Food for Agile Thought #388: Perils of Deterministic Thinking, ChatGPT for Product Work, Interruption & Context Switching, Pre-Mortems

Welcome to the 388th edition of the ‘Food for Agile Thought’ newsletter, shared with 46,012 peers. My name is Stefan Wolpers.

This week, we delve into the perils of deterministic thinking and reflect on what growth may mean for a Scrum team, covering the spectrum from product discovery to DevOps. Also, we suggest strategies to minimize the influence of engineering work’s two most costly factors and point to wrong ideas typically plaguing agile transformation, from installing practices to changing culture to the mystical one-time change effort.

Then, we share real-life examples, including prompts on how product managers already use ChatGPT daily and follow John Cutler, who looks beyond the usual product-market fit approach, claiming that the biggest challenge is Product-Reality Fit instead. Also, we map the problem of creating product goals onto the Cynefin Framework and detail what experimentation entails in the complex or chaotic domain. Speaking of creating goals: you want to mitigate the risk of running in the wrong direction. Ant Murphy suggests an excellent tool for that: the pre-mortem risk analysis.

Finally, Sevawise Games created a free Monte Carlo Estimation tool that supports Parabol’s fine primer on estimation, from Planning Poker to Wall Estimation to #NoEstimates. Moreover, we explore whether we can use ChatGPT-4 to create workshops for agile practitioners; for example, Scrum Masters. Lastly, Dave Gray details the development steps of the well-known Innovation Ecosystem Map.

PS: 🗞 Did you miss past issues? No worries, here we go: 386, 387.

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

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

Join 150-plus peers on May 4, 2023: HoA EXTRA: How Elon Musk Would Run YOUR Business with Joe Justice.

🏆 Tip of the Week

Medium: Danah Boyd warns of the “deeply entrenched deterministic thinking,” leading many people who “espouse deterministic thinking to believe themselves to be hyper-rational:” "Resisting Deterministic Thinking."

🍋 The Lemon of the Week

Medium: Manfred Friedrich rejects notions of many agile luminaries on SAFe, insisting that SAFe is agile, repeating its sales brochure: "Agile Founders Embarrass Themself: SAFe is Agile."

➿ Agile & Scrum

• Mark Levison reflects on what growth may mean for a Scrum team, covering the spectrum from product discovery to DevOps: "Is Good, Good Enough?"

• Piotr Karczmarz suggests strategies to minimize the influence of engineering work’s two most costly factors: "Programmer Interrupted: The Real Cost of Interruption and Context Switching."
  
  

• Leading Agile: Mike Cottmeyer delves into wrong ideas typically plaguing agile transformation, from installing practices to changing culture to the mystical one-time change effort: "4 Common Misconceptions About Agile Transformation."

🎓 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 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

• Lenny Rachitsky shares real-life examples, including prompts on how product managers already use ChatGPT daily: "How to use ChatGPT in your PM work."

• John Cutler looks beyond the usual product-market fit approach, claiming that the biggest challenge is PRF instead: "Product-Reality Fit (PRF)."
  
  Quote: ”A big challenge is that people underestimate the impact of inertia and overestimate their ability to solve new problems. Each successive failure gets chalked up to poor execution, poor-fit leaders, or similar, and every success gets chalked up to genius. And this can go on for years—with an ever-increasing divergence between product and reality.“

• Medium: Grant Gadomski maps the problem of creating product goals onto the Cynefin Framework and details what experimentation entails in the complex or chaotic domain: "Do You Really Want Your Teams to Experiment? Are you Sure?"

🛠 Concepts, Tools & Measuring

• Sevawise Games created a free Monte Carlo Estimation tool: "Monte Carlo Online Estimation Tool."

• Parabol Focus shared a fine primer on estimation, from Planning Poker to Wall Estimation to #NoEstimates: "12 Agile Estimation Techniques to Try With your Team."

• Medium: Ant Murphy sketched the steps of running a pre-mortem risk analysis: "How To Run a Pre-Mortem: Mitigate against risks that matter."
  
  

🎶 Encore

• Dave Gray detailed the development steps of the well-known map: "The story of an XPLANATiON: How we developed the Innovation Ecosystem Map."

📅 Training Classes, Meetups & Events

Upcoming classes and events:

• 🖥 💯 🇩🇪 Apr 18-21 — Live Virtual Class: Advanced Professional Scrum Master Training (PSM II; 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)
• 🖥 🇬🇧 July 4-7 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; English)

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,