👀 Look back to move forward - product retrospectives

Retrospectives help you look back to move forward

One of the most helpful agile practices is periodic retrospectives. You’ll see them described as sprint retrospectives, agile retrospectives, or just plain retrospectives. Whatever you call them, periodically looking back and thinking about the best way to move forward is a great way for a product team to stay on course. Here are some resources about how to conduct retrospectives, and an example of how to include your customers in your look back.

What is a sprint retrospective? Templates and best practices. If you’re part of a cross-functional digital product team, you may have heard of or already taken part in a sprint retrospective. Monica Viggers gets you up to speed on what a sprint retrospective is and why it’s important. She also looks at some best practices to ensure that yours runs smoothly.(via @LogRocket)

How to run an effective retrospective. Your team’s retrospective doesn't need fancy formats or activities. It needs to help your team improve. Gregory Witek explains the point of retrospectives, how to make most of them, and he presents the agenda he follows during retros he runs. (via @gregorywitek)

Continues below...

Crypt-oh no, part 2

Last week, I wrote a bit about the absolute meltdown that happened at the crypto exchange, FTX. It’s probably going to soon be the subject of a Netflix limited series (and is sure to be in its Top 10 for a while once it comes out). But if you haven’t been paying attention, you can check out my first write-up from last week. So much more has happened since then, though:

First, over the weekend, FTX “was hacked” and all of the remaining funds that were locked up in the exchange were “stolen.” There were many people who thought it was an inside job. But today, it actually became clear that it wasn’t a hacker… or FTX insiders. It was actually the Bahamian government. They ordered FTX’s executives to transfer the funds over to them for “safekeeping.” Whether or not the funds will actually be kept safely and returned to its rightful owners remains to be seen. 

Also, major celebrities like Tom Brady, Steph Curry, Larry David, and others got swept into the chaos by being named in a class action lawsuit against FTX. From CoinTelegraph, “The lawsuit alleged that FTX attempted to destroy incriminating emails, texts and evidence of its criminal activities. However, the recovered evidence suggests that “FTX’s fraudulent scheme was designed to take advantage of unsophisticated investors from across the country, who utilize mobile apps to make their investments.” 

What happens next? Who knows. But grab your popcorn, because the story isn’t done yet. It seems like there will be more and more revealed in the weeks to come.

The ultimate guide to agile retrospectives. Do your retrospectives fail to lead to actual change, or perhaps you don’t even know where to begin? You’re not alone. Retrospectives are really hard to get right. David Horowitz found this out from his own experience so he created the Ultimate Guide to Agile Retrospectives to pull together everything he knew about retrospectives and help others learn it quickly. (via @RetriumHQ)

32 Kickass retrospective ideas for agile teams. A retrospective should include reflecting work from a different angle. Ever had a retrospective with low energy and zero feedback? Right - you don’t want that. So you need a different angle. Christian Heidemeyer shares several retrospective format ideas that you can use in different situations. The formats will trigger your team's creativity to reflect and deliver something to improve on, something that is worth a great action item. (via @EchometerDE)

Quidd product retrospective. Product retrospectives are most often thought of as a discussion amongst your product team exploring ways to improve your product and your approach to building your product. The folks at Quidd took a different approach and started producing content to explain to their stakeholders what they built and why with an eye toward shining a light on the evolution of their platform and whether they’ve kept their development promises. (via @quidd)

Is self-service BI realistic or just an empty advertising promise?

Business Intelligence / Analytics providers will often make bold claims about self-service leading users to expect that anyone can jump right into their company data and find ground-breaking insights. In this webinar, we explore whether self-service BI is realistic or just an empty advertising promise.

Can anyone create custom dashboards using a modern BI tool? Is it realistic to have "Dashboard in a Day" training to allow users to explore data or build their own content? Like a mountain, a complex BI project can be a deep, impassable valley with painstakingly high peaks followed by more yet undiscovered peaks. Most people simply underestimate the complexity involved.

We'll dive into all of this — plus, answer your questions as well!

Growing a Product Organization from the Early Days

Managing a product team is hard enough. But what happens when you're tasked with building the team when you're in the beginning stages? There are a whole set of new challenges that come along with building and growing a product organization. We'll get into those challenges — as well as ideas on how to flourish and set yourself up for success — in this interactive discussion.