Age of Product’s Food for Thought of April 23rd, 2017—shared with 7,693 peers—celebrates lasagne from Colgate, pardon me: failure, and why C-level execs believe in big bang agile transitions. (Of course, we know they need passion from ones in the trenches, and Thoughtworks believes that, too.)

We then dive deep into the fetish of estimations, and why agile process-fetishists might turn the DoR into a stage-gate. (Sneaking in the dark side through the backdoor, so to speak.)

On the product side, we have another look at our nemesis, the sales team, and we learn why chefs supposedly make good product managers. Lean startup aficionados might enjoy the MVP, MMF, and MRF analysis.

Lastly: Up your game of convincing other people of your ideas with storytelling and learn right from the source.

The Essential Read

Tom Popomaronis (via Inc.com ): This Wonderfully Absurd Museum Features Only Failures (Here's Why That's Brilliant) Tom Popomaronis reports on Samuel West’s museum of not-so-grand ideas, the Museum of Failure.

Big Bang Agile & Scrum

Chris Matts : Executives and Top-Down Transformations Chris Matts analyzes why executives tend to favour top-down big bang implementations whereas agile practitioners prefer bottom up safe to fail experiments.

Gary OBrien (via ThoughtWorks ): Do You Have What It Takes To Transform? Gary O’Brian points at word transformation, how it became a cliché, and what real change requires instead.

John Cutler (via Hacker Noon ): Why Do We Estimate? John Cutler shares his latest research on why we actually submit to the mental model of predicting the future when building software.

Mark Levison : What United Can Teach Us About Building Systems Mark Levison uses the recent United disaster to focus the reader on the underlying system: culture, rules, and overutilization.

From the Blog: 28 Product Backlog and Refinement Anti-Patterns

Scrum is a practical framework to build products, provided you identify in advance what to build. But even after a successful product discovery phase, you may struggle to make the right thing in the right way if your product backlog is not up to the job. Garbage in, garbage out – as the saying goes.

The following article points at 28 of the most common product backlog anti-patterns – including the product backlog refinement process – that limit your Scrum team’s success.

Read More: 28 Product Backlog and Refinement Anti-Patterns

Product & Lean

Melissa Perri : Getting Sales + Product In Sync Melissa Perri asks: ‘What does an effective sales team look like at a product-led organization?’

(via First Round Capital ): Why Chefs and Soldiers Make the Best Product Managers Jim Patterson shares hiring philosophy that chefs and soldiers make excellent product managers. Read on to learn why.

Ken Rubin : Blog: MVP and MMF and MRF, Oh My! In this posting, Ken Rubin explain why he believes MVP and MMF are not good choices for the smallest set of must-have features that would constitute a release.

Becky Bicks (via Duarte ): Improve Your Storytelling Presentation Skills and Get Your Ideas Adopted Becky Bicks introduces how to use storytelling in presentations to influence your audience.