Food for Agile Thought #347: Beneficial Pre-Mortems, Agility Follows Structure, Scaled Feature Factories

Welcome to the 347th edition of the ‘Food for Agile Thought’ newsletter, shared with 35,417 peers. My name is Stefan Wolpers.

This week, we delve into five success-critical topics for every product manager, from the benefits of pre-mortems to prioritizing your time to ROI and opportunity-cost thinking. Also, we explain code cruft/technical debt in a metaphor for non-technical people to help the looming conflict between developers and management, and we share learnings from supporting agile transformations at three companies in the insurance and automation industries.

Then, we detail a pattern of non-tech companies heavily investing in digitalization: Despite good intentions, they end up as big feature factories. Moreover, we point out a) how iterating behavioral changes and applying experiments help build the right products and b) the often overlooked signal-to-noise ratio critical for innovation, or: asking for ideas is a bad idea.

Finally, we embrace a simple process that allows everyone on a team to start writing user stories: the Product Backlog Building Canvas. Also, the folks at ProductLed asked 600-plus SaaS businesses about their paths to product-led growth and core metrics such as free to paid accounts conversion rates.

PS: 🗞 Did you miss past issues? No worries, here we go: 345, 346.

📅 Join 200-plus peers on July 14, 2022: Outcome-Based Product Planning with Jeff Gothelf.

🏆 Tip of the Week

🎙 In this podcast, Shreyas Doshi delves into five success-critical topics for every product manager, from the benefits of pre-mortems to prioritizing your time to ROI and opportunity-cost thinking: "Pre-mortems, the LNO Framework, 3 Levels of Product Work, [and] why most Execution Problems Are Strategy Problems."

➿ Agile & Scrum

• Agile Alliance: Wolfgang Steffens shares learnings from supporting agile transformations at three companies in the insurance and automation industries: "Optimize Your Organizational Structure for Agility."

• Industrial Logic: Tim Ottinger explains code cruft in a metaphor for non-technical people to help the looming conflict between developers and the management: "How To Understand Refactoring."

• Allan Kelly shares Noel Warnell’s visualization of how to make OKRs achievable for your team: "Succeeding with OKRs in Agile Infographic."
  
  

🎓 🖥 💯 🇩🇪 Hands-on Agile #43: Outcome-Based Product Planning with Jeff Gothelf — July 14, 2022

Roadmapping is a flawed concept in the age of Agile. Maps, by their definition, are linear and we don't build linear products and services any more. We build continuous systems. Nevertheless, we have to be able to create and provide some plans for our teams, leaders and customers to set expectations about the ongoing improvements and future of the services we build. How do we communicate that effectively in a continuous world? How do we ensure the voice of the customer is included in these plans?

In this talk, Jeff Gothelf will discuss the concept of outcome-based product planning. Using specific examples and detailed tools, Jeff will show how taking a customer-centric look at product strategy and creating continuously improving plans ensures the teams maintain their agility, customer-focus and ultimately, the success of their product.

Learn more: 🖥 💯 🇩🇪 Hands-on Agile #43: Outcome-Based Product Planning with Jeff Gothelf — July 14, 2022.

👉 From time to time, we can offer last-minute seats for Professional Scrum training classes at cost to individuals who do not have access to a corporate training budget. If you like to be notified about these opportunities, please apply here.

🎯 Product

• John Cutler details a pattern of non-tech companies heavily investing in digitalization: Despite good intentions, they end up as big feature factories: "Scaled Feature Factories."

• 🎙 In this podcast, Janel Wellborn shares how iterating behavioral changes and applying experiments help build the right products: "Teams Should Celebrate Learning Fast, Not Failing Fast."

• Stephen Shapiro points at the often overlooked signal-to-noise ratio critical for innovation: "3. Asking for Ideas is a Bad Idea."

🛠 Concepts, Tools & Measuring

• Paulo Caroli shares a simple process that allows everyone on a team to start writing user stories: the Product Backlog Building Canvas: "Product Backlog Building Canvas."
  
  

✂️ Cutting Room Floor

• 📈 ProductLed: The folks at ProductLed asked 600-plus SaaS businesses about their paths to product-led growth and core metrics such as free to paid accounts conversion rates: "Product-Led Growth Benchmarks 2022."

📅 Training Classes, Meetups & Events

Upcoming classes and events:

• 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Jun 20-23 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Master Training (PSM I; English)
• 🖥 💯 🇩🇪 Jun 28 - Jul 1 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German)
• 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 July 14 — Live Virtual Meetup: Hands-on Agile #43: Outcome-Based Product Planning w/ Jeff Gothelf (English)
• 🖥 🇩🇪 Aug 29-30 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Master Training (PSM I; German)
• 🖥 🇬🇧 Sep 6-9 — Live Virtual Class: Advanced Professional Scrum Master Training (PSM II; English)
• 🖥 🇩🇪 Sep 26-27 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Agile Leadership Essentials Training (PAL-E; German)

See all upcoming classes here.

📺 Youtube Channel

• David Burkus: Hands-on Agile #40: The Best Team Ever.

Your Opinion Matters

Would you like to suggest a post for next week's edition or provide general feedback? You can reply to this email, or contact stefan@age-of-product.com.

If you like the newsletter, please forward it to a friend or colleague—it would mean a lot to me! 🙏

If you want to receive even more news, just follow @AgeOfProduct or @StefanW on Twitter for your daily dose.

Last, but not least: If you are a first time reader of this newsletter, click here to subscribe and join 35,417 peers.

Best,