Food for Agile Thought #357: Agility—a Timeless Way of Thinking, Team Dynamics, Difficult Product People

Welcome to the 357th edition of the ‘Food for Agile Thought’ newsletter, shared with 35,789 peers. My name is Stefan Wolpers.

This week, we celebrate the Agile 2022 keynote of Joshua Kerievsky, where he reflects on why “Agility isn’t a formula, a framework, nor a set of roles and rituals to follow” but a timeless way of thinking. Also, Linda Rising, Diana Larsen, and James Shore delve into the dynamics that make and break Agile teams, from the importance of trust to the Tuckman model. Moreover, we suggest six ways of encouraging feedback from team members, from creating psychological safety to leading by example, and we close with a rant about mission statements.

Then, we listen to Mary Cagan, sharing his learnings after more than 20 years at the forefront of product management, from Steve Jobs to building product teams to which trends to ignore. Additionally, we analyze the four most significant threats to building great products and how to deal with them, from difficult developers to executive bullies, and we tackle product roadmaps from a pragmatic angle.

Finally, we share a new game to “find a golden path to delivering maximum business value by benefiting from collaboration vs. getting stuck in dependencies” and a “primer on what you need to know to leverage VSM to chart your lean journey.” Lastly, inspired by Kurt Vonnegut’s lecture on “the simple shapes of stories,” Ash Maurya shows that JTBD’s customer stories also have archetypical shapes.

PS: 🗞 Did you miss past issues? No worries, here we go: 355, 356.

🎓 Advance your understanding of facilitation and decision-making practices by attending the Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills on September 29, 2022 — there are three community tickets available at a 50 % premiere discount! (Please reach out to me if you are interested in attending.)

🏆 Tip of the Week

📺 Agile Alliance: In this Agile 2022 keynote, Joshua Kerievsky reflects on why “Agility isn’t a formula, a framework, nor a set of roles and rituals to follow” but a timeless way of thinking: "Joy of Agility."

➿ Agile & Scrum

• 📺 Linda Rising, Diana Larsen, and James Shore delve into the dynamics that make and break Agile teams, from the importance of trust to the Tuckman model: "Team Dynamics."
  
  👉 Pair with Hands-on Agile 45: FAST: An Innovative Way to Scale w/ James Shore (English) on Sept 27 or Hands-on Agile 46: Engage the Agile Fluency® Model with Diana Larsen (English) on Oct 12.

• Get Lighthouse: Jason Evanish suggests six ways of encouraging feedback from team members, from creating psychological safety to leading by example: "6 Great Ways You Can Get More Feedback from Your Team."

• David Heinemeier Hansson rants about mission statements: "Mission statements are worse than worthless."
  
  

🎓 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Hands-on Agile #45: FAST: An Innovative Way to Scale w/ James Shore on September 27, 2022

How can multiple teams work together on a single product? The common wisdom is to carefully align teams and responsibilities to create autonomous teams. But, invariably, this approach eventually runs into cross-team bottlenecks, challenges aligning responsibilities to teams, and difficulties creating cross-functional teams.

Fluid Scaling Technology, or FAST, is an innovative new approach that solves these problems. It uses frequent team self-selection to prevent bottlenecks, share knowledge amongst teams, and ensure the right people are working on the right things. It’s simple and lightweight.

Join James Shore as he shares his experiences with scaling Agile—first with traditional approaches, and more recently with FAST. Learn what works, what doesn’t, and how you can try FAST in your organization.

RSVP now: 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Hands-on Agile #45: FAST: An Innovative Way to Scale w/ James Shore on September 27, 2022.

👉 From time to time, we can offer last-minute seats for 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 register here.

🎯 Product

• 🎙 In this podcast, Marty Cagan shares with Lenny Rachitsky his learnings after more than 20 years at the forefront of product management, from Steve Jobs lessons to building product teams to which trends to ignore: "The nature of product."

• Product Coalition: J.A. Becker analyzes the four most significant threats to building great products and how to deal with them, from difficult developers to executive bullies: "Dealing with Extremely Difficult Product People."

• 📺 Phil Hornby and Tim Herbig talk product roadmaps from a pragmatic angle: "Don’t over-tool your roadmap approach."

• Inspired by Kurt Vonnegut’s lecture on “the simple shapes of stories,” Ash Maurya shows that JTBD’s customer stories also have archetypical shapes: "The Simple Shapes of Customer Stories."
  
  

🛠 Concepts, Tools & Measuring

• 🎲 TastyCupcakes.org: Dana Pylayeva shares a new game to “find a golden path to delivering maximum business value by benefiting from collaboration vs. getting stuck in dependencies:” "Drowning in Dependencies? Try a New Dependency Game!"

• The Lean Enterprise Institute shares a “primer on what you need to know to leverage VSM to chart your lean journey:” "Understanding the Fundamentals of Value-Stream Mapping."

🎶 Encore

• Petra Wille and Teresa Torres share thoughts on lessons learned from Teresa’s community of practice: "Teresa Torres on the Continuous Discovery Habits Community of Practice."
  
  

📅 Training Classes, Meetups & Events

Upcoming classes and events:

• 🖥 💯 🇩🇪 Aug 29-30 — SOLD OUT: Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Master Training (PSM I; German)
• 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Sep 5 — Live Virtual Meetup: Hands-on Agile #44: Honey, I Shrunk the Backlog w/ Allan Kelly (English)
• 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 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)
• 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Sep 27 — Live Virtual Meetup: Hands-on Agile 45: FAST: An Innovative Way to Scale w/ James Shore (English)
• 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Sep 29 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills (PSFS; English)
• 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Oct 4-5 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Master Training (PSM I; English)
• 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Oct 12 — Live Virtual Meetup: Hands-on Agile 46: Engage the Agile Fluency® Model with Diana Larsen (English)
• 🖥 🇩🇪 Oct 18-21 — Live Virtual Class: Advanced Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO-A; German)
• 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Oct 31-Nov 3 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; English)

See all upcoming classes here.

📺 Youtube Channel

• Jeff Gothelf: Outcome-Based Product Planning — Hands-on Agile 43.

Your Opinion Matters

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Best,