In this episode of the Arguing Agile podcast, Product Manager Brian Orlando and Enterprise Business Agility Coach Om Patel explore the importance of asking for help across various roles, including developers, testers, UI/UX designers, managers and executives.

The podcast explores the common reasons people avoid seeking help, such as ego, fear of appearing weak or incompetent, and cultural factors.

Listen to this podcast if you want to discover the benefits of fostering a culture where asking for help is encouraged, and learn practical tips for instilling this mindset in your team.

Whether you're an individual contributor or a leader, this episode will provide valuable insights to help you and your organization succeed through collaboration and continuous improvement.

Keywords:
asking for help, collaboration, coaching, leadership, team culture, developers, testers, UI/UX designers, managers, executives, ego, fear, incompetence, Toyota Way, agile, scrum
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AA168 - Why Asking for Help is Critical for Success

Many companies offer both products and services to their customers, but struggle with how to effectively manage and organize these two sides of the business. In this episode of the Arguing Agile podcast, Product Manager Brian Orlando and Enterprise Business Agility Coach Om Patel dive deep into the challenges and opportunities that come with delivering products and services together.

Join the hosts as they explore different organizational models, from silos to matrixed structures to customer-centric "pods". Through examples from companies like Intuit, BMW, IKEA and FedEx, the hosts illustrate how the product and service components can intersect and influence each other and how a deep understanding of how your product is being utilized can be crucial for product managers.

Whether you're in software, manufacturing, logistics or any other industry, if your company has both a product and service offering, this episode will give you food for thought on optimizing your business.

Keywords: product management, service delivery, business models, organizational structure, product teams, customer experience, Intuit, FedEx, BMW, IKEA, agile

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AA167 - How to Manage Products & Services Together in Your Business

In this episode of the Arguing Agile podcast, Brian and Om discuss the risks of bypassing user validation and prototyping in favor of quickly building and releasing features. They explore the potential pitfalls, including lack of alignment with user needs, rework, low feature adoption, and damage to company reputation.

Learn why investing time upfront in user research, wireframes and staged rollouts can save major headaches later. Even if you think a feature is quick to build, validation is still critical.

0:00 Podcast Intro
0:17 Topic Intro: Just Build It!
1:33 The Main "Pro"
4:49 Reducing Risk
8:21 Lack of User Validation
11:29 Types of Companies
13:31 Rework
16:25 Validating Ideas
18:28 Intuition vs Evidence
20:19 Smaller Course Corrections
24:12 Low/No Feature Adoption
26:34 Stakeholder Alignment
32:22 Asking for Feedback
35:39 The Right Circumstances
38:03 Wrap-Up

AA166 - The Perils of "Just Build It": Why User Validation Matters

product development, user validation, prototyping, user research, agile development, product management, MVP, minimum viable product, user feedback, wireframes, product-market fit, feature adoption, technical debt, stakeholder alignment

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Toronto Is My Beat (Music Sample)
By Whitewolf (Source: https://ccmixter.org/files/whitewolf225/60181)
CC BY 4.0 DEED (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en)

We've titled this podcast: "Escaping the Feature Factory," or Unlearn Bad Habits and Advance Your Career!

If you're a developer, product manager, or in another tech role and feel stuck in the "feature factory" mindset, this podcast episode is for you. We discuss the key skills and mindset shifts needed to break out of the feature factory and advance your career in a more modern, collaborative product development environment. 

Topics include:

• Recognizing feature factory habits that hold you back 
• Developing critical emotional intelligence and collaboration skills
• Embracing uncertainty and ambiguity 
• Letting go of control and building trust
• Celebrating small wins and learning from failure

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Toronto Is My Beat (Music Sample)
By Whitewolf (Source: https://ccmixter.org/files/whitewolf225/60181)
CC BY 4.0 DEED (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en)

Does your team struggle with large, complex user stories that don't fit in a sprint? 🤔

In this podcast, Product Manager Brian Orlando and Enterprise Business Agility Coach Om Patel brainstorm for 10 techniques to split user stories for better flow and faster software delivery. 💡

This episode is all about practical tips to slice stories by:

• Workflow and valuable user paths 
• Personas and roles
• System and technology borders
• Business rules and exception handling
• Non-functional requirements
• ...and more!

Whether you're a Developer, Product Manager, or Executive, we guarantee you'll walk away with actionable ideas to break down your backlog for optimal value delivery - or your money back! 🚀

#agile #userstories #backlogrefinement #storysplitting #productowner #scrummaster

0:00 Podcast Intro
0:17 Topic Intro: Splitting Stories
1:12 High-Level: Vertical Slicing
1:53 High-Level: INVEST
4:10 High-Level: Similar Sizing
7:02 By Workflow (and via Valuable Path)
8:44 Logistics Example
11:32 Mortgage Example
12:50 By Persona
14:49 Nuances of Persona
16:41 Persona Profiles
17:50 By System/Technology Border
19:58 Amazon Example
22:50 By Uses of AND/OR
25:47 By Interface
29:36 By Business Rules
31:07 Logistics Example, Revisited
33:00 Mortgage Example, Revisited
34:35 Around Dependencies
37:07 Fake Door with Feature Toggles
39:30 Spikes
43:00 Spike Example
46:17 To Capture Technical Debt
50:19 By Exception Handling
53:53 ChatGPT Example, Revisited
56:39 By NFR
59:03 Wrap-Up

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Toronto Is My Beat (Music Sample)
By Whitewolf (Source: https://ccmixter.org/files/whitewolf225/60181)
CC BY 4.0 DEED (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en)
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10 Proven Techniques to Split User Stories

In this episode, we're joined by Ed Martin to discuss and debate the benefits and challenges of asynchronous daily scrum meetings. 

Listen as we explore the reasons teams may want to go async, potential pitfalls to avoid, and best practices to make async standups effective. If your team is struggling with async practices, listen as we explore ways to optimize your async workflow, including:

• The top reasons teams switch to async standups
• Anti-patterns and pitfalls to watch out for 
• Best practices and tools to enable effective async collaboration
• How to maintain team alignment without meeting in real-time

Let us know your thoughts! Have you tried async standups with your team?

#agile #scrum #remotework #asynccollaboration #productmanagement

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Toronto Is My Beat (Music Sample)
By Whitewolf (Source: https://ccmixter.org/files/whitewolf225/60181)
CC BY 4.0 DEED (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en)

Are you (or management) considering shuffling team members to improve performance?

Before you play musical chairs, explore the latest Arguing Agile Podcast (Linked in the comments) for ways to make sure you're using data, not just reacting to hearsay and emotions!

Organizational design is difficult - don't just stumble through it.

We all know shuffling people between teams can disrupt team dynamics and set teams back to the "forming" stage. Listen as Enterprise Business Agility Coach Hemant (Om) Patel and Product Manager Brian Orlando discuss shuffling team members and outline 5 areas to be analyzed to be sure the data justifies change:

1. Team processes
2. Communication channels
3. Leadership styles
4. Workload distribution
5. Interpersonal team dynamics

#agileleadership #agilecoaching #teamperformance #organizationaldesign

0:00 Podcast Intro
0:17 Topic Intro: When Management Shuffles Team Members
0:48 Why the Shuffling?
2:21 Back to Forming
7:30 Om's Team-Shuffling Example
9:21 Shortcutting Storming & Forming
13:51 Skill (Re)Balancing
16:57 Observing Trends
19:33 Adding Cross-Functionality
20:35 Evaluating Feedback
23:43 What Management Thinks - Fresh Perspectives
25:58 Lacking Communication Skill
27:25 Brian's 5 Suggestions
30:14 Impact of Leadership Decisions
32:29 Leadership is Difficult
35:42 Career Growth
38:23 Conflict Resolution
40:56 Wrap-Up

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Toronto Is My Beat (Music Sample)
By Whitewolf (Source: https://ccmixter.org/files/whitewolf225/60181)
CC BY 4.0 DEED (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en)

In this episode of the Arguing Agile podcast, Product Manager Brian Orlando and Enterprise Business Agility Coach Om Patel are joined by Software Development expert Ed Martin for an exploration how company size affects business agility.

We discuss the challenges that arise as organizations scale from 3 people to 30 to 300 and beyond, covering topics like losing the culture of experimentation, organizational rigidity, continuous improvement, and the "rule of 3 and 10".

Listen as we share real-world examples on how to maintain agility while growing your business. Listen to learn strategies for reinventing your culture, org design best practices, and the importance of having a framework to "work on the business" as you scale. Listen whether you're a founder, agile coach, or product leader and this episode will give you valuable perspectives on navigating the complexities that come with company growth!

0:00 Podcast Intro
0:17 Topic Intro: Business Agility & Company Size
0:47 Brian's Start-up Story
1:51 The Rule of 3 and 10
3:20 Proactive Work on the System
5:27 Om's Systems Example
7:05 Ed's Planning Example
8:11 Example: 3 to 30 People
11:20 Example: Growth to 300
13:57 Continuous Improvement
17:04 Shooting the Messenger
19:35 Your 100%
23:04 Losing the Experimentation Culture
26:15 Business Rigidity and Reinvention
28:16 Culture is Past Tense
30:10 Reinspection Triggers
32:53 Org Design
34:57 Gino Wickman: Traction
37:49 Working Groups
38:45 The Natural Order
44:12  Reinventing Organizations
48:37 Future Podcasts
48:55 Wrap-up

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Toronto Is My Beat (Music Sample)
By Whitewolf (Source: https://ccmixter.org/files/whitewolf225/60181)
CC BY 4.0 DEED (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en)

Onboarding New Product Managers

In this episode of Arguing Agile, hosts Product Manager Brian Orlando and Enterprise Business Agility Coach Om Patel dive into the challenges and best practices around onboarding new product managers. 

Topics include:

• Communicating the company vision, mission and goals 
• Mapping key players, stakeholders and decision-making processes
• Aligning the new PM's goals to organizational objectives
• Building and owning the product roadmap 
• Understanding customers, segmentation and building empathy
• The importance of mentorship and coaching for new PMs

Whether you're a product leader looking to optimize your onboarding or a new PM wanting to hit the ground running, this episode provides actionable tips to set up PMs for success from day one!

Roman Pichler's Stakeholder Management Article referenced in the podcast:
https://www.romanpichler.com/blog/stakeholder-management-tips-for-product-people/

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Toronto Is My Beat (Music Sample)By Whitewolf 
(Source: https://ccmixter.org/files/whitewolf225/60181)
CC BY 4.0 DEED (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en)