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-inIt'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 TwitterYou 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 itRemoving 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 teamsYou 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 behavioursWe 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!
Allen is writing a book! Check out the progress of the book here.
Go to Allen's User Story workshopIf you want to go to Allen's upcoming class on User Stories, check out the details here.
Contact AllenYou can reach out to Allen on Twitter, or book a chat with him.
Paying Off Your Organisation’s Human Debt Through Agility & Psychological Safety (with Duena Blomstrom, Founder & CEO @ People Not Tech)
Moving Beyond Founder-Led Product Development & Setting PMs up for Success (with Jennifer Yang-Wong, VP of Product @ Contrary)
Connecting Product Management to Business Goals by Mastering your Product Strategy (with Gabrielle Bufrem, Product Leadership Coach & Advisor)
Taking Control of your Career with Life-Changing Conversations (with Julie Starr, Author ”The Coaching Manual”, ”The Mentoring Manual” & ”Brilliant Coaching”)
Designing Conversations that Matter with the Conversation OS Canvas (with Daniel Stillman, Executive Coach & Conversation Designer @ The Conversation Factory)
Product Managing APIs - What’s Different and What’s the Same? (with Deepa Goyal, Product Strategy Lead @ Postman & Author of ”API Analytics for Product Managers”)
Build Better Products Faster by Embracing Continuous Delivery (with Dave Farley, Consultant & Co-author of ”Continuous Delivery”)
The Big Pivot to Reinvent Product Management (with Yana Welinder, Founder & CEO @ Kraftful)
Landing That Perfect Role by Finding Your Inevitable Edge (with Erika Klics, Job Search Strategist & Founder @ ErikaKlics.com)
Doing the Splits to Accelerate your Product Growth (with Andres Glusman, CEO @ DoWhatWorks & A/B Test Enthusiast)
Moving to Customer-Led Growth by Forgetting the Funnel (with Georgiana Laudi & Claire Suellentrop, Founders @ Forget the Funnel)
Embracing Change to Innovate in Product Management (with Greg Coticchia, CEO @ Sopheon)
Achieving Product Excellence with the Product Operations Manifesto (with Antonia Landi, Product Ops Consultant & Co-Author ”Product Operations Manifesto”)
Is Product-Led Growth Really For You? (with Leah Tharin, Product-Led Growth Guru & Head of Product @ Jua)
(Don’t) Scream If You Want To Go Faster - How to Accelerate Product Development (with Ed Biden, Founder @ Hustle Badger)
The Rise of the Robots - How to Responsibly use AI in your Products (with ChatGPT 4, Cutting-edge language model @ OpenAI)
Moving from Value Streams to Software Profit Streams (with Luke Hohmann, Co-author ”Software Profit Streams” & former SAFe® Framework Contributor)
Getting Ahead of the Competition by Getting Good at Competitor Analysis (with Bethan Vincent, Managing Partner @ Open Velocity)
The Seven Deadly Mistakes of Productization (with Eisha Armstrong, Co-founder @ Vecteris & Author ”Productize”)
How to Move Fast Without Breaking Things (with Dani Grant, Co-founder & CEO @ Jam)
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