Join Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they discuss product management with John Cutler, famous for his newsletter The Beautiful Mess.

We dive into the purpose of product management as a driver of profitable growth. And we discuss how to use the north star framework to align your organisation around common goals. We examine how to use product roadmaps to communicate and prioritize plans and discuss how critical it is to be an open, honest, and effective leader. And finally we look at whether agile is critical or useless in product management. Join us as we uncover the insights and best practices product managers need to be more effective.

Join Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they discuss UX research with Dr. Nick Fine. Nick explains what to expect from a UX researcher, how to do user research well, and the challenges that researchers have to overcome to obtain valid results. Whether you’re a product manager, designer, or developer this episode is packed with actionable insights, real world examples and expert tips to enhance your understanding of UX research and its role in creating high value, digital products and services.

Join Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they discuss the Vanguard method with Ibbi Hussain, one of the founding architects of this revolutionary approach to organisation change. Ibi describes how the Vanguard method uses systems thinking, service design, and occupational psychology to make profound improvements to call center performance. Join us as we navigate through the philosophy of change, the importance of leadership. And practical insights into implementing sustainable improvement within organisations.

Welcome to our 100th episode.

In this episode, we talk about what we’ve learnt from our guests about agile, product development and leadership. We discuss what the podcast is about and why we started it. We unpack our critical take on fake agile and discuss agile leadership and product development. Join us as we take a deep dive into the insights, experiences and conversations that have shaped our podcast ovr the last 99 episodes. And here’s to another hundred episodes of cutting through the nonsense and bringing you the advice you need to succeed.

Join Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they chat with Evan Leybourn from the Business Agility Institute about business agility. We discuss how to define and measure business agility, examples of agile organisations, and the struggle with traditional bureaucratic models. We delve into the different types of leadership, the nature of internal cultural and political changes, and the challenges faced by organisations in adopting and implementing agility.

Join Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they chat with Ron Westrum about how organisational culture drives innovation and disaster. We discuss generative, bureaucratic and pathological cultures, using real-world examples from NASA, Boeing and others. This episode highlights the importance of leadership integrity, openness, honesty, the free flow of information, and a mission-focused approach to achieving organisational goals. Listen for insights on identifying and promoting a generative culture, dealing with bad news, the role of technical maestros, and much more.

Join Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they chat with Jack Skeels about agile for digital and marketing agencies. Jack advocates for reducing the managerial overhead in organisations to promote productivity and improve communication. We discuss common hurdles in agile implementations. The value of a manager as a sports coach. The importance of scoping the work. Over managing and how real change must start from the top. This episode is full of practical advice and critical insights into organisation dynamics. This conversation is especially useful for those seeking to implement agile in a more holistic, efficient, and outcome oriented way in a service provider.

Join Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they discuss objectives and key results with Adrian Howard.

Adrian explains how OKR’s can be used as a strategic instrument for aligning goals within your organisation.  We walk through common pitfalls and misconceptions emphasizing the importance of using OKR’s focused on outcomes rather than outputs. We discuss the potential for using OKR’s with vendors. The idea of paired metrics. And how OKR’s can serve as indicators of underlying problems within your organisations culture and structure.

Join Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as discuss business agility and the heart of agile with Mike Leber. 

We talk about how the heart of agile liberates you from rigid process frameworks by focusing on collaboration, delivery reflection and improvement.  We talk about how the agile industrial complex has turned agile into a heavyweight waterfall process.  And how innovation is happening outside the traditional agile bubble.  And lastly, we talk about agile leadership. If you’re interested in getting to the heart of agile and exploring business agility.

Join Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they chat with Jason Knight on the state of product management. 

Jason shares his insights and experiences on the responsibilities of a product manager, the evolving nature of the role. Differentiating buyer and user features the importance of testing and validating ideas. Supporting cross-functional teams and fostering a mindset of continuous improvement.  Jason shares insights from his experiences and discussions with thought leaders and provides advice for those navigating the product management field.

Join Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson as they chat with Michael Lloyd about dysfunction mapping.

Whether you are new to the agile world or a seasoned professional, you’ll find valuable insights as we delve into understanding team dynamics, honing the coaching process. And the essential principle of iterative hypothesis testing. Join us as we learned the power of mapping dysfunctions to unveil powerful solutions in agile environments.

In this episode, we talk to Bianca Grizhar about developing digital products in China. We discuss the cultural differences between Germany and China, and how Scrum improved team collaboration. We talk about the benefits of working directly with people offshore in cross functional, cross organisational teams. Whether you’re a product manager or a developer, this episode is packed with practical advice that will help you work more successfully with your offshore teams.

In this episode, we talked with with Gabrielle Benefield, the inventor of the Mobius loop, an outcome focused product development framework.  Gabrielle shares her journey in agile product development from Silicon valley to Yahoo.  And the importance of focusing on outcomes of outputs and improving decision speed. We discuss why organisations don’t focus on outcomes, the problem with contracts and scaling an outcome based approach. And finally, we talk about how you can use an experimental approach to bring an outcome driven, focus to your organisation.

In this episode, Murray Robinson chats with Maarten Dalmijn about Sprint Goals. We discuss how sprint goals should act as a primary mission for a sprint, around which everyone’s tasks should revolve, rather than focusing on individual deliverables. We talk about challenges to implementing this approach, the importance of measuring outcomes over output, and the need for competency and trust in the team. This conversation highlights the importance open dialogue with stakeholders, and the necessity of adaptability in the face of uncertainty.