome book is all about
Continuous Discovery Habits is a practical, extremely useful book. I share the main concepts and the three most important personal takeaways.
Six best practices for maximizing the value of the Opportunity Solution Tree (OST)
The opportunity solution tree is an extremely useful method. Having already covered the why, how and what of the opportunity solution tree, I will focus on the best practices that I have found to be crucial in maximizing the potential of the OST.
Opportunity Solution Tree – a simple visual for organizing opportunities
The opportunity solution tree (OST) was invented by Teresa Torres as a means to collect and visualize the opportunity space. It is a model or mental representation that clearly links product goals to user needs and to the options for solving those needs. In product discovery, it is a powerful tool for creating a clear structure of what the team wants to achieve.
Keep quiet – the rare ability to endure and withstand silence
We often feel the need to immediately fill silence with answers, comments, or questions. And I get it, being in a group where nobody speaks for some moments can be extremely uncomfortable and awkward. Being able to withstand the urge to say something in those moments of silence is not easy to do.
Leading indicators – easy to understand but hard to master in practice
The core of agile development - it should be at the heart of all product development efforts for that matter - is iteratively moving forward. We need to understand the impact of what we are doing without waiting for too long. For this reason, Product teams need to use leading indicators so that they can immediately measure the effectiveness of their product development.
OKRs – a fancy name for leading by objectives or is there more?
Although the big hype around Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) from a few years ago seems to have receded a bit, many companies still deploy OKRs to manage their organization. Many seem to consider this the “agile” way to set…