Food for Agile Thought #423: Ditching the Project Mindset, Who Rules Product, Thoughtful HIPPOs, Radical Candor

Welcome to the 423rd edition of the ‘Food for Agile Thought’ newsletter, shared with 49,908 peers. My name is Stefan Wolpers.

This week, Janna Bastow discusses evolving from a project to a product mindset, emphasizing user-centric development, and Annie Duke and Howard Marks explore decision-making in uncertainty. At the same time, John Cutler examines the value of top-down decision-making, and Martijn Oost critiques the “SpotiSAFe®” model’s harmful effect on transformations. Also, I highlight pitfalls in the Scrum Framework from my book, “Scrum Anti Patterns Guide.”

Then, Itamar Gilad advocates for evidence-based leadership in product development, critiquing Airbnb’s approach. Noah Desai Weiss of Slack reveals his bold overhaul of user experience, while Jeff Gothelf discusses the effectiveness of empowered product teams over output-driven feature teams. Stay SaaSy contributes practical tips to enhance team velocity, focusing on removing dependencies and streamlining project narratives.

Lastly, Kate Leto highlights the importance of conflict resolution and emotional intelligence in product development. Also, Kim Scott and Lenny Rachitsky explore Scott’s books “Radical Candor” and “Radical Respect,” focusing on leadership and feedback. Ben McRedmond discusses principles for increasing startup product velocity, and Chris Lewicki recounts a near-miss incident at NASA, emphasizing resilience and learning from mistakes. Finally, we unravel the secrets of what makes a Scrum Master not just good but amazingly outstanding. From regularly achieving Sprint Goals, delivering value to customers, and building stakeholder rapport easily, discover the traits that set apart successful Scrum Masters.

🎄 I wish you a joyous Christmas and a prosperous New Year! May this festive season bring happiness and peace to you and your loved ones. Happy Holidays! The next issue will be available on January 7, 2024.

📖 Preorder the Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide book now for delivery in January 2024!

PS: Did you miss the last issue? No worries, here we go: 422.

👉 Join 650-plus peers and help create the next edition of the Scrum Master Salary Report!

🏆 Tip of the Week

ProdPad: Janna Bastow elaborates on transitioning from a project to product mindset, focusing on evolving from mere task completion to strategic, insightful product development driven by user needs and market dynamics: "From Project to Product Mindset: How to Make The Change."

🎙 Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide

I discuss my brand-new book, the “Scrum Anti Patterns Guide,” exploring elements of the Scrum Framework and identifying common anti-patterns within each element on the Agile Coaching Round Table podcast: "‎The Podcast by Agile Coaching Round Table (ACRT): Anti-Patterns of Scrum with Stefan Wolpers."

➿ Agile & Scrum

• 🎙 Oaktree: The author Annie Duke, alongside Howard Marks, delves into luck, decision quality, and uncertainty, inspired by her book “Thinking in Bets” and Howard’s memo “You Bet!” in a compelling podcast: "Conversations – Special Episode with Annie Duke and Howard Marks."

• John Cutler highlights the often-underrated value of top-down decision-making in uncertain situations, using vacation analogies to illustrate the challenges and solutions in leadership dynamics: "The Thoughtful HIPPO."

• Medium: Martijn Oost criticizes the hybrid “SpotiSAFe®” model, a blend of the Spotify model and SAFe®, for its convoluted structure that fails to capture the strengths of either approach, leading to ineffectiveness and disillusionment in Agile Transformations: "Stop SpotiSAFe®: The havoc-wreaking bastard child of SAFe® and the Spotify model must be stopped."

🎓 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Product Backlog Management Cohort Class of Jan 23 to Feb 20, 2024

👉 Black Friday Deal — get one of five tickets 50% off with the code “PBM2024”: Product Backlog Management Class of Jan 23 to Feb 20, 2024.

Discover the Product Owner success principles in this engaging Product Backlog Management cohort class and accelerate your professional growth and career perspective with tried & tested, hands-on practices:

• Excel at delivering value regularly — your #1 career success factor.
• Learn to distinguish between valuable and useless ideas.
• Abandon the feature factory. Instead, learn to contribute to customer and organizational success.
• Gain actionable insights, learn supportive tools, and practice everything in a safe community of like-minded peers.
• Learn to say no and build trust and rapport with stakeholders while focusing on creating value.
• Create engaging feedback loops.

Enjoy the benefits of an immersive cohort class with like-minded agile peers on Jan 23, Feb 6, and Feb 20, 2024, from 4-6 pm CET. The class will be offered in English.

👉 Join now: Product Backlog Management Class of Jan 23 to Feb 20, 2024.

🎯 Product

• Itamar Gilad debates the optimal decision-making authority in product development, citing Airbnb’s controversial shift and advocating for balanced, evidence-based leadership over traditional top-down or discipline-centric approaches: "Who Should Rule the Product?"

• First Round Capital narrates how Slack’s CPO, Noah Desai Weiss, transformed the user experience by daring to overhaul it completely, illustrating his approach to bold, informed product decision-making: "How to take bigger, bolder product bets."

• Jeff Gothelf contrasts feature teams, driven by output and lacking autonomy, with empowered product teams, highlighting the latter’s effectiveness in solving problems and achieving outcomes. This approach requires humility and trust, often hindered by leadership ego: "Ego killed the empowered product team."

• Stay SaaSy offers practical strategies to enhance product and engineering team velocity, emphasizing the importance of eliminating dependencies, requiring clear project narratives, and improving deployment and incident metrics for increased efficiency: "Practical Ways To Increase Product Velocity."

🛠 Concepts, Tools & Measuring

• Kate Leto dispels the myth that conflict is essential for great product development, advocating for conflict resolution and emotional intelligence in teams to foster better outcomes: "Conflict is not the secret sauce to building a great product."

• 🎙 Kim Scott, acclaimed author of “Radical Candor,” and Lenny Rachitsky discuss her influential framework and upcoming book “Radical Respect,” exploring leadership, feedback strategies, and the balance between kindness and effectiveness: "Radical Candor: From Theory to Practice."

• Equals: Ben McRedmond shares eight principles for maintaining product velocity in startups: focus on momentum, customer closeness, design involvement, decision speed, task ownership, detailed planning, quality-speed balance, and capturing inspiration: "How to ship fast."

🎶 Encore

• Chris Lewicki recounts a harrowing experience at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where a testing error on the Spirit Mars Rover nearly resulted in a $500M failure, teaching valuable lessons about resilience and learning from mistakes: "My $500M Mars Rover Mistake: A Failure Story."

📅 Training Classes, Meetups & Events

Upcoming classes and events:

• 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 January 10 — Meetup Hands-on Agile #58: Dysfunction Mapping — A Tool for Creating Real Change w/ Michael Lloyd (Free; English)
• 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Jan 23-Feb 20 — Live Virtual Class: Product Backlog Management Cohort Class (English)
• 🖥 💯 🇩🇪 Jan 30-Feb 2 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German)
• 🖥 🇬🇧 Feb 6-9 — Live Virtual Class: Advanced Professional Scrum Master Training (PSM II; English)
• 🖥 🇬🇧 Feb 15 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills Training (PSFS; English)
• 🖥 🇩🇪 Mar 5-6 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German)
• 🖥 🇩🇪 Mar 12-152 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Master Training (PSM I; German)

See all upcoming classes here.

📺 Youtube Channel

• David Pereira: Overcoming Common Product Backlog Management Traps.

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Best,