I gave the opening keynote at the Regional Scrum Gathering Tokyo conference on January 8th, 2025. My topic was “The Best Product Engineering Org in the World:”

How do you create the best product engineering organization in the world? James Shore had to face that question in his new role as Vice President of Engineering. In the end, it came down to six answers, and six new questions:

People. We’d have the best people in the business, and we’d be the best place for them to work. But how do we compete with the reputation and money of Google, Apple, and Facebook?

Internal Quality. Our software would be easy to modify and maintain, with no bugs and no downtime. But what do we do about the software that’s not?

Lovability. Our customers, users, and internal consumers would love our products. But how do we decide what to work on?

Visibility. Our internal stakeholders would trust our decisions. But what do we do about their frustrations?

Agility. We’d actively seek out new opportunities and change directions to take advantage of them. But how do we create the technical ability to do so?

Profitability. We’d be the engine of a profitable and growing business. But how do we turn our engineering work into profit?

In this keynote, we’ll explore these six topics, the answers to these questions, and how they tie together to create the best product engineering org in the world.

Read the transcript here.