David Denham

@cagan The future potential hugely excites me. What could a super nimble small Product Trio, collaborating with AI Agent teammates - on discovery and delivery - achieve?

@cagan's post "A Vision For Product Teams" svpg.com/a-vision-for-p… also brings up similar themes

"Most Agile practices and principles are based on assumptions about human behavior and team productivity." - @henrikkniberg, hups.com/blog/agile-in-… My 2c: In the age of AI, many of these assumptions need to be challenged and I believe many will no longer hold true.

🚨 Hot-off-the-presses data about the state of the product job market, in collaboration with @GotLiveData. 1. Growth is the #1 fastest-growing roles right now I didn't see this coming. I’ve always thought of growth roles as a niche, and not one that was significantly expanding. I was wrong, but I can also understand why. With the market starting to return, companies are increasingly leaning into growth. You can see this in the chart with the upward inflection in sales and marketing roles as well. It’s also interesting though to see that growth roles are growing much faster than sales and marketing roles. This might mean an increasing focus on product-led growth, potentially driven by a need for capital efficiency—something investors and public markets are increasingly prioritizing. 2. User research is resurgent Another unexpected insight from this data is that user research is the second-fastest-growing role right now. I believe what’s happening is that the UXR function went through a huge overhiring phase (see the large bump in late 2022) and then a reckoning as the market tanked last year. Companies realized their UXR teams were not adding enough value, and thus those saw some of the most significant layoffs in the tech industry. Now that the market is returning, companies are starting to rehire these roles after realizing they went too far. I’ll note, though, that the absolute number of UXR people is relatively small compared with other roles. There are only around 14,000 active UXR roles in the U.S., according to the data, and about 200 are being hired each month. 3. Product management is doing fine The story the data tells me is that there was a hiring acceleration through 2022 and then a steady state (i.e. the number of PMs being hired and fired each month staying relatively even) over the past 1.5 years. That feels healthy to me. Numbers-wise, there are about 450,000 active PMs in the U.S. right now, and 2,500 to 4,500 are being hired each month. 4. Product owners are owning it Another surprising result is that product owners are the third-fastest-growing role in tech. And there are around 65,000 of them. Also, the growth of this role has been very steady. No big spikes, no slowdown. I don’t have a great explanation for this role’s growth other than that non-tech companies (e.g. banks, telecom) are expanding their product investments as they grow. If anyone has any insights on this role and its continued growth, please let me know. 5. Scrum masters are masters no more The only role that’s shrinking (i.e. more people being let go than hired each month) is the scrum master. Sorry, folks. I’m guessing this in part explains the growth in product owners—people who used to be called scrum masters are now called product owners. There are still about 40,000 active scrum masters in the U.S., so we’ll see if this trend continues. More in the thread below.

"Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer's competitive advantage." - Agile Manifesto principle This means scope is variable & means putting customers' needs ahead of our now outdated plan or our associated rewards.

@allenholub @tottinge Yep none of that really has anything to do with authentic agile. That's more about organisational policies and old management practices. Unfortunately project management has crept into agile in many cases, and the main goal becomes predictability of output, over customer value.

From @tottinge (over on LinkedIn). Couldn't agree more.

@euro2024ticket In need of 2 tickets for Portugal v Turkey or Belgium v Romania on June 22nd

Value vs. Viability is a key distinction for PMs, especially in B2B. Value: will it provide benefit to at least one user segment? Viable: can we sell it, more widely / does it make business sense? Focusing ONLY on value is not enough, especially for a narrow segment.

Myself and my good friend @RHealyAgileLean sat down for a conversation with @cagan about his new book "Transformed." Topics covered included: 💡 How GenAI is impacting Product Management 💡 The rise of Product Ops 💡 Why (real) Agile is not dead & more... lnkd.in/gNxtGhSE

@RHealyAgileLean @cagan It's been too long my friend - really enjoyable and insightful discussion with Marty

I had the huge pleasure of having a great discussion with @DavidDenhamLV8 and @cagan this evening. It was a real honour, thanks both.

RIP TikTok'ers. This AI is mind-blowing.

Sora is going to disrupt entire content and movie creation industries. Absolutely insane. #AI

@neil_killick Absolutely this. Empowered product teams focused on value creation, tied to a strong product strategy, an inspiring vision, and a single shared product backlog. Embracing change for the customer's benefit, over following a plan.

+1, even if we do those steps as a "cross-functional team". The only way to do agile software development as intended is to put an empowered team directly in front of a customer (B2B) or market (B2C), give them ownership of the process, and task them with tangible value creation.

#ProductCon London kicking off with an awesome keynote on "Harnessing the Power of GenAI for Exceptional Product Outcomes" by Joe Futty #productmanagement

Excited to learn from great Product people - #ProductCon London here we go

The quality of your research as a PM will impact the quality of your GenAI prompts. Deeply understanding your user and their needs is nothing new, but it becomes even more important now in getting top quality generated content

"See beauty in the chaos" - one of my favourite quotes from my good friend and co-author, Dionatan Moura. Product development is complex, its messy! Rather than trying to control & predict, enable self-organisation, and embrace changing requirements for the customer's benefit.

@JMcjockson @AndyMitten "In football, scoring is like fishing, and right now, Rashford is out there without a trawler. He's learning, though—every fisherman starts with an empty net." - Eric Cantona, 2023

@AndyMitten Which quote was that

Jim Ratcliffe's company being used for the acquisition is called Trawlers Ltd. The name was inspired by a quote from Eric Cantona.

@AndyMitten @AndyMitten I get the sense there's still a few players at the club he doesn't want that were not his signings and that's impacting the culture. Sancho and Varane have been well-documented.

I know this season has been poor so far for MUFC, but I had a long sit down interview with Erik ten Hag recently. And I came out of the room wanting that man to continue doing the very difficult job he's got on his hands. He's knows what's needed.

Last year, we hosted the @ProductElev8n Conference in Dublin. All talks are now available to watch on our community's YouTube channel, including this excellent keynote by @romanpichler on Product Strategy Done Right: lnkd.in/gDCspTaY. Look forward to reconnecting in 2024!