Product Fields

Peter Drucker famously said: “You can’t improve what you can’t measure”. Measurements and metrics are incredibly useful when it comes to product improvement, having the desire to get a better market position or just improvement of yourself as an individual. But then the next challenge; what to measure? And why? Magdalena Firlit, Agile Transformation Consultant and Professional Scrum Trainer, talks...

Ever since the industrial revolution, we’ve been working with bosses and managers. Two/three decades ago, business agility started to take over the way organizations have been developing their products and thinking about how to overcome the challenges they’re facing.  Now we’re in the second half of 2021, and David Pereira sees a massive impediment in making an agile transformation stick. In today...

People are complex. When we work with other people for a while, the probability that some form of conflict will arise goes up. Conflict can be truly uncomfortable. However, no progress is without conflict. It’s the way we handle it that creates that progress. Constructive disagreements with the right support can be very powerful. Communication is key. But it could go sideways real fast, too. In th...

Scrum is purposely incomplete. It is a framework that perfectly lends itself to build upon. There are so many complimentary practices that can be used with Scrum. Kanban is one of those. You might even have used aspects of it without knowing it!  Andy Hiles, Owner of Agile Rocks - Training and Coaching, just released his first book on Applying Scrum with Kanban. Personally, I think it’s a masterpi...

I frequently ask people where they see any form of agility outside of regular development. Joe Justice initially triggered me with that thought during our conversation in the previous season’s episode. A lot of answers passed the revue but never has anyone mentioned Jazz. Yet, Gerald J. Leonard has written a book around this very example.  The smooth sound and the way jazz musicians play work toge...

OKRs provide perfect opportunities to guide your product or experience to value. The thing with OKRs, though, is that they seem to be challenging to truly implement and use to your benefit. Where do we start? How do they relate to Product Goals? Is this the classic chicken-egg story when it comes to the Product Backlog (or ‘wish lists’) and OKRs?  Jurgen Appelo (TedX speaker, thought leader, works...

Frequent listeners of the show know that throughout the episodes “engagement” has been a recurring theme. Engagement of employees, with the organization, with their work, and with themselves. Today’s show zoom in a little bit deeper on that. Lyssa Adkins, one of the most influential people out there when it comes to Agile coaching, joins us to talk about where she discovered her passion and what t...

John Riley is the founder of ReadySetAgile and PST for Scrum.org. When I talked to him about the topic for this episode, he brought up to talk about empirically unfucking things. I have no clue what it meant, so I was eager to find out.  Empirically unfucking things means getting out of a messed-up situation supported by empirical evidence. This might be harder than it sounds. How do return to a g...

Formula 1 is the world’s biggest traveling circus. Races are fast-paced, but so is learning. What you on screen is just one part, but the actual learning starts after the race. Hundreds of terabytes of data are collected each competitive weekend. But what do teams do with that data? How can they improve the way they work, ultimately to move up the field? Teams work with a massive amount of people,...

As the world around is constantly changes, we need to innovate the way we work, as well as our products in order for us to survive in the long run. Classic cases like Nokia and Blockbuster made very clear what happens if you focus on the wrong things. However, it can be quite a challenge to move from our traditional cash cow and follow a path of more risk (but a higher potential margin). Stakehold...

Estimation is hard. We forecast how much work we can take into the Sprint during Sprint Planning, but is still is exactly that: a forecast. We don’t know if we are correct. That’s the beauty of empiricism. We won’t know if we’re right or wrong until we observe the outcomes. And that is what makes this such a widely discussed topic. We always seem to have a need of being correct on forehand. We giv...

The pandemic has made a tremendous impact all around the world. We needed to adapt our ways of working, how we approach problems, find out a new work-life balance. Now that vaccinations are getting up to speed, and more and more people are getting vaccinated, the world is slowly reopening. After working from home for such a long time, going back to what we’re used to will pose a whole new set of c...

Technical debt is one of those things that can really bite your ass when you're not taking care of it. Tech debt sneaks in and before you know it, you’re spending more time repaying that debt rather than delivering actual value. But not all tech debt is wrong. And not everything that is perceived as tech debt is actually that. What about undone work? And what can we do to prevent this from accumul...

Working environments can benefit greatly by having playful environments. But to have playful environments, you need those frontrunners that will take you there. Carsten Lutzen is the right guy for the job. His LinkedIn page and YouTube channel (see for details below) radiate creativity and he helps you get there. Working at the LEGO group, he is constantly surrounded by playful, but serious produc...

Joe Justice is an interesting man. Famous for building electrical cars, while combining Scrum for both soft- and hardware, Joe has been all over the globe for anything you can think of. In this episode, he’s talking to us about his experience in different countries, his thoughts on humanity going to Mars, the future state of machine learning and artificial intelligence, but he’s also giving away a...

Abstract: In this special episode of the ‘Mastering Agility’ podcast, Patricia Kong and I have a conversation about topics that are close to both our hearts; shame, trust, and the experience of burning out. It seems that is the social standard to always say that everything is great, when asked how you’re doing. That real life should be like Instagram. The truth is; it’s not. Far from that. Working...

Abstract: When creating any sort of product, it's important to understand whether we are moving in the right direction. But how do we know that? How do we measure that? And what metrics do we use for that? Agile organizations know that frequent inspection of results limits risk and improves the ability to deliver value. Scrum.org created a complementary framework called Evidence-Based Management....

Abstract: Any agile transformation can be incredibly challenging. Complexity is sky high, and so is risk. Talk through some of these challenges, accompanied by all his experience he condensed into his highly anticipated new book The 6 Enablers of Business Agility (released June 1st). Adopting the latest and greatest agile tools and practices won’t be enough to respond to rapid market change. But i...

Abstract: A few episodes ago, Jordan Gross and Ziryan Salayi joined us to talk about the self-management recipe. In my own experience, it can be incredibly hard to start doing self-management right. What makes it so hard is that the discussion about what we can expect from self-managing teams and what the common understanding is, is being skipped. Today author, self-management expert, and Co-Activ...

Abstract: Last year, the Scrum Guide got updated. One of those updates has been the addition of the Product Goal. How do Product Goals relate to the Product Vision or the Sprint Goals. And how can we still distinguish this in our teams with all the different terminology without causing widespread confusion?  Product development legend Roman Pichler is here to share his vision on this. What you’ll...

The Scrum framework thrives in complex environments, where more is unknown than that is known. That requires decentralized decision-making and self-managing teams. This level of autonomy is incredibly powerful, yet just as incredibly difficult to install. The guys from the Self-Org Chefs are here to talk to us. What you’ll discover in this show: -        Self-management is a layered concept -     ...

Abstract: The Scrum framework thrives in complex environments, where more is unknown than that is known. That requires decentralized decision-making and self-managing teams. This level of autonomy is incredibly powerful, yet just as incredibly difficult to install. The guys from the Self-Org Chefs are here to talk to us. What you’ll discover in this show: -        Self-management is a layered conc...

Abstract: Scrum is lightweight framework; easy to understand, hard to master. It provides four formal events and one container event. It’s not prescriptive. But still, it’s pretty hard to use in practice. Just going through the motion is not going to help teams and organizations to reap the benefits Scrum can provide. Johannes Schartau and Christiaan Verwijs from The Liberators are here to talk to...

Abstract: Nothing quite captures emotions and the perception of value as just having a simple conversation. JIRA tickets full of details still cannot display what a face-to-face conversation can. But challenging times, like now with the pandemic going on, require a different approach. Jeff Patton joins us to share his insights! What you’ll discover in this show: -          COVID has shown that pro...

Ever since the industrial revolution we've been getting more distanced from the value of people in the workspace. People are being called resourced and treated as such. A computer mouse is a resource. An office chair is a resource. People are people. In this episode, we're talking to Gunther Verheyen about we can humanize the workspace again. Support the show Contact us at: Masteringagility.org ht...