Food for Agile Thought #406: Great Strategies, Zen and PM, Hypotheses for Framing, Agile’s Value Focus

Welcome to the 406th edition of the ‘Food for Agile Thought’ newsletter, shared with 48,537 peers. My name is Stefan Wolpers.

This week, Jason Cohen discusses the hallmarks of great strategies; Donald Mark Haynes unpacks true agility beyond Scrum; Michael Göthe reviews Stephen Bungay’s insights on leadership drawn from military history; and David Perell examines Elon Musk’s improvement process.

Then, Gary Niemen delves into how Buddhism and meditation principles enhance product management; Jeff Gothelf underscores the value of framing work as a hypothesis; and Roman Pichler identifies common pitfalls in product strategy formulation.

Lastly, Ari Tikka corrects misconceptions about Tuckman’s “Orming” and its confusion with Katzenbach and Smith’s curve; Joshua Kerievsky champions probabilistic forecasting, using Monte Carlo simulations; and Enzo Avigo introduces Engineering-driven development (EDD), emphasizing engineer-led product processes at the expense of product managers.

PS: 🗞 Did you miss past issues? No worries, here we go: 404, 405.

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

🏆 Tip of the Week

Jason Cohen emphasizes that most strategies are poorly defined and ineffective. A great strategy communicates ‘how we will win’ and possesses qualities like simplicity, candor, decisiveness, and a focus on long-term goals: "What makes a strategy great."

🍋 Lemon of the Week

Reddit: This week’s lemon is another futile attempt to solve a non-existing problem, mimicking Scrum and risking burnout and event overhead. The comments in the Reddit thread are entertaining, though: "From the scrum community on Reddit: Scrum Masters: How would you improve my flavor of SCRUM, Tetrum?"

➿ Agile & Scrum

• Agile Alliance: Donald ‘Mark’ Haynes delves into the essence of true agility beyond just Scrum events, emphasizing value in productivity and stakeholder satisfaction: "An Agile Focus on Value."

• Crisp: Michael Göthe highlights a keynote from Stephen Bungay on leadership, covering learning from military history to alignment vs. autonomy to leading through intent: "Stephen Bungay and the Art of Leadership."

• David Perell points to Elon Musk’s improvement process, which emphasizes questioning assumptions and regularly deleting processes to ensure agility: "Elon Musk's five-step process for improvement."

🎓 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills Class — October 4, 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 — October 4, 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

• Medium: Gary Niemen reflects on the complexities of product management, highlighting how Buddhism and meditation principles from his past have offered great skills to navigate the role: "Zen and The Art of Product Management."

• Jeff Gothelf highlights the importance of framing work as a hypothesis for its blend of humility, customer-centricity, and storytelling: "Hypotheses in Any Context."

• Roman Pichler addresses ten frequent mistakes in product strategy, from lacking one to being unspecific to running a strategy cult: "10 Product Strategy Mistakes to Avoid."

🛠 Concepts, Tools & Measuring

• Gosei: Ari Tikka critiques the widespread misinterpretation of Tuckman’s “Orming” and its confusion with Katzenbach and Smith’s “Team development curve:” "Forming, Storming, Dreaming, Performing."

• Industrial Logic: Joshua Kerievsky addresses the perennial product development question, “When will it be done?” Highlighting the value of probabilistic forecasting, which utilizes daily throughput and Monte Carlo simulations, the approach provides date predictions based on factual inputs: "Reckoning with Reality with Probabilistic Forecasting."

• June: Enzo Avigo explains Engineering-driven development (EDD), placing product initiation, definition, and execution in engineers’ hands, sidelining product managers: "The Rise of Engineering-Driven Development (EDD)."

🎶 Encore

There are no entries to this category this week.

📯 The Peril of Adhering to Legacy Systems, Processes, and Practices

Administrative overreach and micromanagement in Scrum mainly arise from clinging to legacy systems and traditional (management) practices, leading to rigidity and misapplication of Agile principles. The excessive control by stakeholders and the management level stifles creativity and adaptability, disrupting planning and hindering a Scrum team’s growth.

Moreover, these categories from the Scrum anti-patterns taxonomy often emphasize an unbalanced focus on short-term gains, neglecting long-term strategy, value creation, and the essential alignment among all stakeholders to succeed in uncertainty.

👉 Learn more: The Peril of Adhering to Legacy Systems, Processes, and Practices — Scrum Anti-Patterns Taxonomy (1).

📅 Training Classes, Meetups & Events

Upcoming classes and events:

• 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 August 29-30 — Live Virtual Class: Advanced Professional Scrum Master Training (PSM II; English)
• 🖥 💯 🇩🇪 September 5-6 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Master Training (PSM I; German)
• 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 September 5 — Meetup: Hands-on Agile #53: An Agile Coaches Guide to Storytelling w/ Bob Galen (English)
• 🖥 💯 🇩🇪 September 26-29 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German)
• 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 October 4 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills Training (PSFS; English)
• 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 October 10 — Meetup: Overcoming Common Product Backlog Management Traps w/ David Pereira
• 🇬🇧 October 24-25 — In Berlin: Advanced Professional Scrum Master Training (PSM II; English)

See all upcoming classes here.

📺 Youtube Channel

• Joe Justice: How Elon Musk Would Run YOUR Business — Hands-on Agile EXTRA.

Your Opinion Matters

Would you like to suggest a post for next week's edition or provide general feedback? You can reply to this email, or contact stefan@age-of-product.com.

If you like the newsletter, please forward it to a friend or colleague—it would mean a lot to me! 🙏

If you want to receive even more news, just follow @AgeOfProduct or @StefanW on Twitter for your daily dose.

Last, but not least: If you are a first time reader of this newsletter, click here to subscribe and join 48,537 peers.

Best,