agile methodologies

Articles

Dual-Track Agile: Why Messy Leads to Innovation

Dual-Track Agile: Why Messy Leads to Innovation

Dual-Track Agile is an IT development methodology where figuring out what to build is as important as the building process. You start with a discovery track to find out if a product idea is good and if it makes sense to build. Successful findings from the discovery track are added to the backlog of the delivery track.

Replacing The User Story With The Job Story

Replacing The User Story With The Job Story

Job Stories are great because it makes you think about motivation and context and de-emphasizes adding any particular implementation. Often, because people are so focused on the who and how, they totally miss the why. When you start to understand the why, your mind is then open to think of creative and original ways to solve the problem.

When, which … Design Thinking, Lean, Design Sprint, Agile?

When, which … Design Thinking, Lean, Design Sprint, Agile?

A lot of people are — understandably so — very confused when it comes to innovation methodologies, frameworks, and techniques. Questions like: “When should we use Design Thinking?”, “What is the purpose of a Design Sprint?”, “Is Lean Startup just for startups?”, “Where does Agile fit in?”, “What happens after the <some methodology> phase?” are all very common questions.

Running in Circles - Why Agile Isn’t Working and What We Do Differently

Running in Circles - Why Agile Isn’t Working and What We Do Differently

When your team struggles with shipping, you need practical steps you can apply here and now. Not just an ideal. Cycles are good. We work in cycles at Basecamp. But in addition to cycles you need three other practices to ship on time and in good health.

The Typeform Product Playbook

The Typeform Product Playbook

For every step along the way, we have different plays — tools, methods, frameworks. Depending on the situation, we can choose the most appropriate way to get the job done.

The Double Diamond: Strategy + Execution of the Right Solution

The Double Diamond: Strategy + Execution of the Right Solution

The ‘Double Diamond’ process maps the divergent and convergent stages of a design process. Created by The British Design Council, it describes modes of thinking that designers use.

The Power of the Elastic Product Team — Airbnb’s First PM on How to Build Your Own

The Power of the Elastic Product Team — Airbnb’s First PM on How to Build Your Own

In this exclusive interview, Golden describes how to build high-impact, modular teams driven by actual needs. He walks through the decision-making framework that he uses to allocate the hottest of commodities: engineers. And he explains why — when everyone is working toward a clear company objective — having teams that expand and contract actually keeps you aligned.

The most important thing Dropbox did to scale Product Management

The most important thing Dropbox did to scale Product Management

This article goes through the framework Dropbox developed for keeping the growing company on the same page through the product development process.

How we structure our work and teams at Basecamp

How we structure our work and teams at Basecamp

An inside look at the specifics of how Basecamp decides what to do and then decides how to do it.

How we build products at Asana — The Product Process: From Inception to Launch

How we build products at Asana — The Product Process: From Inception to Launch

On the PM team at Asana, we’re always thinking about how we can create a great working environment that makes the best of everyone’s super powers. We want to be fast moving and open to risks while also maintaining a high quality bar and consistency across the customer experience.

Lessons learned from scaling a product team

Lessons learned from scaling a product team

There’s been lots written about how Internet businesses should build software, from books like The Lean Start-Up, and posts from Google Ventures, but not many examples where startups open up their process and show how it really happens.

What is Scrum?

What is Scrum?

Scrum is a management and control process that cuts through complexity to focus on building products that meet business needs. Management and teams are able to get their hands around the requirements and technologies, never let go, and deliver working products, incrementally and empirically.

The One Cost Engineers and Product Managers Don't Consider

The One Cost Engineers and Product Managers Don't Consider

Kris Gale, VP Engineering at Yammer, joined us recently for First Round CTO Summit and blew everyone away with his talk on "why the traditional engineering organizational structure is dead." He's now back for round two with a new piece on how features can create complexity cost in an engineering organization.

This Product Prioritization System Nabbed Pandora 70 Million Monthly Users with Just 40 Engineers

This Product Prioritization System Nabbed Pandora 70 Million Monthly Users with Just 40 Engineers

In an exclusive First Round CTO Summit talk, Tom Conrad — the company’s CTO since 2004 — broke down how the company figured out the exact right things to build fast and literally demanded buy-in from stakeholders (albeit with fake money, as you’ll see).

Videos

Podcast

Drift’s Matt Bilotti on the Burndown framework

Drift’s Matt Bilotti on the Burndown framework

Since adopting Burndown, Drift had increased revenue by 5x. Matt talks about what the framework is, how it differs from traditional agile and scrum methodologies, and how the framework amplifies Drift's customer-first approach to products.

Ash Maurya of Lean Canvas on scaling Lean

Ash Maurya of Lean Canvas on scaling Lean

Ash Maurya, the creator of the Lean Canvas and most recently the author of Scaling Lean. His posts and advice have been featured in Inc., Forbes, and Fortune and we're incredibly excited to share his insights with you on scaling through the lean methodology.

Tools

Jira Software

Jira Software

Plan, track, and manage your agile and software development projects in Jira. Customize your workflow, collaborate, and release great software.

Podio

Podio

Streamline and sync your team's projects and workflow with Podio.

TeamSnippets

TeamSnippets

Daily Standup Meeting in your Inbox.

Books

The Lean Startup: How Constant Innovation Creates Radically Successful Businesses

The Lean Startup: How Constant Innovation Creates Radically Successful Businesses

The Lean Startup is a new approach to business that's being adopted around the world. It is changing the way companies are built and new products are launched.The Lean Startup is about learning what your customers really want. It's about testing your vision continuously, adapting and adjusting before it's too late.Now is the time to think Lean.

Lean UX: Designing Great Products With Agile Teams

Lean UX: Designing Great Products With Agile Teams

User experience (UX) design has traditionally been a deliverables-based practice, with wireframes, site maps, flow diagrams, and mockups. But in today’s web-driven reality, orchestrating the entire design from the get-go no longer works. This hands-on book demonstrates Lean UX, a deeply collaborative and cross-functional process that lets you strip away heavy deliverables in favor of building shared understanding with the rest of the product team.

UX for Lean Startups: Faster, Smarter User Experience Research and Design

UX for Lean Startups: Faster, Smarter User Experience Research and Design

Great user experiences (UX) are essential for products today, but designing one can be a lengthy and expensive process. With this practical, hands-on book, you’ll learn how to do it faster and smarter using Lean UX techniques. UX expert Laura Klein shows you what it takes to gather valuable input from customers, build something they’ll truly love, and reduce the time it takes to get your product to market.

The Startup Way: How Modern Companies Use Entrepreneurial Management to Transform Culture and Drive Long-Term Growth

The Startup Way: How Modern Companies Use Entrepreneurial Management to Transform Culture and Drive Long-Term Growth

In The Lean Startup, Eric Ries laid out the practices of successful startups – building a minimal viable product, customer-focused and scientific testing based on a build-measure-learn method of continuous innovation, and deciding whether to persevere or pivot. In The Startup Way, he turns his attention to an entirely new group of organizations: established enterprises like iconic multinationals GE and Toyota, tech titans like Amazon and Facebook, and the next generation of Silicon Valley upstarts like Airbnb and Twilio.

Burndown by Drift

Burndown by Drift

Burndown is the framework that Drift uses to employ the first principles of Responsive Development.