insights blog
Meaningful Transformation
Now that more people have a clearer understanding of the differences between feature teams and empowered product teams, by far the most common question I get is how to move to true product teams? This is essentially a question of transformation. Most companies have...
Spotify vs. Fitbit
I thought I was done with the series of articles on the importance of empowered engineers, but then an article came out a few days ago criticizing the Spotify model of Agile at scale, and I could not pass up the opportunity to try to turn this into a teachable moment....
Empowered Engineers FAQ
In my last article I spoke about the concept of an empowered engineer, which I consider the single most important concept for companies that want to move from feature teams to product teams. Overall my sense was that most people understood the points, and many told me...
Where To Work?
It’s no secret that due to the pandemic, many people in many different industries are being furloughed or their companies have shut-down. This has impacted product people as well. Where just a few short months ago, a strong product person had their choice of great...
The Most Important Thing
During these work-from-home times, I’ve been doing a lot of video-based AMA’s (Ask Me Anything). It gives me a break from my writing, and I enjoy the questions. Every so often I get a question that really makes me think, and that happened recently, and is the...
Discovery When Working Remotely
Normally the question I focus on in my work and in my writing is “How can we leverage the best practices of the very best companies in order to give ourselves the very best chance for continuous innovation?” While there are many practices that are important and...
The Role of Technology
I’ve been spending a good amount of time this past couple of years – and especially the past few weeks – thinking about the root causes of the chasm between the best product companies and the rest. Most of you know that my writing is intended to be very practical and...
Working From Home
Certainly there are disadvantages to being physically separated from your colleagues, and those are well known, but in this article, I’d like to focus on the potential advantages of working from home (WFH), and encourage you to make the most of this situation. Most...
Team Objectives – Summary
We need some way to assign and manage work to product teams, and we want to do this in a way that is empowering and executes on our product strategy. This is the purpose of Team Objectives. Assuming you have embraced the empowered product team model, and you have...
Team Objectives – Accountability
The companion to empowerment is accountability. Product teams are given the space and time to come up with the solutions to the problems they are assigned, but with that empowerment comes responsibility and accountability. So we need to discuss what happens when a...
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