Age of Product’s Food for Thought of January 8th, 2017—shared with 5,703 peers—looks into agile transitions at scale: hybrid patterns, success stories, and principles of organizational design.

We learn that the Jira people discovered eight traits of successful teams and that getting to done requires a team to accept ownership and accountability.

We also revisit the product manager v. Product Owner debate and have a look at 2016 from the product management community perspective. Also, we learn about the hard-wired cave-man inside of us and what implications this has for product design.

Last but not least, Erin Griffith reports on the growing list of startup scandals, bordering on fraud. (Yub, my beloved Theranos is part of that article, too.)

Hybrid Agile & Scrum

Johanna Rothman (via Agile Alliance ): What is Hybrid Agile, Anyway? Johanna Rothman and others analyze the “hybrid approach” patterns, a lot of larger organization refer to when describing their way to becoming agile.

Henrik Kniberg (via Crisp ): Planning as a social event – scaling agile at LEGO Henrik Knieberg provides a free PDF on his learning to help LEGO HQ to become agile. (Must read.)

Sam Spurlin (via The Ready ): 10 Principles of Emergent Organizations (And How We Live Them at The Ready) Sam Spurlin shares ten principles of organizational transformation work, from purpose to risk taking, to better facilitate your agile journey.

(via First Round Capital ): Team Health Monitors and Why Your Startup Needs a Check-up Jay Simons, President of Atlassian, outlines the eight traits of successful teams, determined after studying hundreds of Atlassian teams across departments.

Stephanie Ockerman (via Scrum.org ): Getting to Done: Encouraging Team Ownership Stephanie Ockerman points at the necessity to create an environment that encourages and enables team ownership to get things done.

Jeff Sutherland (via Scrum Inc ): Scrum "Shock Therapy" How To Change Teams FAST Jeff Sutherland shares an email from Scott Downey of Rapid Scrum on his shock therapy to get new Scrum teams productive in a short period of time.

Join 460+ Peers for Free: The ‘Hands-on Agile’ Slack Team

I would like to invite you to join for free Age of Product’s new “Hands-on Agile” Slack team and enjoy the benefits of a fast-growing, vibrant 460+ strong community of agile practitioners from around the world.

If you like to join this brand-new Slack community just provide your credentials via this Google form, and I will sign you up.

Product & Lean

Dave West (via Mind The Product ): Product Owner vs Product Manager Dave West, the CEO of Scrum.org, shares in this video his opinion why organizations need to consolidate on one overall decision maker for the product.

Martin Eriksson (via Mind The Product ): What We Learned About Building Products People Love in 2016 Martin Eriksson shares his 2016 retrospective, a year that saw the product management community not just mature further, but also grow significantly.

Alvin Hsia (via Medium ): The Irrational User Alvin Hsia leads us on an insightful journey through the flawed human psychology of decision making, and how it is affecting product design.

Paul J (via Medium ): Productise | How to turn great Technology into great Products Paul J points at the profound difference between great technology and a great product and how to turn the first one into the latter.

John Cutler (via Hacker Noon ): 50 Things I’ve Learned About Product Management John Cutler aggregates yet another list of product management insights, most of which will feel familiar.

Gojko Adzic : To slice stories, first make sure they are TOO BIG Gojko Adzic stresses that user stories must be conversation starters, and shows how to lift the full potential of story refinement sessions.

The Essential Read