Food for Agile Thought #426: Continuous Integration, More Features = More Problems, Rebuilding Trust

Welcome to the 426th edition of the ‘Food for Agile Thought’ newsletter, shared with 49,156 peers.

This week, we explore Martin Fowler’s essay, advocating for Continuous Integration for team efficiency, while Martijn Oost critiques quick Agile transformations, emphasizing a tailored approach. John Cutler discusses rebuilding trust in leadership, and Chris Corrigan explores organizational life cycles with the ‘two loops model.’ Lastly, we identify the signs of a Scrum Master’s journey nearing its end, reflecting on evolving organizational dynamics.

Then, Maarten Dalmijn delves into feature development, highlighting the actual value not in the features themselves but in the opportunities they create for users. Janna Bastow contrasts the complexities of overseeing multiple products in large enterprises with the more focused task of managing a single product. Additionally, Lenny Rachitsky and Dan Hockenmaier emphasize the significance of deciphering your business’s core dynamics using a fundamental equation that encapsulates inputs, desired outputs, and their interconnections.

Finally, Jason Cohen highlights the complexities of forecast evaluation using weather prediction examples, focusing on accuracy beyond just surface-level results. Benjamin Huser-Berta explains Monte Carlo Simulations’ role in forecasting and effective planning. Mads Soegaard and another article discuss the significance of user story mapping and Job Stories in product development, enhancing UX design and aligning with user perspectives. Lastly, Howard Tiersky advocates for agile adaptation in digital transformations to meet evolving technological and customer demands.

🎙 Thomas Cagley interviewed me for his podcast. "SPaMCAST 790 – It’s All About The People, A Conversation With Stefan Wolpers"

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

🏆 Tip of the Week

In this epic essay, Martin Fowler advocates for Continuous Integration, a development practice where team members frequently merge their work, minimizing integration challenges and enabling rapid feature enhancement: "Continuous Integration."

🍋 Lemon of the Week

Medium: In a somewhat comical misfire, this article on Scrum reads like a classic case of missing the mark. It turns Scrum’s nuanced approach into a clumsy shuffle, showcasing a striking blend of misunderstanding and oversimplification: "Scrum sucks.. Breaking news: Scrum is bad."

➿ Agile & Scrum

• Medium: Martijn Oost criticizes forced, rapid Agile transformations, advocating for a gradual, tailored approach. He emphasizes aligning people, structures, and content with business goals and advises against generic Agile models: "Stop Big Bang Agile Transformation!"

• John Cutler addresses how trust issues in leadership impact organizations. He suggests recognizing trust proxies, fostering open dialogues, redefining trust as tension, and focusing on successes to rebuild trust within teams effectively: "Rebuilding Trust and Breaking Free From Trust Proxies and The Swirl."

• Chris Corrigan shares insights on the ‘two loops model’ of change in living systems, a tool for leaders to navigate the complex dynamics of organizational life cycles and emerging systems: "The Two Loops Model of Change, Part 1."

🎓 🖥 🇬🇧 Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills Class w/ PSFS Certificate — February 15, 2024

The Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills (PSFS) training by Berlin Product People is a 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 a live-virtual immersive class with like-minded agile peers from 09:00 – 17:30 o’clock CET.

Learn more: 🖥 🇬🇧 Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills Class w/ PSFS Certificate — February 15, 2024.

Customer review: “Great experience – “You reap what you saw.” What I really liked about it was the constant usage of facilitation techniques & Liberating Structures to engage all participants & harness the collective knowledge while reaching the goal of the exercises during the workshop. Therefore, my experience was great because I could really leave with some insights from the whole group that I could apply in my daily work starting from the next day. “You reap what you saw” and in this case, it was the collective intelligence of everyone in the training class.” (Link.)

🎯 Product

• Maarten Dalmijn discusses the misconceptions around feature development, emphasizing that the actual value lies not in the features themselves but in the possibilities they unlock for users: "More Features, More Problems."

• ProdPad: Janna Bastow navigates enterprise product management, contrasting the vast responsibilities of leading multiple products with the focused role of managing one in large organizations: "Enterprise Product Management: How to Run Product in Large Organizations."

• Lenny Rachitsky and Dan Hockenmaier explain the importance of understanding your business through a fundamental equation that outlines inputs, desired outputs, and their relationship: "How to describe your business as an equation."

🛠 Concepts, Tools & Measuring

• Jason Cohen demystifies forecast evaluation, emphasizing that accuracy isn’t the sole criterion. He explores the mathematics of probabilities, using examples like weather prediction to illustrate the complexity of assessing forecast accuracy beyond surface-level outcomes: "How to measure the accuracy of forecasts."

• Medium: Benjamin Huser-Berta’s guide delved into Monte Carlo Simulations in forecasting. It explains using randomness for results, focusing on Throughput, and interpreting outcomes. The guide emphasizes the method’s usefulness in effective planning and decision-making processes: "An Introduction and Step-by-Step Guide to Monte Carlo Simulations."

• InteractionDesignOrg: Mads Soegaard illustrates user story mapping as a vital method for product teams to align their development with the user’s perspective, enhancing UX design and efficiency: "User Story Mapping in Design."

• JTBD Toolkit: This article revisits the concept of Job Stories in the Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) framework, clarifying their application and differentiating them from user stories and personas: "Job Stories Revisited."

🎶 Encore

• Howard Tiersky advocates for organizational agility in digital transformation, stressing swift adaptation to technological changes and evolving customer expectations for success: "Creating Organizational Agility."

📯 Sunsetting Scrum Masters

In this article, I uncover indicators that a Scrum Master’s or Agile Coach’s journey is coming to a close; they are sunsetting Scrum Masters.

These indicators include, for example, management’s deviation from first principles, reduced support for your change initiatives, an emerging preference for short-term fixes over long-term agile strategies, a shift back to top-down control, decreased communication involvement, or exclusion from management discussions.

Consequently, recognizing and addressing these signs is critical to maintaining integrity and effectiveness. Finally, please do not fool yourself; sometimes, it is also time to move on.

Learn more: Sunsetting Scrum Masters.

📅 Training Classes, Meetups & Events

Upcoming classes and events:

• 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 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 — Live Virtual Meetup: “Agile” Does Not Work for You? Tackling Fake Agility w/ Johanna Rothman (English)
• 🖥 🇩🇪 Mar 5-6 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German)
• 🖥 🇩🇪 Mar 12-15 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Master Training (PSM I; German)

See all upcoming classes here.

📺 Youtube Channel

• Maarten Dalmijn: Humble Planning Humble Planning: How To Make Your Plans Suck Less.

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