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.
Getting Your SaaS Pricing & Packaging Right (with Dan Balcauski, Founder & Chief Pricing Officer @ Product Tranquility)
Pioneers, Settlers & Town Planners in Performance Design (with Richie Lokay, VP of Product Design and Services @ Wunderkind)
Building High Performing Cross-Functional Teams as a PM (with Hanne Ockert-Axelsson, Senior Product Manager @ accuRx)
Why We Need To Stay Aligned to Avoid Product Failure (with Jonathon Hensley, author ”Alignment”)
The Importance of Making Design a Strategic Business Partner (with Wolfgang Bremer, Head of Design @ Elli)
How to Manage Imposter Syndrome in Product Management (with Phyllis Njoroge, author ”From Fraud to Freedom”)
Product Leadership is Hard - Let‘s Get Better At It (with Ebenezer Ikonne, author ”Becoming a Leader in Product Development”)
Building Effective Technical Skills for Product Managers (with Irene Yu, founder @ Skiplevel)
Leading & Evolving Product Teams Through Hyperscale (with Brian Shen, Product Director @ ClickUp)
Breaking Down Silos in Product Development (with Sigurd Seteklev, co-founder @ Kitemaker)
Can Sales & Product Really Get Along? (with Brendan McAdams, author ”Sales Craft”)
Protecting Vulnerable Users by Designing for Safety (with Eva PenzeyMoog, author ”Design for Safety”)
Creating Sustainable Products with Conscious Design (with Ian Peterman, co-author ”Conscious Design”)
Digital Pollution & The Product Hippocratic Oath (with Radhika Dutt, author ”Radical Product Thinking”)
Building the Future of Automated Crypto Trading with the DDDT Process (with Gabriele Musella, CEO @ Coinrule)
Helping Companies Scale by Automating (almost) Everything (with Daniel Cooper, founder @ Lolly Co)
Selling Product Thinking by Influencing Companies at the Right Time (with Anthony Marter, product consultant & chair @ Product Aotearoa)
Maintaining a Collaborative & Inclusive Product Culture at Scale (with Anna Curzon, Chief Product Officer @ Xero)
Building the Future of Professional Networking (with Peter Johnston & Matt Breuer, CEO & Product Director @ Polywork)
Optimising Product Planning with the Quartz Open Framework (with Steve Johnson, consultant & co-founder @ Product Growth Leaders)
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