Food for Agile Thought #364: Empowered Product Teams? Shifting Product Culture, Experimentation, Misunderstanding Done

Welcome to the 364rd edition of the ‘Food for Agile Thought’ newsletter, shared with 36,083 peers. My name is Stefan Wolpers.

This week, we share the real-life case of an organization embracing Marty Cagan’s ‘empowered product teams (EPT)’ model entirely—with underwhelming results. Moreover, we ask why the concept of “Done” seems to be constantly misunderstood in organizations while we explore why engineering speed drops over time and what you can do about it. Additionally, we delve into an “understanding of management (managing), self-managing, and the manager role.”

Then, we consider that many transformations fail because they lack a focus on product leadership and cover the challenges of managing a product in its mature state, from figuring out whether your product has achieved that stage to the four top-handling strategies. Also, Doc Norton analyzes the path from complexity to our need for certainty to experimentation based on observations, questions, hypotheses, methods, and results, and we illuminate the importance of Sprint Goals for a Scrum team’s success.

Finally, we listen to Allan Kelly proposing a seven-step, lightweight process to develop products, building on his previous work, and appreciate a new exercise from John Cutler to help teams to move from focusing on how they measure to what they measure. Lastly, Kellan Elliott-McCrea reflects on the annual planning ritual in engineering, from the futility of a bottom-up approach to constraints and dependencies.

PS: 🗞 Did you miss past issues? No worries, here we go: 363, 362.

👉 📈 Join 750-plus peers: The Anonymous Scrum Master and Agile Coach Salary Report 2023.

🏆 Tip of the Week

Bob Galen shares the real-life case of an organization embracing Marty Cagan’s ‘empowered product team (EPT) model’ entirely—with underwhelming results: "Empowered Product Teams… Really?"

Quote: “The point was that ALL of the efforts that the organization made to change the structure into EPT’s was not having any real positive impact. Imagine that. Just saying you’re empowering the teams or creating EPT’s structurally doesn’t mean a darn thing if you don’t change the organizational culture and the leadership mindsets. Words are cheap and easy. While behavioral and cultural changes, true changes, are much harder. And the SVPG folks seem to be selling a concept at the team level but not doing a good job explaining, training, or coaching the requisite cultural changes.”

➿ Agile & Scrum

• Medium: Todd Lankford is frustrated that the concept of “Done” is constantly—and probably deliberately—misunderstood in organizations: "Why is being “Done” in Agile teams so tragically misunderstood?"
  
  

• InfoQ: Steve Janaway explores why engineering speed drops over time and what you can do about it: "Why is Everything so Slow? - Measuring and Optimising How Engineering Teams Deliver."

• Eb delves into an “understanding of management (managing), self-managing, and the manager role:” "Managing Self-Managing Teams."

🎓 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Hands-on Agile #47: How much Product Discovery Is Enough? W/ Itamar Gilad on November 3, 2022

How much product discovery is enough?

Figuring out what is worth building often feels valuable in and of itself. The problem is that becoming stuck in an endless discovery cycle neither solves your customers’ issues nor contributes to your organization’s sustainability.

Don’t worry; help is on the way in the form of Itamar Gilad’s Confidence Meter! During the 47th Hands-on Agile session, you will learn how to calculate your confidence level in a product idea with the Confidence Meter by adding evidence. The Confidence Meter tool will then return a number in the range of 0-10, answering a simple question: Will we deliver the expected impact?

RSVP now: 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Hands-on Agile #47: Evidence-guided Development Using the Confidence Meter w/ Itamar Gilad on November 3, 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

• UX Collective: Afonso Franco believes that many transformations fail because they lack a focus on product leadership: "Shifting your product culture starts with product leaders."

• ProdPad: Janna Bastow covers the challenges of managing a product in its mature state, from figuring out whether your product has achieved that stage to the four top-handling strategies: "How to Manage the Maturity Stage of Product Life Cycle."

• Doc Norton analyzes the path from complexity to our need for certainty to experimentation based on observations, questions, hypotheses, methods, and results: "Experimentation."

🛠 Concepts, Tools & Measuring

• Allan Kelly proposes a seven-step, lightweight process to develop products, building on his previous work: "Objective Driven Agile - 7 step lightweight method."

• John Cutler shares an exercise to help teams to move from focusing on how they measure to what they measure: "Outcome Super Prompt."
  
  

• Kellan Elliott-McCrea reflects on the annual planning ritual in engineering, from the futility of a bottom-up approach to constraints and dependencies: "How to plan?"

🎶 Encore

• User Interviews shares a guide to best flex your “research muscle and use fresh, relevant customer insights to drive your decisions:” "Continuous User interviews."

📅 Training Classes, Meetups & Events

Upcoming classes and events:

• 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Oct 31-Nov 3 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; English)
• 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Nov 3 — Live Virtual Meetup: Hands-on Agile 47: Evidence-guided Development Using the Confidence Meter w/ Itamar Gilad (English)
• 🖥 💯 🇩🇪 Nov 15-18 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German)
• 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Dec 7 — Live Virtual Meetup: Hands-on Agile 48: How Elon Musk Would Run YOUR Business w/ Joe Justice (English)
• 🖥 🇬🇧 Dec 12-13 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Master Training (PSM II; German)
• 🖥 🇩🇪 Dec 14-15 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German)
• 🖥 🇩🇪 Dec 19-20 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Master Training (PSM I; German)

See all upcoming classes here.

📺 Youtube Channel

• Allan Kelly: Honey, I Shrunk the Backlog — Hands-on Agile 44.

Your Opinion Matters

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Best,