Scaling w/ Agility

A newsletter for leaders on how to think through scaling challenges and develop/grow organizations using product and agility principles and practices.

Are You Struggling to Scale Your Organization ? Need agility but dubious of process BS/dogma? I share reflective, pragmatic, principled takes on how to approach scaling your organization leveraging the essence (rather than theater) of product operating models, agile practices and frameworks, and business operating systems such as EOS and OKRs.

💡⚙️📈 The Status of Agile as a Platform and Navigating Agile Career Pivots (Guest Episode on Jonathan Stark's Ditching Hourly Podcast)

What’s the future of Agile? Agility? Agile as a career choice? Yesterday, I joined Jonathan Stark on his podcast Ditching Hourly to discuss the current state of Agile as a platform, how it has evolved over the years, and what practitioners should consider as the platform matures. Jonathan primarily focuses on advice for freelancers/consultants on ditching hourly billing through positioning, productized services, and pricing advice. If, like me, you’re a freelancer/solopreneur agile...

10 days ago • 1 min read

💡⚙️📈 From Hype/FOMO/Theater to Fit-for-Purpose: How To Use a Product Operating Model To Develop Your Product Operating Model

Alice wants her product organization to adopt a product operating model because she believes it’s the future of working. She’s been an early adopter of agile and lean startup methods and is constantly looking for better ways to work. Bob wants their product organization to adopt a product operating model because they have an expensive problem—they were brought in to help scale a product organization. With 12 product teams working on a line/portfolio of products, there’s little consistency,...

11 days ago • 2 min read

💡⚙️📈 Product-Led AI: How to Turn LLM Geekery Into Customer Outcomes

Engineers excited about LLMs, Agentic AI, RAGs, spending time going to the vendors, playing around like kids with new toys. Without a real problem in mind. Without the ability to deploy any of it in the organization (the engineers don’t talk to the legal folks much…) Can you think of where so much time and energy is spent on a technical innovation without connecting it to a real problem? Of course you can… Mobile, Cloud, Big Data, just to think of a couple of recent examples. To be honest, I...

16 days ago • 1 min read

💡⚙️📈 This Week In Scaled Agile Framework and the Product Operating Model

How can an Agile Product Operating Model (APOM) enhance how organizations use SAFe? I had several conversations with product leaders this week where this question came up. Organizations that are struggling with SAFe Theater and want to see much more empowerment, outcome orientation, and evidence-driven decision making and steering. They realize SAFe has helped them evolve from charos towards a stable “Feature Factory”, and they are now setting their aim for becoming a “Product Lab”. If this...

22 days ago • 1 min read

💡⚙️📈 Sniffing your Product Orientation Maturity using Team Names

Persistence Pioneers UI Architects Embedding Engineers Refactor Rebels Sprint Sprinters Integration Innovators Audio Overview Creators Mind Map Builders YouTube Insights Team Scalability Savants Podcast Summarization Squad Knowledge Connectors Can you guess which product these teams are working on? Which of these team names helped you more than others? Let’s say your organization has more “UI Architects” or “Persistence Pioneers” than “Knowledge Connectors” or “Youtube Insights”. What does it...

23 days ago • 1 min read

💡⚙️📈 When and Why Do We Need a Product Operating Model?

Ever feel like your product organization is stuck in the mud? You’re not alone. Many teams start strong, laser-focused on delivering value and achieving product-market fit. But as success scales, things get messy. Dependencies pile up, alignment fades, and suddenly, you’re running a feature factory instead of an empowered product organization. Why Do Product Organizations Stall? Here’s the typical lifecycle: Early Days: One team, minimal dependencies, clear goals. It’s all about finding...

24 days ago • 2 min read

💡⚙️📈 What Do Trusted Peer Groups Have to Do with Scaling Agility? (Podcast)

Leading an agility journey can often feel lonely. These days, especially, there’s plenty of complexity, and rapid change—what we’ve come to know as VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous) or even the newer BANI framework (Brittle, Anxious, Nonlinear, Incomprehensible). Building and growing a consulting/advisory business in the agility/product/scaling field also provides plenty of VUCA and BANI. Peer groups, like Masterminds or the Forums used in the Entrepreneur Org (EO) / Young...

25 days ago • 1 min read

💡⚙️📈 How To Develop Your Product Operating Model/Playbook

I often discuss developing your company/operating model using product techniques. Today's post is a collaboration with my fantastic wife, Vered, where she outlines a somewhat concrete playbook for doing just that—developing your product playbook like it was a product—collaboratively, iteratively, focusing on outcomes, steering with evidence. It's the essence of Product Operations. Enjoy! This article is inspired by recent conversations I had with Product Leaders about product operating...

29 days ago • 3 min read

💡⚙️📈 Can a Product-Led Organization use a PROJECT Operating Model?

Over the years, I have worked with many tech startups. Reader Heidi asked an interesting question as a follow-up to yesterday's email about Product-Led Growth, Product-led Org, and Product Operating Models: "Can a Product-Led Org have a Project Operating Model?" First of all - I'll admit that I ran my product delivery organization using a Project operating model in a Product-led Org, 20 years ago. So it is factually possible (but not necessarily recommended...) Over the years, I have worked...

30 days ago • 1 min read

What’s the difference between Product-Led Growth, Product-Led Org, And Product Operating Model?

I see some practitioners and leaders using these terms interchangeably. I thought I’d take the time to clarify the overlaps and differences, first of all for myself. Product-Led Organization—As opposed to Sales/Engineering/Marketing/Professional Services-led organizations, a Product-Led organization is structured to deliver value through the product. These organizations often have product-oriented leaders at the helm. Some examples – are Tesla, Spotify, and Atlassian. Product Operating Model...

about 1 month ago • 1 min read