Food for Agile Thought #414: Agile Scaling Effectiveness, Product Waste, Customer Obsession, Good Mistakes

Welcome to the 414th edition of the ‘Food for Agile Thought’ newsletter, shared with 49,319 peers. My name is Stefan Wolpers.

This week, Christiaan Verwijs and Daniel Russo analyze Agile scaling effectiveness, highlighting minor differences and suggesting alignment with organizational culture, while Thorsten Ball discusses modern software bloat due to user expectations. Adam Mastroianni and Russ Roberts contrast factual and emotional retention when learning, and Tim Harford emphasizes the importance of a safe environment for acknowledging errors for continuous learning and improvement. Also, we ask: ‘Should we change Scrum?’

Then, Maret Kruve suggests segmenting customer feedback for a better understanding of product needs, and John Cutler discusses the invisible yet significant impact of waste in product development through 15 metaphors. Moreover, Jeff Gothelf provides tips for building a customer-centric organization, plus Rob Zuber encourages businesses to experiment with AI, sharing CircleCI’s journey from brainstorming to AI integration.

Lastly, Paulo Caroli discusses the ‘Build the MVP Canvas’ activity for structured product idea validation. Roman Pichler introduces the downloadable checklist for the GO Product Roadmap, and Egor Savochkin talks about the pace of software development, linking it to technical debt. Finally, Stephen Dubner emphasizes viewing tragedies as cumulative missteps to shift the perspective for mitigation.

🛠️ Are you looking for job opportunities? Try a brand-new service: ScrumMatch: Find a True Scrum Master Job in just a few Steps.

🥇 The most popular discussion on LinkedIn last week was: Is there a need for agile coaches when we diligently adopt and practice Scrum?

PS: 🗞 Did you miss past issues? No worries, here we go: 412, 413.

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

👉 Join 500-plus peers and help create the next edition of the Scrum Master Salary Report!

🏆 Tip of the Week

Christiaan Verwijs and Daniel Russo explore various Agile scaling strategies like SAFe and LeSS, revealing through a broad survey that scaling strategy shows minor differences in team effectiveness. The study suggests selections should align with organizational culture and management style instead: "Do Agile Scaling Approaches Make A Difference? An Empirical Comparison of Team Effectiveness Across Popular Scaling Approaches."

🍋 Lemon of the Week

Medium: This week’s Lemon critiques Agile development as a stifler of innovation, likening it to a restrictive cult that fosters laziness and tribalism in tech sectors: "Agile Software Development Needs to Die (And Everyone Knows It)."

➿ Agile & Scrum

• Every: Thorsten Ball reflects on the perceived bloat in modern software compared to earlier, leaner versions, attributing the change to increased user expectations and complex functionalities, mirroring evolved standards in other industries: "Why We Don’t Ship Software as Fast as We Used To."

• 🎙 Econlib: Psychologist Adam Mastroianni and EconTalk’s Russ Roberts delve into the fleeting nature of factual retention versus the lasting impact of emotional and value-driven “vibes” on our learning and interactions: "Learning and Mostly Forgetting."
  
  

• Tim Harford discusses a study showing good teams admit more mistakes, highlighting the importance of a safe environment for acknowledging errors, which fosters learning and improvement, contrasted by a fear-driven culture where denial prevails, hindering progress: "The Art of Making Good Misstakes."

🎓 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills Class — November 28, 2023

The Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills (PSFS) training by Berlin Product People is a guaranteed 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 — November 28, 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: Maret Kruve explores the nuanced task of deciphering customer feedback in product management, suggesting a segmentation approach to understand expressed, unexpressed, and unrecognized user needs: "When You Should Not Listen to Your Customers."

• John Cutler explores 15 metaphorical scenarios illustrating various forms of waste in product development, emphasizing these issues’ invisibility yet significant impact. The post highlights common challenges and the importance of recognizing and addressing waste: "15 Metaphors for Waste In Product Development."

• Jeff Gothelf follows up on a post about building a customer-obsessed organization by offering practical tips to overcome each challenge. While not silver bullets, these tips aim to guide readers in initiating the right changes towards customer-centricity: "10 Tips for Building a Customer Obsessed Organization."

• CircleCI: Rob Zuber likens the current AI wave to the initial phases of the internet and mobile tech, urging businesses to experiment with AI to stay competitive. Sharing CircleCI’s phased journey from brainstorming to production, this piece is a conceptual guide for integrating AI into applications: "AI adoption for software: a guide to learning, tool selection, and delivery."

🛠 Concepts, Tools & Measuring

• Paulo Caroli delves into the ‘Build the MVP Canvas’ activity, exploring the Minimum Viable Product Canvas as a potent tool rooted in lean startup philosophy. This canvas facilitates a structured approach to validating and refining product ideas: "Build the MVP Canvas."

• Roman Pichler introduces the GO Product Roadmap as a tool for goal-oriented road-mapping, addressing common application challenges with a downloadable checklist shared in the article: "GO Product Roadmap Checklist."

• booking.com: Egor Savochkin explains that software development is about making changes quickly. However, rushing in too early can lead to problems later, making future changes harder and slower, likely resulting in technical debt that demands extra effort over time: "Measuring Technical Debt to Avoid the Boiling Frog Syndrome."

🎶 Encore

• 🎙 Freakonomics: Stephen J. Dubner underscores tragedies as cumulative outcomes of multiple missteps rather than isolated incidents, illustrated through harrowing tales of wildfires and calamities, urging a shift in perspective for potential mitigation: "How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events."

📯 Should We Change Scrum?

Can we or should we change Scrum, or is it a sacrilege to tweak the ‘immutable’ framework to accommodate our teams’ and organizations’ needs?

Not so fast; don’t just dismiss augmenting Scrum as leaving the path, contributing to the numerous Scrumbut mutations, giving Scrum a bad name. However, in our rapidly evolving business landscape, sticking rigidly to traditional Scrum by the book could be a straightjacket stifling innovation, user focus, and adaptability.

From ensuring cultural compatibility to facing technical debt challenges and emerging technologies, discover ten compelling reasons why augmenting Scrum isn’t just okay—it’s necessary for modern teams. Read on to discover when and how to adapt Scrum responsibly without diluting its essence.

👉 Learn more: Should We Change Scrum?

📅 Training Classes, Meetups & Events

Upcoming classes and events:

• 🖥 💯 🇩🇪 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 21 — Meetup: The Big Product Picture — Creating Value though Alignment (Free; English)
• 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 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

• Bob Galen: An Agile Coaches Guide to Storytelling.

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