Food for Agile Thought #386: Food for Agile Thought #386: Scrum Police, Marty Cagan on Transformations, Agile Bureaucracy

Welcome to the 386th edition of the ‘Food for Agile Thought’ newsletter, shared with 45,734 peers. My name is Stefan Wolpers.

This week, we applaud Mike Cohn and his fantastic squad from the Scrum Police for battling the countless misadventures of wonky Scrum implementations. Also, Jurriaan Kamer explores six options to “revitalize your agile transformation” while we reflect on the “relationship between organization and self-organization,” as systems self-organize within constraints. Moreover, Shane Snow claims, “despite our natural propensity to trust, a lack of trust is the #1 underlying cause of dysfunction in teams,” and Jason Cohen dives into humanity’s repeated pattern of inability to predict the future and what techniques we have to navigate our volatile world.

Then, Marty Cagan shares his thoughts on common transformation pitfalls, from outsourcing the transformation to McBoston to the widespread desire for a process, and Tim Herbig suggests addressing the analysis-paralysis problem product teams face during product discovery. Additionally, Dave Gray shares several free innovation-related illustrations, from the corporate innovation ecosystem to measuring innovation to plugging into the startup ecosystem.

Finally, we appreciate that Corinna Baldauf turned all 144 Retromat exercises into a giant Miro template and enjoy Nick Brown’s excellent primer on the many problems, issues, and flaws of a favorite concept of many organizations: flow efficiency. Russ Roberts interviews Kevin Kelly about his book ‘Excellent Advice for Living,’ and why Kevin Kelly is not worried about AI, and we close with David Rotman’s belief that LLMs would inevitably cause a revolution by transforming many jobs. Whether that will be beneficial to society is up to us to decide.

PS: 🗞 Did you miss past issues? No worries, here we go: 384, 385.

PPS: 🎓 📅 See all upcoming events and classes here.

PPPS: 📖 Get notified when the Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide will become available.

Join 100-plus peers on April 5, 2023: The Product Community of Practice w/ Petra Wille — Hands-on Agile #50.

🏆 Tip of the Week

📺 Hats off to Mike Cohn and his fantastic squad for battling the countless misadventures of wonky Scrum implementations: "Scrum Police!"

🍋 The Lemon of the Week

Mind The Product: Reid Manchester reflects on trust and risk in product management, claiming that building healthy, successful products requires product people to work in a state of low trust: "Trust? In product management?"

➿ Agile & Scrum

• Medium: Jurriaan Kamer explores six options to “revitalize your agile transformation,” from examining beliefs about people in the workplace, reviewing your current framework and practices to using experimentation to evolve the organization continuously: "Don’t Get Stuck in Agile Bureaucracy."
  
  

• Chris Corrigan reflects on the “relationship between organization and self-organization,” as systems self-organize within constraints: "Holding space for self-organization."

• Jason Cohen dives into humanity’s repeated pattern of inability to predict the future and what techniques we have to navigate our volatile world: "Navigating the unpredictability of everything."

• Shane Snow claims, “despite our natural propensity to trust, a lack of trust is the #1 underlying cause of dysfunction in teams:” "The Counter-Intuitive Truth About Trust In Teamwork."

🎓 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills Class — May 16, 2023

The Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills (PSFS) training by Berlin Product People is a guaranteed one-day official Scrum.org class for advanced Scrum practitioners and agile coaches, including the industry-acknowledged PSFS certification. This PSFS training class is in English.

Enjoy the benefits of an immersive class of two compact sessions with like-minded agile peers from 09:00 – 17:30 o’clock CEST.

👉 New in 2023: Refresher Classes: Attend a free refresher class as a former student upon arrangement and availability.

Learn more: 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills Class — May 16, 2023.

👉 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

• 📺 Mind The Product: In this extensive video, Marty Cagan shares his thoughts on common transformation pitfalls, from outsourcing the transformation to McBoston to the widespread desire for a process: "Common transformation pitfalls."

• Tim Herbig suggests addressing the analysis-paralysis problem product teams face during product discovery: "From Information to Evidence: How Context Informs Product Discovery Decisions."

• Dave Gray shares several free innovation-related illustrations, from the corporate innovation ecosystem to measuring innovation to plugging into the startup ecosystem: "Innovation illustrated."

🛠 Concepts, Tools & Measuring

• Corinna Baldauf turned all 144 Retromat exercises into a giant Miro template: "Retromat Miroboard Mega Template – All About Retrospectives."
  
  

• Medium: Nick Brown shares an excellent primer on the many problems, issues, and flaws of a favorite concept of many organizations: "The many flaws of flow efficiency."

🎶 Encore

• 🎙 Econlib: Russ Roberts interviews Kevin Kelly about his book ‘Excellent Advice for Living,’ and why Kevin Kelly is not worried about AI: "Kevin Kelly on Advice, AI, and Technology."

• MIT Technology Review: David Rotman believes that LLMs will inevitably cause a revolution by transforming many jobs. Whether that is beneficial to society is up to us to decide: "ChatGPT is about to revolutionize the economy. We need to decide what that looks like."

📅 Training Classes, Meetups & Events

Upcoming classes and events:

• 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Apr 5 — Live Virtual Meetup: Hands-on Agile 50: The Product Community of Practice w/ Petra Wille (English)
• 🖥 💯 🇩🇪 Apr 18-21 — Live Virtual Class: Advanced Professional Scrum Master Training (PSM II; German)
• 🖥 🇩🇪 Apr 25-28 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German)
• 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 May 4 — Live Virtual Meetup: Hands-on Agile EXTRA: Joe Justice on Elon Musk (English)
• 🖥 💯 🇩🇪 May 9-10 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Master Training (PSM I; German)
• 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 May 16 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills Class (PSFS; English)
• 🖥 🇩🇪 May 23-24 — Live Virtual Class: Advanced Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO II; German)
• 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 May 30-31 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Master Training (PSM II; English)
• 🖥 🇩🇪 June 13-16 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German)
• 🖥 💯 🇬🇧June 14 — Live Virtual Meetup: Hands-on Agile 51: Fast, NoWaste Agile Estimating w/ Ron Lichty (English)
• 🖥 🇩🇪 June 21-22 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Master Training (PSM I; German)
• 🖥 🇩🇪 June 27-30 — Live Virtual Class: Advanced Professional Scrum Master Training (PSM II; German)

See all upcoming classes here.

📺 Youtube Channel

• Itamar Gilad: How much Product Discovery Is enough? The Confidence Meter — HoA #47.

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Best,