Part of the Process

First day of a new conference - SofaConf 2020 "A stay-at-home conference"  - that came about in reaction to COVID-19 and lockdown/travel restrictions. Overall very good content so far, lots of sessions that speak to real issues in doing product development in the real world. Slight technical issue with quality of Andy Budd's broadcast that was quickly sorted. The Secret Weapon to Finding Focus - Melissa Perri Melissa explained the build trap, where features are not seen as "what is the business value I want to provide" but rather "here are some features we want as  output". Netflix realised that they were in the build trap with Roku, and getting into competition with hardware companies that they could partner with. So they spun it out and so that they could then double down on their core competency. Now is the time to focus, what can we do to win? .... first you need a good product Strategy framework. alignment builds autonomous teams. The right level ...

Last week was the briefing webinar for the ThoughtWorks Technology Radar. Like many of us, this was the first time they had gone through a process remotely which appeared as the pun/theme "the elephant in the zoom". It is interesting to hear from experts in specific technology areas discuss the latest trends and techniques. This time I was struck by the story behind how the Tech Radar came about.  It didn't start as a external "thought leadership" or sales device, It was a reaction to business growth and internal knowledge management issues. I think it's the bi-directional process of the teams feeding in the ideas, the advisory board then collating and debating them to pull out patterns and asses the different maturity levels makes it powerful. Also this is based on actual experience from their projects, rather than desk analysis that you might get from a report like Gartners. They also offer advice on how to make your own , which is great to get people sha...