Last week I had the opportunity to present at #DBART in Frankfurt. Happily, about it, I tried to create a content just for this event to share some honest experiences of the last three years at DT SmartHome.
Some learning and findings
As usual I can live with unfinished work and work in progress very good as long as thoughts evolve to more clarity and inspire. This is exactly what I tried and it might have confused some of the audience. And this was done on purpose. The methods for great presentations and storytelling are clear to me, well documented too. I’ve chosen not to stick to them this time as my goal was to share as much as information in 40 minutes to observations, concepts and experiences. One of the reasons why I started the presentation with the statement “today it feels like death by PowerPoint“. My hope is I was able to share at least some of them, the more, the better. Whatever people could get out of the talk, I’d like to share it with them.
The main ideas for this talk reside in this list as I try to articulate actionable principles and directions:
I could have written and shared more stories to each line, something to do in the near future.
Another thing pondering very early after the talk, not all things are anti-patterns happening at DT, and I tried to focus on this. Nevertheless, the amount is huge and change is still needed.
Later this week I’ve experienced a similar situation as we shared and early unfinished version of a redesign of our product at a bigger review session. My fault, should have known better. Questions rise as people see things and an immediate answer in form of “full blown concepts and designs” #BDUF seems to be expected.
Trust and missing team empowerment
Trust – this seems to be the topic with the highest resonation. Marty Cagan is advocating for this, John Cutler too and I find this is the main topic.
If trust is missing, what are you building? Are you living in the feature factory? How does this influence yourself?
Please check older blogposts for more context:
- A Potpourri of Product, Organization, Team and Individual Thoughts
- My Personal Impressions and Views of the 3rd Edition #MTPEngage in Hamburg 2019
- Focus on Learning, Context and Empowerment
- Roadmaps, Expectations and Empowerment
Team Objectives and OKRs
As direction was part of the talk too and OKRs came up as a popular methodology, I highly recommend the series from Marty Cagan why he no longer advocates for OKRs. Please read more here: https://svpg.com/insights/product/team-objectives/
Full slide deck – Agile Experiences from the Trenches #DBART 2020
For people who are interested, the full presentation is uploaded to SlideShare, video and animations are missing.
Gratitude
I’m thankful for everything happened, especially for the warm and wonderful hosting team at #DBART @FrankGollas @dc7590 and @khgdrn @eSGeEla – thank you very much for having me. ❤
Thanks,
Patrick
Patrick Sauerwein | @virtual_patrick 