The Main Thing: Are Empowered Product Teams Realistic?

Marty Cagan has released a new book, Transformed, which goes into how companies can transition to empowered product teams.

One of the most common criticisms that Marty receives is that he is too idealistic and not realistic enough. His counter is that he is basing his content on first-hand experience of how the best teams work.

I think it is better to view the way of working as an almost impossible aspiration. What do I mean by this? Toyota has an ambition for "Single Piece Flow" which means that they don't batch any of their work in backlogs and always work on an item as soon as it is available. This is not achievable but it has helped them to massively improve how they work by giving people a vision to aim towards: will this change get us closer to single-piece flow?

This Weeks Updates

Enabling the Team

How to Actually Execute Change at a Company by Tom Hunsaker
Only 60% of planned value is typically realized in change initiatives. Tom shares four key factors that can improve your odds.

Transformed FAQ by Marty Cagan
Does this add responsibility to product managers? Is the product model realistic? How do you define the best companies? Marty answers the most common questions.

Product Direction

AI Tools for Product Managers: Expert Recommendations by Go Practice
Discover the AI tools, beyond ChatGPT and Midjourney, preferred by product managers for enhancing operations and leveraging expertise.

Rethinking the Startup MVP: Building a Competitive Product by Tuomas Artman
Tuomas shares how you can use MVPs to iterate towards best-in-class products for existing categories and not just for validating novel ideas.

Continuous Discovery

What Is a Product? by Megan Neese
The traditional way of looking at products and personas was not working. So Nissan shifted to location-based needs. Some might even call them jobs :)

Is Systems Thinking the New Buzzword in UX? by Meghan Bausone
Everything is connected. But modern systems are complex. Meghan explains that the key is finding the system's leverage points and paradigms.

Continuous Design

Beyond the Wait: Enhancing User Experience Through Psychological Insights by Dr Maria Panagiotidi
Should wait screens have interactive animations? Should they be colour or grayscale? It depends on the expected delay time.

A Survey of Digital Product Teams Reveals the Value of Content Design by Melanie Seibert
Better products, better solutions, and higher morale: Just a few benefits content designers bring to the UX design process.

Continuous Delivery

What is INP and Why you Should Care by Salma Alam-Naylor
Core Web Vitals are how Google compares the performance of websites which influences ranking. And they've introduced a new one: Interaction to Next Paint.

Measuring Developer Productivity via Humans by Abi Noda and Tim Cochran
Qualitative data can be better than quantitative data when working with unstructured problem areas. Not where have we learned that before?

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Join our expert-led talk on blending human-centric approaches with AI in tech and business. Learn strategies for integrating ethics in AI development and maintaining human values in business models. Ideal for tech leaders and strategists, this presentation will guide you in navigating AI adoption responsibly. 👇👇

The job of the Week

Senior Machine Learning Developer
🏬 Ocado
📌 San Francisco, USA

About Ocado
Two decades later, Ocado has gone from revolutionizing procurement to pioneering advanced technologies and expanding around the world. Now, they are transforming their industry and inviting innovators to help shape the future of global procurement.

See role details here

The Results of Last Week’s Poll

The question was: Are you excited about the prospect of full AI programmers?

The majority of people are excited for the "Democratisation" of coding with AI developers. However, 26% of people expressed some concerns about the problems of early adoption and 16% of people are concerned about their jobs.

One thing is certain though - AI programmers are coming because of the cost savings they will provide. So we should start to think about what types of work would be best suited for them and how to get the most out of them.