Food for Agile Thought #370: Calm Innovation, Delivery Dates, Participatory Decisions, Bad Bosses

Welcome to the 370th edition of the ‘Food for Agile Thought’ newsletter, shared with 36,317 peers. My name is Stefan Wolpers.

This week, Shane Parrish interviews Tobi Lütke of Shopify about calm innovation in large organizations, fighting bureaucracy, and scaling Shopify. Also, we reflect on facilitation and decision-making, including the opportunity costs of premature convergence, and learn more about the “Technology, Organization, and Product (TOP)” approach to agility. Moreover, we dissect the background of bad bosses.

Also, we learn from Ian McAllister about essential PM skills, broadening your horizon, and the importance of diversifying your skills as you move up the ladder. Speaking of which, we also share ten real-life examples of mistakes with long-term career-limiting effects for product managers, and we analyze three, unfortunately, prominent ways to trigger waste and frustration in product management.

Finally, we play our favorite broken record again: hands-off the deliberately abstract concept of story points. Moreover, we detail why teams underestimate work—learn more about hubris, dominant voices, and lacking the big picture—and advocate reducing cycle time to improve throughput and predictability. Lastly, Ken Norton shares his approach to what to do “when it’s time for some tough talk.”

PS: 🗞 Did you miss past issues? No worries, here we go: 369, 368.

👉 📈 Join 925-plus peers—less than 75 to go: The Anonymous Scrum Master and Agile Coach Salary Report 2023.

🏆 Tip of the Week

🎙 Farnam Street: Shane Parrish interviews Tobi Lütke of Shopify about innovation in large organizations, fighting bureaucracy, and scaling Shopify: "Calm Progress."

Quote: The best thing founders can do is subtraction. It’s much, much, much easier to add things than it is to remove things. Adding things is a lot more expensive than removing things. However, it requires some measure of bravery and risk-taking. If you say no to a thing, you say no to one thing. If you say yes to a thing, you actually say no to every other thing you could have done during this period of time.

➿ Agile & Scrum

• Charles Lambdin reflects on facilitation and decision-making, including the opportunity costs of premature convergence: "Meetings Are Design Products."
  
  

• Michael Küsters explains his “Technology, Organization, and Product (TOP)” approach to agility: "The TOP Structure - how it all started."

• Get Lighthouse: Jason Evanish dissects the background of bad bosses, from a lack of training to a lack of support to a lack of self-awareness: "6 Suprising Reasons Why Good People become Bad Bosses."

🎓 🖥 🇺🇸 Professional Scrum Product Owner — January 23-26, 2023

Discover Scrum’s four success principles in this official Scrum.org Professional Scrum Product Owner training class, leading to and including the industry-recognized PSPO I certification. (This live-virtual class will be offered in English.)

Enjoy the benefits of a live immersive class with like-minded agile peers in the morning hours from 9 am – 1 pm EST.

Learn more: 🖥 🇺🇸 Professional Scrum Product Owner — January 23-26, 2023.

“Great Depth of Knowledge & Experience: The depth is experience that Stefan Wolpers possesses was evident in his ability to answer questions of all levels during the 4 training sessions. I particularly appreciated his willingness to tease apart Scrum answers into application in real life with examples.” (Source.)

👉 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

• Deb Liu shares real-life examples of mistakes with long-term career-limiting effects for product managers: "Ten Mistakes to Avoid in Executive Reviews."

• 🎙 Lenny Rachitsky interviews Ian McAllister on essential PM skills, broadening your horizon, and diversifying skills as you move up the ladder: "What it takes to become a top 1% PM."

• Itamar Gilad analyzes three, unfortunately, prominent ways to trigger waste and frustration in product management: "3 Common PM Role Antipatterns."
  
  

🛠 Concepts, Tools & Measuring

• Mike Cohn plays our favorite broken record again: hands-off a deliberately abstract concept: "Don’t Equate Story Points to Hours."

• Bob Galen replies to a previous Mike Cohn post and details why teams underestimate work. Learn more about hubris, dominant voices, and lacking the big picture: "Underestimation."

• Ken Norton shares his approach to what to do “when it’s time for some tough talk:” "Preparing to Have a Difficult Conversation."
  
  

🎶 Encore

• Joshua J. Arnold advocates reducing cycle time to improve throughput and predictability: "Delivery Dates."

📅 Training Classes, Meetups & Events

Upcoming classes and events:

• 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Dec 8 — 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; English)
• 🖥 💯 🇩🇪 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)
• 🖥 🇺🇸 Jan 23-27 👉 US Timezone — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; English)
• 🖥 🇬🇧 Jan 24-28 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Master Training (PSM II; English)
• 🖥 🇩🇪 Jan 31-Feb 3 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Master Training (PSM I; German)
• 🖥 🇬🇧 Feb 3-10 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Master Training (PSM I; English)
• 🖥 🇺🇸 Feb 13-16 👉 US Timezone — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Master Training (PSM II; English)
• 🖥 🇩🇪 Feb 3-Mar 3 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German)

See all upcoming classes here.

📺 Youtube Channel

• Diana Larsen: The Agile Fluency Model®.

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Best,