Clarion Coughlan, Justin Blass, Kelsey White, Nathan Lord & Simon Watson
Over the past two weeks, Nathan has been delving into AI tools like ChatGPT and DALL-E, exploring their practical applications and enjoying leisure activities such as creating images with his children. He also attended an AI conference, gaining valuable insights into its potential impact across various industries and the importance of continuous learning in technology.
In the meantime, Justin's been having fun creating and running various workshops over the last few weeks. From sessions to discuss responsibilities across our Product Trios to the art and challenges of 1-on-1 coaching, and finally, a session to help teams improve their way of managing defects. He spent a bit of brain power considering how teams work towards a Tech Strategy within their Product outcome-orientated roadmaps. In the meantime, he wrote a blog to help Product Trio's (design, engineering, and product leaders) check on their interactions to improve decision-making and solutionising. You can also check out the map for 1-on-1 coaching.
As the current project Simon has been working on comes to a close he is spending his time looking back and forward. Back - interviewing team members and stakeholders from the early days of the project to gather insights on how it could have gone better. It's been interesting to ponder what is an appropriate level of effort to use on something like this when the need to apply the learnings could be a number of years away. Forward - pulling together recommendations for how aspects of the project could operate in business-as-usual mode. This includes thinking on how to do client side product management and product strategy, as required user acceptance testing, first level support and stakeholder management.
Kelsey published the Strategy on a Page for her group this week. So, the past two weeks were busy taking feedback from peers, finalizing, and presenting it. She has also started the first of a two-part mini design sprint for a cohesive incident management process at her company. Google's own methods and Teresa Cain provided inspiration in structuring the workshop. Kelsey has been musing hypothesis driven development these past two weeks, coaching the product managers in her organization to follow this structure: align with the vision and larger goals, identify the most significant problems or barriers to that vision, and then plan hypothesis tests to solve them.
Clarion has been immersed in discussions about fostering better collaboration between Product and Engineering teams. She stressed the necessity of defining clear principles for product and engineering cultures before crafting artifacts that delineate roles and responsibilities. Clarion highlighted the ambiguity often found in the delivery area and how different methodologies influence product shaping. She reminded her colleagues of the vast array of available methodologies beyond the popular ones like Shopify, Scrum, and SAFe, advocating for alternative approaches such as Kanban, Lean Startup, Linear Method, and Shape Up, which might be more fitting for scaling product development teams.
Lastly, Jayne has been embracing the festive spirit by exploring the Christmas lights of London, blending work with the joy of the season. 🎄