Food for Agile Thought #409: How to Be Unproductive, Customers Hate the MVP, Waterfall Misconceptions

Welcome to the 409th edition of the ‘Food for Agile Thought’ newsletter, shared with 48,883 peers. My name is Stefan Wolpers.

This week, we explore several provocative perspectives: John Cutler delves into factors affecting developer productivity, suggesting the environment plays a more substantial role than individual aptitude. Kris Brandow makes a case for the undervalued potential of the Waterfall method. Stephan Schmidt pinpoints the unintentional merger of Scrum and Waterfall into “Scrumfall” due to external pressures. Lastly, Ben Biran shares insights from Zapier’s Interfaces team, emphasizing how shifting prioritization duties to engineering leaders can catalyze team performance and culture.

Then, Jason Cohen critiques the widely adopted MVP approach for sidelining the user experience and calls for its reevaluation. In conversation with Lenny Rachitsky, Tim Holley of Etsy unfolds his ten-year odyssey with the e-commerce giant, touching on various facets, from handling the pandemic-induced surge to fine-tuning marketplace dynamics. Meanwhile, Arne Kittler brings product maven Teresa Torres into the spotlight, who, in dialogue with Petra Wille, clarifies the essence of product discovery grounded in customer feedback.

Lastly, Mike Cottmeyer tackles the growing disillusionment among leaders with Agile, offering ways to reignite their interest and commitment. Mikkel Krenchel sheds light on the rising societal apprehensions around AI, emphasizing the often-overlooked importance of ethnographers in shaping AI’s ethical trajectory. Lastly, Nick Ianetta puzzles over the marked distinction between Research Operations and Market Research Operations, probing the reasons behind their strategic organizational separation.

🏅 The most popular discussion on LinkedIn last week was: I am torn: Should a Scrum Master be technical or not?

PS: 🗞 Did you miss past issues? No worries, here we go: 408, 407.

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

👉 Join the community and help create the next edition of the Scrum Master Salary Report!

🏆 Tip of the Week

John Cutler argues that the environment influences developer productivity more than individual skills. Counter-productive developers are often stuck in low-leverage activities. Instead of assessing individual productivity, address factors causing low/negative leverage. Instead, teams should track where their time goes, aiming for high-leverage tasks: "The Ultimate Guide to Developer Counter-Productivity."

🍋 Lemon of the Week

Medium: This week’s Lemon critiques Agile's practicality, noting widespread dissatisfaction among developers and senior managers. Despite Agile's principles, the majority of implementations seem ineffective, suggesting a fundamental flaw in its real-world application: "The Anti-Agile Manifesto."

➿ Agile & Scrum

• Changelog: Kris Brandow challenges common Waterfall perceptions, revisiting its roots through key papers to argue its underrated value in today's software processes: "‘Waterfall’ doesn't mean what you think it means"

• Stephan Schmidt argues that despite agile adoption, external pressures and the pursuit of efficiency often reintroduce waterfall elements into Scrum processes, leading to hybrids like Scrumfall: "Why we always end up with waterfall."

• Medium: Ben Biran describes how shifting prioritization responsibilities from product managers to engineering leaders can significantly boost team effectiveness. By adopting a product mindset within engineering at Zapier's Interfaces team, they observed improved outcomes, faster learning, and enhanced team culture: "Hand over product prioritization to Engineering Managers. Here’s why."

🎓 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 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

• Jason Cohen emphasizes that while product teams have consistently favored the MVP approach for its quick insights, it often neglects the customer experience, suggesting a need to reevaluate and refine the process: "Your customers hate MVPs. Make a SLC instead."

• 🎙 Tim Holley, VP of Product at Etsy, and Lenny Rachitsky discuss Tim’s decade-long journey with the company, sharing insights on corporate culture shifts, Etsy’s pandemic-driven e-commerce boom, balancing marketplace supply and demand, addressing the “graduation problem”, and hiring tips for product managers: "Inside Etsy’s product, growth, and marketplace evolution."

• 📺 Arne Kittler introduces product expert Teresa Torres. In a chat with Petra Wille, Teresa defined product discovery as making informed decisions on what to build using customer feedback: "How Can Product Leaders Support Continuous Discovery?"

🛠 Concepts, Tools & Measuring

• 📺 Leading Agile: The Agile community is split between viewing Agile as an iterative delivery and as a cultural movement. Many leaders have grown disillusioned with Agile. In this video, Mike Cottmeyer addresses how to re-engage these leaders: "How You Define Success in Agile Matters."

• epicpeople: Mikkel Krenchel claims that AI advancements raise societal concerns like biases and privacy issues. While many focus on AI ethics, the role of ethnographers remains underutilized. These professionals should understand AI better and engage early in its development: "Ethnography for the AI Age: How to Get Started."

• Team ReOps: Research Operations and Market Research Operations are distinct disciplines. Search results vary significantly between them, emphasizing their separation in many organizations. Nick Ianetta asks, Why is this? "Research Is Research: Rethinking Market Research’s Place in ResearchOps."

🎶 Encore

There are no entries to this category this week.

📈 Join the Anonymous Poll for the Upcoming Free 'Scrum Master Salary Report 2024'

It is time again to start collecting data for the next edition!

The purpose of this anonymous Scrum Master salary report is to create a clear, data-backed benchmark that allows everyone in the Agile community to understand whether their compensation is adequate. The report will cover Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches, both employed and freelancing.

The goal is to have at least 1,000 replies by the end of November 2023 to create the report in time for January 2024. Of course, the report will be available for free.

👉 Learn more: Join the community and help create the next edition of the Scrum Master Salary Report!

📅 Training Classes, Meetups & Events

Upcoming classes and events:

• 🖥 💯 🇩🇪 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 30-31 — Live Virtual Class: Advanced Professional Scrum Master Training (PSM II; German)
• 🖥 🇩🇪 November 1-2 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Master Training (PSM I; German)
• 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 November 8 — Meetup:Designing Agile Ecosystems with Org Topologies™ w/ Alexey Krivitsky and Roland Flemm (Free; English)
• 🖥 🇩🇪 November 21-24 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German)
• 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 November 28 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills Training (PSFS; English)
• 🖥 🇩🇪 December 11-12 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Master Training (PSM I; German)
• 🖥 🇩🇪 December 13-14 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German)
• 🖥 🇬🇧 December 18-19 — Live Virtual Class: 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.

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