Food for Agile Thought #391: Your Second Brain, Wrong Reasons in Product, Vanity Metrics, Getting Buy-In

Welcome to the 391st edition of the ‘Food for Agile Thought’ newsletter, shared with 46,445 peers. My name is Stefan Wolpers.

This week, Tiago Forte shares the essence of his massively popular book on productivity, unlocking your creative potential. Also, we address proven techniques that will ‘help you to effectively communicate your vision and show you how to get buy-in from your team for your change,’ and we examine three approaches that exceptional teams use to accept failure at individual, group, and organization-wide levels, allowing them to learn, develop, and enhance their performance.

Then, we point to a video game practice that is highly effective for products, too: Games help users become more skilled throughout their journey, as onboarding is a continuous process. John Cutler answers, ‘What are you working on right now, and why is it the most important thing you could be working on?’ in all the wrong ways, and we explain different approaches to learning whether a customer might buy—from the worst way to one that actually works. Moreover, Stripe’s CTO David Singleton describes how to build a product-minded engineering team that excels at planning and prioritizing at scale.

Finally, Charles Lambdin applies some ideas from the past to create products today, from Lenin’s concepts of commandism and tailism to Marx’s notions of struggle and contradiction. (Think of it as a kind of intellectual stretching… 🤔) We also talk about vanity metrics and share that it is primarily our lack of courage that leads us to seek refuge in estimates instead of facing the undeniable truth that software development inherently involves risks.

The most popular discussion on LinkedIn last week was: 🤬 Rant: Scrum Masters are no Project Managers!

PS: 🗞 Did you miss past issues? No worries, here we go: 390, 389.

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

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

📅 Join your peers on June 14: Hands-on Agile 51: Fast, NoWaste Agile Estimating w/ Ron Lichty (English).

🏆 Tip of the Week

Tiago Forte shares the essence of his massively popular book on productivity, unlocking your creative potential: "Building a Second Brain: The Definitive Introductory Guide."

🍋 The Lemon of the Week

Medium: Friedrich C.F. Meertaube argues that using Agile for projects that have a “well-defined roadmap” in a corporate setting can be harmful: "Keep Your Agile off My Lawn, Please."

➿ Agile & Scrum

• Get Lighthouse: Jason Evanish shares proven techniques that will ‘help you to effectively communicate your vision and show you how to get buy-in from your team for your change:’ "How to Get your Team Buy in: Proven Leadership Methods."

• David Burkus examines three approaches that exceptional teams use to accept failure at individual, group, and organization-wide levels, allowing them to learn, develop, and enhance their performance: "Why Great Teams Embrace Failure (and How To Do It)."
  
  

• Charles Lambdin applies some ideas from the past to create products today, from Lenin’s concepts of commandism and tailism to Marx’s notions of struggle and contradiction: "Applying Marxist Thought to…Product Work?"

🎓 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 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

• Jock Busuttil points to a video game practice that is highly effective for products, too: Games help users become more skilled throughout their journey as onboarding is a continuous process: "What games taught me about customer onboarding."

• John Cutler answers, ‘What are you working on right now, and why is it the most important thing you could be working on?’ "Why Are You Doing This? (Wrong Answers Only)."
  
  

• Teresa Torres explains different approaches to learning whether a customer might buy, from the worst way to one that actually works: "Ask Teresa: How Can You Test a Customer’s Willingness to Pay?"

🛠 Concepts, Tools & Measuring

• First Round Capital: Lloyd Tabb shares “how to abide by metrics that generate direction—not pats on backs—so that your company can act on what’s essential to a business:” "I’m Sorry, But Those Are Vanity Metrics."

• Medium: Jason Godesky asserts that it is primarily our lack of courage that leads us to seek refuge in estimates instead of facing the undeniable truth that software development inherently involves risks: "All Software Estimates are Lies."
  
  

• Agile Alliance: Kenny Henbest takes some inspiration from a faraway galaxy to help you better understand the importance of flow for successful teams: "The Galactic Empire was defeated by WIP."

🎶 Encore

• 🎙 Lenny Rachitsky interviews Stripe’s CTO David Singleton on how to build a product-minded engineering team that excels at planning and prioritizing at scale: "Building a culture of excellence."

• Medium: Jean Huang shares a lesson on deriving a product roadmap from company-level and product strategies: "What I Learned about “Product Roadmap” from Stanford Product Management Accelerated."

📯 Agile Leadership: 10 Hidden Gems to 10X Your Leadership Game

Agile leadership is tricky, covering a lot of ground, from team building, decision-making, servant leadership, and self-management to including everyone and giving everyone a voice—to name a few of the challenges.

In the past, I found the following books beneficial to better understand the problem and solution space agile leadership. Moreover, you can significantly improve your leadership game as Scrum Master, agile coach, or manager for less than $ 200—an excellent investment from a professional perspective.

👉 Learn more: Agile Leadership: 10 Hidden Gems to 10X Your Leadership Game.

📅 Training Classes, Meetups & Events

Upcoming classes and events:

• 🖥 💯 🇩🇪 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

• Petra Wille: The Product Community of Practice — Hands-on Agile 50.

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Best,