One Knight in Product4 Sep 2022

The Role of Product Management on Truly Agile Development Teams (with Allen Holub, Software Architect, Consultant & Outspoken Twitter Agilist)

Allen Holub is a software development and agile consultant who wants to help you build better software and build software better. He's also not shy when it comes to telling the world what he thinks about product development via Twitter.

Here are some of Allen's spicy takes:

Making true organisational change requires C-level buy-in

It's easy to get hired by the engineering team to help them learn how to make sausages better but the better goal is to work out if you want to make sausages, and you need top-level buy in for this

There are too many people walking on eggshells on Twitter

You should be able to share your version of the truth in an open, direct way. If people don't like it, they can listen to someone else! Context is important, but it's not ivory tower thinking to try to change a system.

Empowering people to be agile doesn't mean leaving them to it

Removing organisational blockers and waterfall thinking is important, but you can't just leave them to it and not support them. They need support to become a learning organisation.

Scrum is, at best, mostly harmless, but only in good teams

You don't need backlogs, you don't need scrum masters, you don't need Sprints. You don't need any of it. Scrum was just a way to make agile acceptable to bureaucratic micromanagers. But all frameworks fly against agile thinking.

Product managers do essential work that developers won't do if left to their own devices, but..

It's important that they're part of the development team, that they're not a silo, they aren't the boss or decision maker for the team & they aren't a replacement for the customer

JIRA is actively contributing to poor development behaviours

We don't need big long complicated specs, we don't need backlogs, estimates, story points or velocity charts. We'd be better off with index cards stuck to a wall (or Miro!)

Listen to the episode for this and more!

Follow the progress of Allen's book:

Allen is writing a book! Check out the progress of the book here.

Go to Allen's User Story workshop

If you want to go to Allen's upcoming class on User Stories, check out the details here.

Contact Allen

You can reach out to Allen on Twitter, or book a chat with him.

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(279)

Evan Campbell: Your Strategy Is Decaying... Here's How to Save It

On this episode, I speak to Evan Campbell, technology executive, strategy consultant and author of Adapt to Win. Evan is a former CTO, product development leader and US Army Green Beret who's spent ye...

4 Nov 1h 7min

Jeff Patton: AI Doesn't Change Product Management Fundamentals

On this episode, I speak to Jeff Patton, Chief Troublemaker at Jeff Patton Associates. Jeff is a product management consultant, coach and trainer, and the author of User Story Mapping, a book that has...

21 Okt 1h 7min

Simonetta Batteiger: Product Managers Need to Understand the Financials... Not Just the Users

On this episode, I speak to Simonetta Batteiger, a product leadership coach, trainer, speaker and co-organiser of ProductTank Cologne. Simonetta began her career in accounting and finance before movin...

10 Okt 1h 6min

Rich Mironov: AI Should Change Product Management... Just Not The Way You Think

On this episode, I speak to the returning Rich Mironov, longtime product management consultant, product leadership coach, and founder of Mironov Consulting. Rich has spent decades working with product...

18 Sep 1h 1min

Eric Ries: From Corrupted to Incorruptible - How to Build Mission-First Companies That Last

On this episode, I speak to Eric Ries, entrepreneur, multiple-time founder and bestselling author of The Lean Startup. Eric has spent years working with founders, leaders and organisations on how comp...

28 Aug 1h 5min

Barry O'Reilly - How to Keep the Humanity in Artificial Organizations

On this episode, I speak to Barry O'Reilly, entrepreneur, executive adviser and author of Lean Enterprise, Unlearn and his latest book, Artificial Organizations. Barry works with senior leaders around...

18 Aug 1h 6min

Pavel Samsonov - AI Can Build the Solution... You Still Have to Design the Problem

On this episode, I speak to Pavel Samsonov, Principal UX Designer at Justworks and author of The Product Picnic newsletter. Pavel has spent his career working across UX, service design and product man...

25 Jul 1h 9min

Be Kaler Pilgrim - Where Does Product Go Wrong in PE-Backed Firms?

On this episode, I speak to Be Kaler Pilgrim, founder of Smithfield Search and original founder of Futureheads Recruitment. Be has spent more than three decades helping organisations build technology ...

2 Jul 57min