Call me crazy but I…

• Don’t believe deadlines motivate. • Don’t believe working solo is more productive than teamwork. • Don’t believe that isolating teams from customers allows them to focus. • Don’t believe change is a cost.

I do believe (with crazy abandon)…

• Solving a customer need inspires and motivates. • A team focused on one thing eclipses a group of people working alone. • A team who knows its customer realizes more value with less effort. • Change is an investment in future effectiveness.

And you have to be a little crazy if you want to make real change actually happen. What do you believe that makes you look crazy?

Read about why I believe in these things (and steal them if you like) in this latest article:

https://medium.com/simply-agile/4-crazy-moves-leaders-can-make-today-to-actually-improve-team-outcomes-e46cada38186?sk=3a27259aac838dfd774ef695741604a4

Managers: Got deadlines?

Since many managers I know keep telling me they are unavoidable, here’s a 101 guide on outsmarting the deadline.

Learn 18 small but powerful tips to win the deadline game. Do you have others?

https://medium.com/simply-agile/beating-deadlines-101-how-to-outsmart-the-corporate-obsession-845a1ab02845?sk=03dcd1dd4e47a930f27837a4f4f692d9

Internet Computer Canadian TownHall with Offchain Vancouver, Offchain Toronto, Blockchain Futurist Conference (ETH Toronto), Genzio Media, Crypto Chicks, Hotcoin, Ashley Wright, Rime Salmi and many more. Don't miss this Twitter Space next Friday at 4 pm EST

Registrations open: https://lu.ma/icp-global-townhall-ep-1-11

Do you know the #1 mistake made with user stories?

Treating them as requirements.

You can get the quick guide to avoid this trap in the article (in the comments).

Do you find this mistake being made?

Article TL;DR A Quick Guide On How Not To Confuse User Stories With Requirements:

#1: Be Clear About What User Stories Are (options and conversation placeholders) #2: Be Clear About The Reality Of Requirements (there’s no such thing in product) #3: Be Clear About What It Means To Be “Done” (done is a delighted user) #4: Be Clear About Emergence (the right solution requires trial and error)

Bypass member only sites / disable pop ups for cookies

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAb37fF67tw

Emotion, a familiar enemy of change.

Emotion is to change as oil is to water. They don't mix. And the result is change that takes longer than it should, or that never happens at all.

Emotions can drive teams and managers to avoid change.

But to develop great products, we have to embrace change. We must avoid emotion-driven (change-resistant) development.

I've got 5 tactics on how to do this .

Tactic 1: How can we make this safe to try? -> Make fear a non-issue. Tactic 2: “Let’s try it.” -> Action trumps debate. Tactic 3: Be a detective. -> Evidence dissolves emotion. Tactic 4: Turn from “Or” to “And.” -> Take both decision paths. Tactic 5: Focus on improving the system. -> Avoid local optimization. Bonus Tactic: Ask, “What would the customer think?” -> Imagine they are watching.

Give them a try and keep emotion at bay.

That’s it. Do you have others?

You can find more detail in the article (in the comments)

Change agents: have you ever witnessed learner amnesia?

Here’s the scene: You have just explained a new behavior at length.

And afterward, the learner has no recollection. Nada. Not a thing.

What’s going on? What can we do about it?

Learner recollection issues are more common than you might think.

I see it all the time, and it makes the change process mysterious (for me and the learner).

One thing is obvious: change brings emotion and resistance with it.

Here’s what I’ve noticed:

Change is hard for both the change agent and the learner.

For the change agent, it’s difficult to figure out how to make change stick.

For the learner, it's challenging to embrace the move to the new and accept the loss of the old.

But what can we do differently to avoid it?

Fortunately, I ran across a 2017 NIH study that sheds light on how change impacts the brain.

It’s a research study, so it’s not a page-turner. But I read it so you don’t have to.

It reveals a path to better change.

Let me tell you about it.

4 study findings explain what causes learner forgetfulness:

1. Emotions influence attention
2. Emotions affect memory
3. Emotions regulate storage and retrieval efficiency
4. Stress impacts memory

This explains a lot.

So, what can change agents do with this?

This NIH study gave me the idea for 5 helpful change agent tweaks.

1. Be aware of emotional impacts
2. Repetition to try multiple paths
3. Adaptability to meet the learner’s context
4. Pause to check in
5. Patience

These small tweaks make you aware of what’s going on inside the learner, and help you to enable lasting change.

Want to learn more? Find the longer article in the comments explaining the study and the tweaks for change agents.

What are your thoughts on dealing with emotion from change?

“97% of product teams know their backlog and ticketing system better than their customer.”

This statement was posted across Reddit, LinkedIn, and Twitter last week.

It sparked a fire of regret from many.

• Regretting the widespread truth of the statement.
• Regretting a tool has become their focus, not their customer.
• Regretting the backlog is as close as they can get to customers.
• Regretting their team is not seen as capable of customer interaction.

But a few said they know their customer and the joy it brings:

• Empathy for the exact struggles the customer faces.
• Less pressure to deliver more features than are necessary.
• Better insight into surgical ways to solve the root cause of pain.
• The rush of knowing they have made their customers’ lives better.

Do you see a reason to reverse the trend?

I do. Article in the comments gives a start on how.

Article TL;DR 8 common limiting beliefs stand in the way of the customer-team connection. And 8 ways to overcome them. Here they are.

Limiting Belief 1: Product team members couldn't care less about the customer. Overcome by trying the customer-team connection; be amazed.

Limiting Belief 2: Product teams need to stay focused on the work. Overcome by making space for customer engagement to reach goals sooner.

Limiting Belief 3: A product manager should perform discovery. Overcome with product manager matchmakers.

Limiting Belief 4: The product team can’t connect from a different time zone. Overcome by getting creative on remote customer interactions across time zones.

Limiting Belief 5: Product team members are incapable. Overcome by awakening conversational capability.

Limiting Belief 6: There are too many customers for the team to cover. Overcome by forming a small customer cohort.

Limiting Belief 7: This will bother customers. Overcome by creating a stable, periodic cadence.

Limiting Belief 8: The backlog is easier to follow than a customer’s whims. Overcome by realizing real-time communication leads to better understanding.

Bonus tip to expedite the customer-team connection: temporarily remove the crutch of the backlog and ticketing system.

Every change has this: friction

When friction comes knocking, change can live on or die based on what comes next.

As a manager, when employees complain to you that change hurts, your response is critical.

You can manage and contain the friction by compromising change. Or you can embrace it for what it is and side-step it to accelerate change.

Article in the comments (no PW). Learn 4 simple steps leaders actually use to embrace change (and the friction that comes with it).

TL;DR Here are 4 pivotal steps leaders use to navigate change friction effectively. Plus, some strategic advice for executing large-scale change safely.

Step 1: Expect Resistance — Understand that resistance is part of the process. This prepares you for navigating it.

Step 2: Pause and Think Before You Act — Avoid knee-jerk reactions that could halt or reverse progress. Thoughtful responses promote enduring change.

Step 3: Leverage Collective Wisdom — Seek diverse opinions to provide strength, clarity, and courage. This will help you navigate out of the resistance.

Step 4: Anchor in Purpose and Safety — Remind your people of the reasons behind the change. And build space and safety around the learning process.

Advice for Large-scale Change — Too much change at once will give you whiplash. Change one team or group at a time to contain the impact and build momentum quicker.

What does it mean to be unstoppable?

The easy path is an illusion.

This is especially true in product development. Instead, we must expect the crooked path, littered with barriers to our progress. This is the only certainty when it comes to product.

A shift in our mindset helps.

“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.” —Marcus Aurelius

We can heed the advice of Marcus Aurelius, penned almost 2000 years ago in his personal journal.

The path to peak product success is facing and breaking through obstacles, not avoiding them.

Article in the comments.

97% of product teams know their ticketing system better than their customer.

• Proxies sit between team and customer
• Separate teams feed “requirements” to them
• Nobody in the org talks to users and stakeholders

Does this seem right?

I don’t think so. Article in the comments.

It’s product fight night: humility versus the fake deadline.

Which will win?

Let’s be honest, humility is the underdog in this fight and is on the ropes.

IME, humility is considered a sign of weakness inside of organizations.

A sign of planning ineptitude. A sign of not being a team player. A sign of inability to control the situation. A sign of inexperience in the ways of tradition.

In reality, humility has the upper hand.

Combined with curiosity, it will lead you through the dark veil of your understanding and reveal the right product path.

In product, your best starting point is admitting: “I don’t know.”

Humility is where I would place my bet in this fight.

Let’s root for humility to be the comeback hero and put fake deadlines to rest.

I hope this helps you rally behind humility in your product journey. Read more about the fight in the comments.

how to video for using docker to set up Puter the cloud desktop on local network. pretty easy and simple to run on your network. Just a few commands to set up and download docker for this method

https://youtu.be/UGJ0N5KhT6U

Hello everyone, I have been applying for jobs for a Full-Stack developer/Frontend developer/Backend developer. But whenever a company replies they give me a huge assignment as a part of selection process. The assignment is-

Assignment Information :

Login & Registration : Users or Merchants can be able to create an account or sign in to the existing account. Merchant Merchants can upload products to the website. They can able to edit the product details. The products can be categorized such as Fashion; electronics etc,. User Users can log in to the account and browse the products. Search the products by using multiple filters by sorting Category Subcategory Price Location etc.,

Time for the assignment is 48 hours. Job Offer is 3 lpa. Is it normal for a fresher or am I missing something, Please help !!

Stakeholder pressure is at the root of many false promises based on hope.

Promises to deliver all ideas by a date. Promises to stay in budget and have a windfall return on investment. Promises to do more, do it faster, and do it all now.

Fortunately, this pattern of empty promises can be broken.

I have seen some product managers crack the code. They become product leaders in the face of stakeholder pressure.

In my latest article (link in the comments), you can quickly learn how savvy product leaders handle 5 common stakeholder asks without betting on hope.

Be sure to check out my bonus go-to response in the article. It works wonders for any stakeholder ask.

Let me know in the comments your favorite responses to stakeholder asks.

TL;DR
Here are 5 common asks and savvy leader response, plus my bonus go-to stakeholder response.

----
Ask 1: “When will it be done?”

Savvy Response: “I don’t know, but let’s start experimenting to find out.”

----
Ask 2: “How much will it cost and what will be my return?”

Savvy Response: “I don’t know. Let’s involve the customer to maximize outcomes while minimizing output.”

----
Ask 3: “Can you fit in these extra bells and whistles before release?”

Savvy Response: “Not yet. We need to start simple and evolve only as much as is useful to our customers.”

----
Ask 4: Can you do it faster and cheaper?”

Savvy Response: “Here is what we can do: 1 Order by impact, 2 Learn from each step, and 3) continuously improve.”

----
Ask 5: Have you started my work?”

Savvy Response: “No, not yet. We finish one thing before starting another. This delivers everything sooner.”

----
**Bonus: My go-to response to any stakeholder ask

Go-to Response: “Would you like to join us and help steer our direction?”

What are they? 👇

1. They use deadlines to spur urgency for fixed scope
2. They seek certainty and don’t tolerate failure
3. They “protect” teams from customers & stakeholders to focus on the work.

That’s it.

Cuvette Tech (100%) guarantee job/intership program is a scam!!

It's a big scam!! I joined their 1st batch, they didn't teach anything extra. They didn't even help in anything, useless live classes were held. They just gave an overview of a language and gave an assignment. Trust me you can learn more on YouTube or any other channel. They will create a slack group but when our batch members tried to create an unofficial WhatsApp group they were not happy about it because their scam will be out in public. Please stay away from these claims of (100% guarantee). DM me if anybody and I will share all their assignments with you because these are useless to me, I have wasted my money along with my classmates

I'm thrilled to introduce you to my latest passion project, ChartCraftr – an AI-powered website that transforms raw data into stunning visualizations instantly. If you've ever found yourself in need of a quick bar chart, pie chart, or line graph but didn't have the time or tools to make it happen, ChartCraftr is here to save the day!

🚀 What is ChartCraftr? ChartCraftr is a web-based tool that leverages the power of chat-based AI, like GPT, to interpret your data or questions and generate accurate and beautiful data visualizations in real-time. It's designed to be intuitive, user-friendly, and incredibly efficient.

📊 How Does It Work?

1. Simply input the data you need to visualize or ask a question about the data you're interested in.
2. ChartCraftr's AI will process your input and create a corresponding data visualization.
3. You'll receive an image of a bar chart, pie chart, line graph, or other visualization types that best represents your data.

🔗 Try It Out!

Check it out here:https://chartcraftr.com/

https://reddit.com/link/1akbqf1/video/xattu8wvbzgc1/player

When do you claim victory as a product team?

Most do it far too early.

They mistake motion for progress (rocking horse fallacy).

And they let value slip away.

Want to be in the minority? Read more in my latest post below.

https://medium.com/simply-agile/how-product-teams-claim-victory-too-soon-and-let-value-slip-away-and-how-not-to-0978336f317f?sk=4272c1ebe15e50ea7af8f320107e8f31

Basically, I have an application running on localhost:5000.

I've been looking at forward and reverse proxies, but I haven't had much success. The goal is to visit a domain example.com, and have example.com establish connection with the local machine running the application.

Is something like this possible? I hope the question is clear.

Tl;Dr the client accesses the server. The server block responds by redirecting back to the host, port 5000. Port 5000 does what it does, responding back to the server and so on.

Specifically, the port 5000 application access the client local file system, delivering content ad-hoc to the server, the server renders accordingly but is in constant communication with the 5000 host.

In a 2 person setup:

• host running the port 5000 application reaches out to a specific url.
• connection is established between the host and the site.
• the host performs some php logic and returns a response to the site, this is likely a streamed file like a video.
• the server accepts the streaming video, and renders in an iframe on the site for both users simultaneously.
• the stream has to be concurrent and in-sync, i.e, rendering the same frames for both users at the same time.

I've been looking into php, Ratchet, WebSocket and WebRTC.

What might be the best way to approach something like this? Thanks v much!

Excited to share my latest piece: “How to Optimize Product Team Success: Measure What Matters.”

In a world obsessed with metrics, we could use a simpler approach to measure our success potential.

In this post, I continue my quest for lean leverage as it applies to measurement. This is the question: can we simplify measurement to the ultimate predictive indicator of product team success?

My conclusion on the measure that matters might surprise you. But I believe you will agree with where I land. Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

https://medium.com/simply-agile/how-to-optimize-product-team-success-measure-what-matters-aa66dfb4cede?sk=992d689c506009811c41714c21c9a272

Happy New Year, all! With the new year, comes a new focus for me in my business agility coaching. I'm excited to share my latest article to help product management thrive in 2024.

We've all felt the pinch of the overcomplicated state of agile and product management today. There has to be a better way. My experiment to find it is called Lean Leverage.

This notion is not just about cutting back, but about being smarter and more outcome-focused in our approach to product. Give it a read and let me know your thoughts. I’ll be experimenting with it and writing about my adventures all year.

https://medium.com/simply-agile/winning-with-product-management-in-2024-via-lean-leverage-d3a8e27d407d?sk=f09d28222b34c8341abb7ac8281b3539