Food for Agile Thought #391: Your Second Brain, All the Wrong Reasons in Product, Don’t Fall for Vanity Metrics, Getting Team Buy-In
Stefan Wolpers
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TL; DR: Your Creative Second Brain — Food for Agile Thought #391
Welcome to the 391st edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 46,445 peers. This week, Tiago Forte shares the essence of his massively popular book on productivity, supporting your second brain. Also, we address proven techniques that will ‘help you to effectively communicate your vision and get buy-in from your team for your change,’ and we examine three approaches that exceptional teams use to accept failure at individual, group, and organization-wide levels, allowing them to learn, develop, and enhance their performance.
Then, we point to a video game practice that is highly effective for products, too: Games help users become more skilled throughout their journey, as onboarding is a continuous process. John Cutler answers, ‘What are you working on right now, and why is it the most important thing you could be working on?’ in all the wrong ways, and we explain different approaches to learning whether a customer might buy from the worst way to one that actually works. Moreover, Stripe’s CTO David Singleton describes how to build a product-minded engineering team that excels at planning and prioritizing at scale.
Finally, Charles Lambdin applies some ideas from the past to create products today, from Lenin’s concepts of commandism and tailism to Marx’s notions of struggle and contradiction. (Think of it as a kind of intellectual stretching.) We also talk about vanity metrics and share that it is primarily our lack of courage that leads us to seek refuge in estimates instead of facing the undeniable truth that software development inherently involves risks.
The most popular discussion on LinkedIn last week was: 🤬 Rant: Scrum Masters are no Project Managers!
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🏆 The Tip of the Week: Your Second Brain
Tiago Forte: Building a Second Brain: The Definitive Introductory Guide
Tiago Forte shares the essence of his massively popular book on productivity, unlocking your creative potential.
Author: Tiago Forte
🍋 The Lemon of the Week
(via Medium): Keep Your Agile off My Lawn, Please
Friedrich C.F. Meertaube argues that using Agile for projects that have a “well-defined roadmap” in a corporate setting can be harmful.
➿ Agile & Scrum
Jason Evanish (via Get Lighthouse): How to Get your Team Buy in: Proven Leadership Methods
Jason Evanish shares proven techniques that will ‘help you to effectively communicate your vision and show you how to get buy-in from your team for your change.’
Author: Jason Evanish
David Burkus: Why Great Teams Embrace Failure (and How To Do It)
David Burkus examines three approaches that exceptional teams use to accept failure at individual, group, and organization-wide levels, allowing them to learn, develop, and enhance their performance.
Author: David Burkus
Charles Lambdin: Applying Marxist Thought to…Product Work?
Charles Lambdin applies some ideas from the past to create products today, from Lenin’s concepts of commandism and tailism to Marx’s notions of struggle and contradiction.
Author: Charles Lambdin
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🎯 Product
Jock Busuttil: What games taught me about customer onboarding
Jock Busuttil points to a video game practice that is highly effective for products, too: Games help users become more skilled throughout their journey as onboarding is a continuous process.
Author: Jock Busuttil
John Cutler: Why Are You Doing This? (Wrong Answers Only)
John Cutler answers, ‘What are you working on right now, and why is it the most important thing you could be working on?’
Recommended by LinkedIn
Author: John Cutler
Teresa Torres: Ask Teresa: How Can You Test a Customer’s Willingness to Pay?
Teresa Torres explains different approaches to learning whether a customer might buy, from the worst way to one that actually works.
Author: Teresa Torres
📯 Agile Leadership: 10 Hidden Gems to 10X Your Leadership Game
Agile leadership is tricky, covering a lot of ground, from team building, decision-making, servant leadership, and self-management to including everyone and giving everyone a voice — to name a few of the challenges.
In the past, I found the following books beneficial to better understand the problem and solution space agile leadership. Moreover, you can significantly improve your leadership game as Scrum Master, agile coach, or manager for less than $ 200 — an excellent investment from a professional perspective.
🛠 Concepts, Tools & Measuring
Lloyd Tabb (via First Round Capital): I’m Sorry, But Those Are Vanity Metrics
Lloyd Tabb shares “how to abide by metrics that generate direction — not pats on backs — so that your company can act on what’s essential to a business.”
Author: Lloyd Tabb
Jason Godesky (via Medium): All Software Estimates are Lies
Jason Godesky asserts that it is primarily our lack of courage that leads us to seek refuge in estimates instead of facing the undeniable truth that software development inherently involves risks.
Author: Jason Godesky
(via Agile Alliance): The Galactic Empire was defeated by WIP
Kenny Henbest takes some inspiration from a faraway galaxy to help you better understand the importance of flow for successful teams.
🎶 Encore
🎙 Lenny Rachitsky and David Singleton: Building a culture of excellence
Lenny Rachitsky interviews Stripe’s CTO David Singleton on how to build a product-minded engineering team that excels at planning and prioritizing at scale.
Authors: Lenny Rachitsky and David Singleton
(via Medium): What I Learned about “Product Roadmap” from Stanford Product Management Accelerated
Jean Huang shares a lesson on deriving a product roadmap from company-level and product strategies.
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Food for Agile Thought 391: Your Second Brain, All the Wrong Reasons in Product, Don’t Fall for Vanity Metrics, Getting Team Buy-In was first published on Age-of-Product.com.
Product Manager @ Google | Mentor
1yGlad to know my article can be helpful to the community! 😊
Product Management & Leadership Coach, Fractional Product Leader, Author
1yThanks for including me in your article, Stefan Wolpers 👍