Product Agility
Ben Maynard
Less Method. More Meaning.The world of Product Discovery and Creation is becoming increasingly challenging due to mistakes and missed opportunities that are prevalent in agile teams, large-scale Scrum and all other agile frameworks. History has shown that when organisations try and scale their product development to more than one cross-functional team, mistakes are made that cut short many chances of getting all possible benefits.The route of this for many is the need for more attention paid to the incredible advancements in Product Management driven by hordes of professional Product People who prove that making their customers happier is not a pipe dream but a hard and fast reality.This podcast exists to explore all topics related to Product and Agility and Coaching. How do you marry the agile principles with Product discovery?Is it really possible to have hundreds of cross-functional teams (or Product Teams) all working from an effectively prioritised single Product Backlog and a dedicated Product Owner?How can you embrace continuous improvement and empirical process control for your product, people and processes?Ever wondered how to overcome the problems people face when trying to scale the Product Owner role and how it relates to Product Management and Product Teams?Baffled by how to define a product in such a way that enables Feature Teams (aka Product Teams) and why doing wrong means you will only ever be stuck with technical teams? Scrum Teams are not compatible with modern product management techniques.Want to know what Product Focus means and how the right focus makes creating a shippable product less painful?Need to get your head around how to blend modern product management techniques with Sprint Planning and Sprint Reviews to achieve Product Increments that cover the entire product?This podcast's original focus was on Scaling Scrum vs Single-Team Scrum and how organisations can reap the benefits of Scrum when working on a larger product but still keeping a single product backlog. We found many Product People liked what we said, and then the penny dropped. This isn't a podcast about scaling Scrum or the limitations of single-team Scrum.This podcast is for Product People & agile advocates who coach or get their hands dirty with Product creation.We promise there is no Taboo topic that we will not explore on your behalf. We aim to transcend the conversations about a single team, Daily Scrums, Scrum Masters and the double-diamond and bring everyone together into responsible teams dedicated to working on the entire product to make their customers happier and their lives more fulfilling.Come and join us on our improvement towards perfection, and give us your feedback (we have a strong customer focus, too), and who knows, perhaps we will discover the magic wand that we can wave over all the broken agile and sudo-products to create a more resilient and adaptable future by bringing the worlds of Product, Agility and coaching together.This podcast has the conversations and insights you need.
Episodes
Mentioned books
Jan 12, 2023 • 31min
The Problems with Top-Down and Bottom-Up Change (with Cliff Hazell, Ex Spotify and Co-Creator of Flight Levels)
Send us a textCliff Hazell, ex-Spotify and Co-Founder of Flight Levels with Klaus Leopold is an expert on organisational change, systems, agile and Kanban. In this practical and somewhat philosophical episode, Cliff and I explore some meaty topics that Agile Coaches, Product People, Scrum Masters, damned pretty much anyone with an interest in organisational change will love.This is the first of 3 episodes that Cliff and I recorded on various topics.In this one, we speak about Organisational change pitfalls Agile Coaches and other change agents can avoid. The power of quitting in a Product environment (as well as in our personal lives). Putting the parts back together rather than being reductionist (through critiquing the words holistic and systemic and a whole lot more (see below).Should you want to skip to a specific point, this is probably useful (if chapters are not your thing)02:15 - How did Ben become aware of Cliff and his work?03:03 - Who is Cliff Hazell? In his own words06:37 - Is the "Top Down and Bottom" metaphor useful when attempting organisational change?09:20 - The problems with the terms "systemic" and "holistic."11:39 - what is the big challenge when embarking on organisational change?13:48 - What is it that Cliff finds both frustrating and amusing?15:16 - The secret to Cliff's success17:32 - what are the two pitfalls when trying to be outcome focussed21:03 - What was the thing Cliff should have quit rather than carried on24:06 - When an organisation should quit talking about focus27:14 - why is it Naive to think that just training will change an organisational system?28:42 - Episode recapUseful StuffSunk cost fallacy the phenomenon whereby a person is reluctant to abandon a strategy or course of action because they have invested heavily in it, even when it is clear that abandonment would be more beneficial.Annie Duke - Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away Host Bio Ben is a seasoned expert in product agility coaching, unleashing the potential of people and products. With over a decade of experience, his focus now is product-led growth & agility in organisations of all sizes. Stay up-to-date with us on our social media📱! Ben Maynard 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/benmaynard-sheev/ 🐦 https://x.com/BenWMaynard 💻 https://sheev.co.uk/ Product Agility Podcast 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/company/productagilitypod/ 💻 https://productagilitypod.co.uk/ 🖇️ https://linktr.ee/productagility Listen & Share On Spotify & iTunes Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/0lkwAYJzVSuk5zfJ1vIDZq?si=4c691fb12f124a56 iTunes - https://apple.co/3YvTX8p Want to come on the podcast? Want to be a guest or have a guest request? Let us know here https://bit.ly/49osN80
Dec 9, 2022 • 5min
Festive Fun! - Find Out About our Christmas Break and Plans for 2023
Send us a textAs this year comes to an end, I thought it would be the perfect time to take a short hiatus on the podcast! In order to prepare for all of the new amazing things that are coming in January. Thank you to all of the LeSS Listeners, we hope you have a wonderful Christmas and a great New Year! Listen out for us in 2023! Host Bio Ben is a seasoned expert in product agility coaching, unleashing the potential of people and products. With over a decade of experience, his focus now is product-led growth & agility in organisations of all sizes. Stay up-to-date with us on our social media📱! Ben Maynard 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/benmaynard-sheev/ 🐦 https://x.com/BenWMaynard 💻 https://sheev.co.uk/ Product Agility Podcast 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/company/productagilitypod/ 💻 https://productagilitypod.co.uk/ 🖇️ https://linktr.ee/productagility Listen & Share On Spotify & iTunes Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/0lkwAYJzVSuk5zfJ1vIDZq?si=4c691fb12f124a56 iTunes - https://apple.co/3YvTX8p Want to come on the podcast? Want to be a guest or have a guest request? Let us know here https://bit.ly/49osN80
Dec 1, 2022 • 30min
The Dynamics of High Performance Teams With Ari Tikka
Send us a textAri has woven his thoughts on group dynamics by consolidating 70 years of research into something he believes are the team dynamics fundamentals that everyone Scrum Master should know how to leverage to help teams reach high performance WHO IS ARI?Ari provides coaching, training, and consultation for Agile Teams, Product Owners, Adoption Leaders, and executives. He has worked in the software business since 1990, including seven years of developing fault-tolerant embedded real-time systems.✨This research was done in som elunlikley contexts, you will be amazed what we in the Product Agility world can learn from coal miners.✨Were Coal miners the first Feature Teams?✨What is the "third" relationship that we can find in a team that is not between each individual but between the individuals and something else✨how can understanding thie extra entity help us to create teams whose performance sets them apart from the crowd?✨What can we develop in ourselves that enables us to be aware of this and manage the power it holds over us and others?✨We learn the first necessary step in team forming, that if missed could caause performacne improvement inertia✨What is the role of the "situational leader" and how teams thrive because of it✨✨And how this situational leadership can then lead the team to an untimely death✨How can you tell if your team is in its Teenage years?✨How the teams "internal questions" are the key to the next stages of team development✨How long does it take for teams to reach distinguiable levels of performance✨Why "Dreaming" is better than "Norming"✨How can we turn this advice to communiities?✨Team resiliacny, does it mean being hard so nothing effects your or soft so that they can dented and recover, becoming something newUSEFUL LINKSThe images Ari was showing during the episode (Team Life Cycle) - https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1D_GnHqZtnp1RsSnl0PBb8aQZcsYP2JZ-?usp=sharingTeamwork and Rewarding, a blog post by Ari - https://gosei.fi/blog/teamwork-and-rewarding/More info on Ari's approach - https://gosei.fi/teHost Bio Ben is a seasoned expert in product agility coaching, unleashing the potential of people and products. With over a decade of experience, his focus now is product-led growth & agility in organisations of all sizes. Stay up-to-date with us on our social media📱! Ben Maynard 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/benmaynard-sheev/ 🐦 https://x.com/BenWMaynard 💻 https://sheev.co.uk/ Product Agility Podcast 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/company/productagilitypod/ 💻 https://productagilitypod.co.uk/ 🖇️ https://linktr.ee/productagility Listen & Share On Spotify & iTunes Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/0lkwAYJzVSuk5zfJ1vIDZq?si=4c691fb12f124a56 iTunes - https://apple.co/3YvTX8p Want to come on the podcast? Want to be a guest or have a guest request? Let us know here https://bit.ly/49osN80
9 snips
Nov 24, 2022 • 24min
Enabling High Performing Teams With Ari Tikka
Ari Tikka, an agile coaching expert with over three decades in the software industry, dives into the often-taboo topic of team performance. He discusses how introducing new vocabulary can transform team dialogue and enhance performance. Ari reveals what types of work hinder progress and the essential conditions for enabling great team outcomes. Surprisingly, he emphasizes that coaching plays a mere 10% role in performance, while the remaining 90% is influenced by team dynamics and organizational design.
Nov 17, 2022 • 31min
What is Team Magic? - Ari Tikka
Send us a textAri Tikka - https://www.linkedin.com/in/aritikka/ has a magic wand for team performance, just what this wand was took me by surprise. Not because its actually magic but because it stands a pretty good chance of working because 1) its not actually magic 2) its based upon research 3) Ari has a rather special approach.WHO IS ARI?Ari provides coaching, training, and consultation for Agile Teams, Product Owners, Adoption Leaders, and executives. He has worked in the software business since 1990, including seven years of developing fault-tolerant embedded real-time systems.WHAT IS IN THE EPISODE?In this episode, Ari makes the case that, to achieve a great systemic, organisational performance a Team, regardless of size, is required. Focusing on 7+/-2 won't get us to where amazing performances are staged, so we spoke about🍄What is performance in a team context? 🍄Everyone knows there are two types of magic Harry Potter style (real) and Dynamo - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamo_(magician) (not real). Which is Ari's?!🍄What are group dynamics?🍄What does Ari recommend when you get to more than around eight teams? 🍄What type of Teamwork and collaboration mode has Ari seen between Product Owners🍄The problems with people who have never really experienced great teamwork leading and managing teams 🍄In small-scale software development, how does Ari see leadership being enacted? 🍄How the performance of the "smartest person" has held back our thinking on Teams 🍄 Why is it that in some organisations, the "aggressive whippers" (aka Project Managers who focus on Jira ticket management) get promoted?🍄 Ben's complete ignorance as to what Zen meditation is was exposed (Ben: "turns out its inverse floating") 🍄Is a Requirement Area - https://less.works/less/less-huge/requirement-areas in If the enablers for Teamwork are the same for communities, so what are Ari's tips for getting a community working well? USEFUL LINKSRichard HackHost Bio Ben is a seasoned expert in product agility coaching, unleashing the potential of people and products. With over a decade of experience, his focus now is product-led growth & agility in organisations of all sizes. Stay up-to-date with us on our social media📱! Ben Maynard 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/benmaynard-sheev/ 🐦 https://x.com/BenWMaynard 💻 https://sheev.co.uk/ Product Agility Podcast 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/company/productagilitypod/ 💻 https://productagilitypod.co.uk/ 🖇️ https://linktr.ee/productagility Listen & Share On Spotify & iTunes Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/0lkwAYJzVSuk5zfJ1vIDZq?si=4c691fb12f124a56 iTunes - https://apple.co/3YvTX8p Want to come on the podcast? Want to be a guest or have a guest request? Let us know here https://bit.ly/49osN80
Nov 10, 2022 • 9min
James Mayes - Dealing with The Product Mentor Shortage: Product Elevation Talk in Ten
Send us a textJames Mayers is the Cofounder & former CEO, Mind the Product. I grabbed James for 10 minutes at the Product Elevation 2022 conference in Dublin to get his talk in Ten.Now his talk wasn't titles the "Product Mentor" shortage, but I needed something pithy to put on the thumbnail and it seemed relevant to our conversation. Here is the offical title and synopsis for his talkHow to build the best support for you AND your teamProduct mentors are in short supply, leadership mentors even more so - and real experts are always time poor. This lightning session will run through tips, tactics and hacks to help you build the support networks you needWhat James has to say on mentoring in the Product world was fascinating, thought provoking and practically useful.These descriptions are short, mostly because I am sat in the conference venue trying to keep the cycle time per episode nice and short :-)Useful LinksJame's slides from Product Elevation -https://www.slideshare.net/JamesMayes/building-support-for-product-peopleLinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/jmayes/Twitter – https://twitter.com/James_MayesHost Bio Ben is a seasoned expert in product agility coaching, unleashing the potential of people and products. With over a decade of experience, his focus now is product-led growth & agility in organisations of all sizes. Stay up-to-date with us on our social media📱! Ben Maynard 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/benmaynard-sheev/ 🐦 https://x.com/BenWMaynard 💻 https://sheev.co.uk/ Product Agility Podcast 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/company/productagilitypod/ 💻 https://productagilitypod.co.uk/ 🖇️ https://linktr.ee/productagility Listen & Share On Spotify & iTunes Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/0lkwAYJzVSuk5zfJ1vIDZq?si=4c691fb12f124a56 iTunes - https://apple.co/3YvTX8p Want to come on the podcast? Want to be a guest or have a guest request? Let us know here https://bit.ly/49osN80
Nov 10, 2022 • 13min
Janna Bastow - The Skinny on Lean Road mapping: Product Elevation Talk in Ten
Send us a textJanna is a product manager, taking the forms of a startup founder and CEO, consultant, and accidental event manager. As a product manager, she is always looking for better tools, which led to her founding ProdPad, product management software that helps you manage your roadmap and your product backlog.Janna on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jannabastow/Continuing with the hugely popular "Talks in Ten" format Ben is at the Product Elevation Elevation 2022 conference in Dublin asking people to summarise their talk in ten minutes (ish)This time up it is Janna Bastow, her talk was enlightening and this short interview is rammed with good tips.Here is the overview of her talk (and this chat)In this talk, Janna will look at modern road mapping best practices, including where lean road mapping came from and how to put it to use in your organization. You’ll learn practical tips on how to move away from old school feature and date-driven roadmaps, and how to move your team on to a leaner, more objective-focused track of product management using OKRs.Brilliant linksThe slides - https://bit.ly/lean-roadmapping-okrsA safe place to play with Janna's Prodpad- www.prodpad.com/sandboxProdpad- - www.prodpad.com/Host Bio Ben is a seasoned expert in product agility coaching, unleashing the potential of people and products. With over a decade of experience, his focus now is product-led growth & agility in organisations of all sizes. Stay up-to-date with us on our social media📱! Ben Maynard 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/benmaynard-sheev/ 🐦 https://x.com/BenWMaynard 💻 https://sheev.co.uk/ Product Agility Podcast 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/company/productagilitypod/ 💻 https://productagilitypod.co.uk/ 🖇️ https://linktr.ee/productagility Listen & Share On Spotify & iTunes Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/0lkwAYJzVSuk5zfJ1vIDZq?si=4c691fb12f124a56 iTunes - https://apple.co/3YvTX8p Want to come on the podcast? Want to be a guest or have a guest request? Let us know here https://bit.ly/49osN80
Nov 10, 2022 • 38min
Product Elevation Conference - Why Product Team Coaching Is The Secret Sauce We Need
Send us a textBen is at the Product Elevation Conference in Dublin and delivered an experimental talk on Product Team Coaching. TLDR: Its about how to increase Product Team Performance.This talk was done live less that one hour before release, how's that for a low cycle time :-)Product Elevation - https://skillsmatter.com/conferences/13772-pe2022-in-person#programThe slides are here - https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1gfV1UHp2ZFov3iFEfCmkcQoEchsEzI8w?usp=sharingWhy experimental? The slides were a bit out there and the content, perhaps a little different to what people were expecting!Either way, it went down brilliantly. Enjoy!Host Bio Ben is a seasoned expert in product agility coaching, unleashing the potential of people and products. With over a decade of experience, his focus now is product-led growth & agility in organisations of all sizes. Stay up-to-date with us on our social media📱! Ben Maynard 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/benmaynard-sheev/ 🐦 https://x.com/BenWMaynard 💻 https://sheev.co.uk/ Product Agility Podcast 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/company/productagilitypod/ 💻 https://productagilitypod.co.uk/ 🖇️ https://linktr.ee/productagility Listen & Share On Spotify & iTunes Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/0lkwAYJzVSuk5zfJ1vIDZq?si=4c691fb12f124a56 iTunes - https://apple.co/3YvTX8p Want to come on the podcast? Want to be a guest or have a guest request? Let us know here https://bit.ly/49osN80
Nov 10, 2022 • 27min
The UKs BIGGEST Agile Failure With Paddy Dhanda - Part 2 of 2
Send us a text**DISCLAIMER** This is my MOST POLITICAL PODCAST to date and goes deep on a HUGE failure of a HUGE project. It is an emotive topic for many so I want to make it clear that there were great people working long hours and nothing we say is aimed at any one person. It was, in my (Bens') opinion, a systemic failure with nothing to do with individual people. Pardeep "Paddy" Dhanda - https://www.linkedin.com/in/paddy-dhanda/, Creative Industry Awards Best Content Creator nominee, Agile Practices Director for the UKs largest technical training company QA picks up from where we left off in episode 1 to try and understand what could have been done to have made the £2 billion project less of a sh*t show. Having been on benefits for half of his life, this was a topic close to Ben's heart.So what did we talk about?✨ When people parent the truth away from the people doing the work.✨ How the LeSS Huge Product Owner structure creates alignment✨ With a project with such a strong purpose, why didn't people speak up?✨Did the fact that consultancy firms had incumbent software give them too much power?✨Would it have been possible for Universal Credit to have been a single Product with a single Product Backlog?✨How competition between consultancy firms leads to feature/requirement land grabs, (much like corporate Cobra Paw - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45oTvnqTmrc) where the desire was to be the richest, not do the right thing for the people of the UK.✨Was there any approach that could have saved the project from disaster?✨ The Sponsor employed Go See, so what on earth went wrong?Some awesome links🔗 Universal Credit, the UKs largest agile failure - https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=universal+credit+agile+failurePardeep's AWESOME podcast superpowers.school - https://superpowers.school🔗 Seacom Enterprise Agility Conference - https://www.seacom.online/🔗 Check out this VisuaHost Bio Ben is a seasoned expert in product agility coaching, unleashing the potential of people and products. With over a decade of experience, his focus now is product-led growth & agility in organisations of all sizes. Stay up-to-date with us on our social media📱! Ben Maynard 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/benmaynard-sheev/ 🐦 https://x.com/BenWMaynard 💻 https://sheev.co.uk/ Product Agility Podcast 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/company/productagilitypod/ 💻 https://productagilitypod.co.uk/ 🖇️ https://linktr.ee/productagility Listen & Share On Spotify & iTunes Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/0lkwAYJzVSuk5zfJ1vIDZq?si=4c691fb12f124a56 iTunes - https://apple.co/3YvTX8p Want to come on the podcast? Want to be a guest or have a guest request? Let us know here https://bit.ly/49osN80
Nov 3, 2022 • 27min
The UKs BIGGEST Agile Failure With Paddy Dhanda Part 1 of 2
Send us a textPardeep "Paddy" Dhanda - https://www.linkedin.com/in/paddy-dhanda/, Creative Industry Awards Best Content Creator nominee, Agile Practices Director for the UKs largest technical training company QA and ex IBM'er tells us about what it was like working on the UKs largest ever (to date) agile failure the UK Department Of Work and Pensions (DWP) £2 billion Universal Credit Platform. Having been on benefits for half of his life, this was a topic close to Ben's heart. With around £1.12billion burnt on consultants, Paddy tells us what it was like working there and what he blieves were some of the biggest hurdles that lead to the DWP pulling the plug on all agile development for this delivery.Sounds pretty unbelievable right? You can find more information from this great write up from Computer Weekly - https://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240187478/Why-agile-development-failed-for-Universal-CreditWhat is:Housing benefit - https://www.gov.uk/housing-benefitCouncil tax benefit - https://www.gov.uk/apply-council-tax-reductionSo what was explored?💣 A whole new reason why component teams are created that I had never though of. 💣How Paddy came from the UK's worst performing school to the UKs worst agile delivery💣What was the human skill that was missing that caused it to be such a HUGE failure💣 What do you get if you have 200 super intelligent consultants, what do you think they were optimising for? 💣 Universal Credit was seen as the UKs Conservative governments flagship agile programme, how did this contribute towards it's failure? 💣 <Sarcasm> How you can you be totally agile when you have vendors handing large requirement documents they have spent years writing? </Sarcasm>💣 Why so many scenarios they had to implement couldn't be without them being discussed by the UK Government leaders💣Do any agile approaches take into account the operational overhead created when technology is not the silver bullet? 💣 What is and who were the "middle users"?Host Bio Ben is a seasoned expert in product agility coaching, unleashing the potential of people and products. With over a decade of experience, his focus now is product-led growth & agility in organisations of all sizes. Stay up-to-date with us on our social media📱! Ben Maynard 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/benmaynard-sheev/ 🐦 https://x.com/BenWMaynard 💻 https://sheev.co.uk/ Product Agility Podcast 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/company/productagilitypod/ 💻 https://productagilitypod.co.uk/ 🖇️ https://linktr.ee/productagility Listen & Share On Spotify & iTunes Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/0lkwAYJzVSuk5zfJ1vIDZq?si=4c691fb12f124a56 iTunes - https://apple.co/3YvTX8p Want to come on the podcast? Want to be a guest or have a guest request? Let us know here https://bit.ly/49osN80
