Food for Agile Thought #412: The Dark Age Has Returned, Product Management Axioms, Scrum Guide 202(X)

Welcome to the 412th edition of the ‘Food for Agile Thought’ newsletter, shared with 49,219 peers. My name is Stefan Wolpers.

This week, Henrik Mårtensson criticizes the re-emergence of the Waterfall method in software development; Ken Schwaber discusses refining the 2020 Scrum Guide to better serve as a reflective framework, inviting community feedback. Also, Emily Webber highlights three collaboration anti-patterns that create power imbalances and hinder problem-solving, while Burcu A. Şengün offers ten valuable tips for budding Scrum Masters, emphasizing patience, continuous learning, and effective communication. Moreover, the Lemon introduces “time-mapped Estimation” to simplify Scrum estimations by mapping story points to person-hours. (Yub, you read this correctly.)

Then, Saeed Khan introduces four Product Management Axioms to guide and communicate fundamental principles in product management, and Rich Mironov discusses the organizational transformation from a services-centric to a product-centric model, stressing the distinct business models and the need for a clear stance to improve alignment and efficiency.. Anthony Murphy showcases the value of structured storytelling in product management, a skill transitioned from his military training. He asserts that a well-constructed narrative greatly enhances clarity and influence in professional communication.

Finally, Kimberly Hendrick celebrates user stories as a catalyst for meaningful dialogue rather than mere task descriptors. At the same time, Ari Tikka critiques the unscientific “Team Performance Curve” in “The Wisdom of Teams” by Katzenbach and Smith, advocating for emphasizing organizational conditions over “teamyness” for enhanced team performance. Johanna Rothman proposes reducing Work in Progress (WIP) and increasing team size to improve collaboration and efficiency, evolving them into small-world networks for better results. Lastly, Marc Randolph reflects on Netflix’s trust-centric approach during its DVD-by-mail era, illustrating how trust, balanced with verification, fortified customer relations.

🏅 The most popular discussion on LinkedIn last week was: Revamp Your #SprintPlanning or Risk Failure! 💣

PS: 🗞 Did you miss past issues? No worries, here we go: 410, 411.

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

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🏆 Tip of the Week

Henrik Mårtensson expresses dismay over the resurgence of the Waterfall method in software development, outlining its historical misinterpretation and inherent flaws compared to agile and Critical Path Method (CPM): "Waterfall - The Dark Age of Software Development Has Returned!"

🍋 Lemon of the Week

This week’s Lemon author suggests that “Time-mapped Estimation” simplifies Scrum estimations. You read correctly: mapping story points to person-hours based on a fixed exchange ratio: "Better Performance using Time-mapped Story Points Estimation in a Scrum Environment."

➿ Agile & Scrum

• Ken Schwaber mentions the effort to refine the 2020 Guide on Scrum, emphasizing its role as a reflective framework rather than a directive tool, and invites feedback for further improvements: "I have been getting queries recently. People want to know when the next Scrum Guide is coming out."

• InfoQ: Emily Webber identifies three collaboration anti-patterns in organizations, leading to power imbalances and hindering problem-solving. She suggests fostering transdisciplinary teams and natural cross-overs to enhance effective collaboration: "Bridging Silos and Overcoming Collaboration Antipatterns in Multidisciplinary Organisations."

• Medium: Burcu A. Şengün shares ten insightful tips for aspiring Scrum Masters, underscoring the importance of patience, continuous learning, effective communication, and embracing Agile’s flexible framework for adaptive problem-solving and constructive team engagemen:. "Scrum Mastery: 10 Tips You Should Know at the Beginning."

🎓 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 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: Saeed Khan shares four Product Management Axioms derived from their experience in various software companies to guide, focus, and communicate fundamental principles in their role, emphasizing the importance of influence in effective product management: "Product Management Axioms."

• Rich Mironov discusses the challenges and organizational shift in transitioning from a services-centric to a product-centric company, emphasizing the contrasting business models, investor values, and internal dynamics while advocating for a clear stance to optimize alignment and operational efficiency: "Moving from Services to Products."

• Ant Murphy emphasizes the power of structured storytelling, drawing from his military training in precise communication. He highlights the transition of these skills into product management, proposing that a well-framed narrative can significantly enhance clarity and influence in professional communication: "Why Most Product Managers Aren’t Great Storytellers."

🛠 Concepts, Tools & Measuring

• Gosei: Ari Tikka critiques “The Wisdom of Teams” by Katzenbach and Smith, highlighting its unscientific “Team Performance Curve” and oversimplified team stages. He emphasizes the importance of organizational conditions over mere “teamyness” for better team performance, referencing Richard Hackman’s extensive research: "Forget Katzenbach's Team Performance Curve."

• Johanna Rothman revisits their stance on small teams being more efficient, realizing that the crux of team dysfunction is high Work in Progress (WIP). By reducing WIP, even larger teams can foster better collaboration and efficiency, morphing into small-world networks instead of disjointed communication paths, thus advancing towards better and faster results: "Want Better and Faster Results? Increase Team Size and Reduce WIP."

• InfoQ: Kimberly Hendrick underscores that a user story is more a catalyst for meaningful dialogue than a task descriptor. She laments recent shifts towards documentation over a valuable conversation, advocating for utilizing user stories and adept story slicing to foster understanding and maintain cohesiveness: "User Story: a Placeholder for a Conversation."

🎶 Encore

• Marc Randolph recounts Netflix’s trust-based approach during its DVD-by-mail era, embracing customer honesty over stringent loss prevention. Despite occasional losses or deceit, this stance fortified customer relations. An incident of a mailman pilfering DVDs led to a lesson: trust but verify: "Trust Your Customers."

📺 Lost in Communication and Collaboration — Scrum Anti-Patterns Taxonomy (2)

Lost in Communication and Collaboration addresses two categories from the Scrum anti-patterns taxonomy that are closely aligned: ineffective collaboration at the stakeholder level, often resulting in an unsuited reporting system based on misaligned metrics.

Learn how these Scrum anti-patterns categories manifest themselves and how they affect value creation for customers and the organization’s long-term sustainability.

👉 Learn more: Lost in Communication and Collaboration — Scrum Anti-Patterns Taxonomy (2).

📅 Training Classes, Meetups & Events

Upcoming classes and events:

• 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 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

• Jim Highsmith: Wild West to Agile — An Interview with the Co-Creator of the Agile Manifesto.

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