Food for Agile Thought #417: Working Backward at Amazon, “Marty Cagan’ization?” Agile Contracts

Welcome to the 417th edition of the ‘Food for Agile Thought’ newsletter, shared with 49,538 peers. My name is Stefan Wolpers.

This week, we delve into Amazon’s innovative ‘working backward’ approach with Lenny Rachitsky and Bill Carr and explore Viktor Cessan’s proposition of borrowing ecology’s “Interspecific Interactions” framework to enhance workplace interactions. Peter Stevens sheds light on ten agile contract models, evaluating their alignment with operational agility. Further, Alexey Krivitsky and Roland Flemm provide insights on transitioning from Component Teams to more flexible organizational designs, drawing from James Shore’s talk. Lastly, we uncover the detrimental Scrum anti-patterns across planning, communication, and quality adherence that often lead to underperformance in Scrum teams.

Then, Bandan Jot Singh’s critical take on the global ‘Marty Cagan’ization’ in the product domain urges a balanced evaluation of its impact on product professionals. Scott Belsky explores AI’s potential to disrupt business models, hinting at a meritocratic shift in creative fields yet posing questions on brand perception. Lenny Rachitsky delves into a discussion with Eric Ries on the Lean Startup methodology, while Michael H. Goitein highlights the perilous ‘Product Gap’ in organizational transformations, drawing a vivid analogy to point at the dangers of assigning critical Product roles to the inexperienced.

Lastly, Paulo Caroli illuminates the ‘Design Ahead’ technique to synchronize design and development phases. Moreover, Kyle Byrd explores the subtle effects of OKRs on strategic choices, delving into the dichotomy of causal and effectual reasoning. Also, Aatir Abdul Rauf introduces an efficient method for PMs to harness AI tools to sift through customer feedback, refine product strategies, and gauge competitive standing. Conversely, Steven Sinofsky critiques the President’s Executive Order on AI as an impulsive move, potentially thwarting innovation while bypassing democratic scrutiny and lacking accountability and transparency.

🗞️ Exclusively on my New Substack: Product Owner Anti-Patterns — An Excerpt from the Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide (2).

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🏆 Tip of the Week

🎙 In this podcast, Lenny Rachitsky interviews Bill Carr. They clarify Amazon’s ‘working backward’ approach, the essence of ‘single-threaded leaders,’ and how to foster a culture of risk-taking and innovation: "Unpacking Amazon’s unique ways of working."

🍋 Lemon of the Week

gitconnected: In this week’s Lemon, Sam Haynes misinterprets Scrum’s flexible framework while overly praising Kanban’s alignment with Lean principles. His narrow view overlooks Scrum’s adaptability and underestimates its potential for cross-functional collaboration and continuous improvement in agile environments: "Ditch Scrum and Switch to Kanban: Why Kanban is the Superior Agile Methodology."

➿ Agile & Scrum

• Viktor Cessan discusses the untapped potential in improving workplace interactions for enhanced performance, citing various methodologies. He suggests learning from ecology’s “Interspecific Interactions” framework to observe better and evaluate interactions in organizational settings: "Enhancing Organizational Performance with Ecological Models."

• Peter Stevens evaluates ten common contract models for agile product development, categorizing them from “Not Agile/Fake Agile” to well-aligned with operational agility, highlighting the merits and drawbacks of each: "Ten Agile Contracts Infographic."

• Alexey Krivitsky and Roland Flemm analyze James Shore’s talk on transitioning from Component Teams to Team Topologies to a FaST Agile ecosystem, emphasizing the pitfalls of component-focused teams and the merits of stream-aligned and flexible organizational designs: "Case Study: from Component Teams to Team Topologies to FaST Agile."

🎓 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 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.

🎯 Product

• Bandan Jot Singh critiques the widespread influence of Marty Cagan’s methodologies—termed ‘Marty Cagan’ization’—on the global product domain, acknowledging its clarity but also urging a mindful appraisal of its costs on product managers and leaders: "The dark side of Marty Cagan'ization."

• Scott Belsky discusses the unconventional ways AI might alter business models, from challenging time-based billing to shaking the core and periphery model in entertainment, suggesting AI’s potential to bring meritocracy to creative fields while questioning its impact on brand perception in purchase decisions: "Strange Ways AI Disrupts Business Models, What’s Next For Creativity & Marketing, Some Provocative Data."

• 🎙 Lenny Rachitsky interviews Eric Ries on Lean Startup methodology, MVPs, handling uncertainty with AI, structuring companies around core values, and his current project: the Long-Term Stock Exchange: "Reflections on a movement."

• Medium: Michael Goitein discusses the ‘Product Gap’ in organizational transformations, highlighting the peril of assigning inexperienced individuals to critical Product roles, likening it to a receptionist suddenly tasked with doctor duties: "How ‘The Product Gap’ Has Already Doomed Your Transformation To Failure."

🛠 Concepts, Tools & Measuring

• Paulo Caroli sheds light on the ‘Design Ahead’ approach, aimed at aligning design and development timelines by enabling a thorough design phase before development, beneficial in complex or iterative projects, and noting its limitations in highly agile or resource-constrained environments: "Design Ahead: Harmonizing Design and Development Timelines for Optimal Results."

• UX Collective: Kyle Byrd delves into the nuanced impact of OKRs on strategic decision-making, exploring the balance between causal rationality and effectual reasoning and highlighting potential pitfalls like goal-induced blindness and distorted incentives: "Are OKRs improving or inhibiting decision-making?"

• Aatir Abdul Rauf shares a method for PMs to utilize AI tools, specifically Browse AI and Claude, to efficiently analyze customer feedback from review sites like G2, streamlining the gathering of insights to improve product offerings and compare with competitors: "How PMs can use AI tools to analyze customer feedback."

🎶 Encore

• Steven Sinofsky critiques the President’s Executive Order on AI as a premature, pessimistic political move, arguing it circumvents democratic processes and might stifle innovation while lacking the accountability and transparency inherent in legislative actions: "Regulating AI by Executive Order is the Real AI Risk."

📅 Training Classes, Meetups & Events

Upcoming classes and events:

• 🖥 🇩🇪 November 21-24 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German)
• 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 November 21 — Meetup Hands-on Agile 56: The Big Product Picture — Creating Value through Alignment (Free; English)
• 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 November 28 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills Training (PSFS; English)
• 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 December 6 — Meetup Hands-on Agile #57: Humble Planning: How To Make Your Plans Suck Less w/ Maarten Dalmijn (Free; 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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