The Problem A SaaS startup had a South Asian outsourced offshore team as its primary application development team. The team had a project leader, who, while very capable and reliable, was a bottleneck for communication with the rest of the team. Stakeholders simply threw requirements over the fence to the project leader and were not … Read more »
Leadership
Scrum is Like Training Wheels for an Agile Mindset
In the last few years there has been a growing but steady backlash against Scrum and some its corollary concepts such as using story points to estimate work and make projections. As a proponent and practitioner of agile product development methodologies, this bothered me at first. But upon further reflection, I have come to welcome … Read more »
Rise of the CPTO (Chief Product & Technology Officer)
I thrive as a cross-functional digital product development leader, where I can see the big picture and how each discipline integrates to make cohesive, integrated products that delight customers. Asking me to choose between engineering, product, UX, and project management is like asking me to choose between my kids. The title of “Chief Product & … Read more »
Intuition is Just Internalized Data
How good is your gut? We make decisions without complete information every waking minute of our lives. When you roll out of bed in the morning and plant your feet beside your bed to stand up, do you first look down at the floor to verify it’s still where you think it is, or that … Read more »
Know Thy [Work] Self
There are 3 types of roles that I think everyone should experience in order to learn more about themselves and how they work best: Working at a larger company or larger team where you are a ‘grunt,’ or have supervisors in your specialization. Working at a small company or small team where you are the domain expert. … Read more »