Food for Agile Thought #428: Why Agile Fails, Product Management Theater, Decision Velocity, Deadlines

Welcome to the 428th edition of the ‘Food for Agile Thought’ newsletter, shared with 42,147 peers.

This week, Adam Yuret delves into how traditional power structures resist Agile’s transparency and autonomy. Ant Murphy emphasizes the importance of decision velocity for innovation and adaptability, and Derek Jones discusses the shift from Waterfall to Agile, highlighting the need for adaptability in management. Wes Kao offers strategies for effectively discussing deadlines, focusing on intellectual honesty and trust. Lastly, John Cutler advises cautiously sharing complex topics to avoid workplace tension and advocates for a Trojan Horse approach to implementing change. Also, we delve into Agile Laws: From Conway to Goodhart to Parkinson to Occam’s Razor.

Then, Marty Cagan highlights the critical need for Product Owners and Managers to move beyond mere “product management theater,” emphasizing genuine contributions. Itamar Gilad advocates for evidence-guided decision-making, cautioning against the automatic acceptance of customer feedback, and Daria Beliakova examines the product management trends of 2024, including hyper-personalization and the challenge of subscription fatigue. Moreover, Lenny Rachitsky presents insights from Geoffrey Moore on navigating the market’s chasm from early adopters to mainstream success, detailing strategic go-to-market playbooks for disruptive technologies.

Lastly, Matt O’Connell delves into Opportunity Solution Tree (OST) patterns to improve team collaboration and problem-solving without specialized tools. Willem-Jan Ageling critiques organizational silos, advocating for trust and cooperation to achieve unified success, and Nick Brown discusses advancing beyond traditional predictability measures in agile teams with Process Behavior Charts at ASOS Tech, offering a more objective assessment of team performance. Finally, Steven Sinofsky shares a personal narrative on how the launch of the Apple Macintosh in 1984 revolutionized his approach to computing, emphasizing its ease of use and transformative impact.

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🏆 Tip of the Week

Adam Yuret discusses Agile’s challenges within traditional power structures, highlighting that executive resistance to transparency, autonomy, and strategic clarity often undermines its effectiveness in enterprise settings: "Why Agile doesn't work."

🍋 Lemon of the Week

We do not have a lemon this week.

➿ Agile & Scrum

• Ant Murphy highlights the critical impact of decision velocity on a company’s ability to innovate and adapt, contrasting fast-moving organizations with those hampered by decision drag and emphasizing the importance of making swift, high-quality decisions to maintain competitive advantage: "Decision Velocity & Drag."

• Derek Jones explores the transition from Waterfall to Agile practices, emphasizing how Agile’s focus on rapidly evolving requirements challenges traditional management structures and power dynamics within organizations: "Agile and Waterfall as community norms: ‘No manager is going to support switching to a development approach that makes them redundant.’"

• Wes Kao explores the awkwardness and strategies for discussing deadlines in the workplace, emphasizing the importance of intellectual honesty, the role of trust, and practical frameworks for direct reports and managers to communicate more effectively and compassionately about project timelines: "How to talk about deadlines at work."

• John Cutler discusses the delicate balance of sharing complex organizational topics from his newsletter, advising caution to avoid inadvertently causing workplace tension, and suggests a Trojan Horse approach for introducing change: "Important Reader PSA."

🎓 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Product Backlog Management Cohort Class of April 2-30, 2024

Discover the Product Owner success principles in this guaranteed 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 and its community with like-minded agile peers on April 2, April 16, and April 30, 2024, from 4-7 pm CEST. The class will be offered in English.

👉 Join now: 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Product Backlog Management Class of April 2-30, 2024.

🎯 Product

• Silicon Valley Product Group: Marty Cagan warns Product Owners and Product Managers of an impending reckoning as companies recognize the limitations of these roles, emphasizing the need for genuine contribution over “product management theater” and the superficiality of certain training and certifications: "Product Management Theater."

• Itamar Gilad explains that while customer feedback is crucial, not all requests should be acted upon without validation, challenging the notion that customers are always right with a call for evidence-guided decision-making in product management: "Your Customers Are Not Always Right."

• Hackernoon: Daria Beliakova outlines key product management trends in 2024, focusing on hyper-personalization, subscription fatigue, market saturation, cybersecurity, and balancing user needs with investor demands for building beloved products: "How to Build Products People Love in 2024 and Beyond."

• 🎙 Lenny Rachitsky features Geoffrey Moore discussing strategies for marketing disruptive technologies, emphasizing the critical transition from early adopters to mainstream customers, and outlining effective go-to-market playbooks for each stage of market adoption: "Geoffrey Moore on finding your beachhead, crossing the chasm, and dominating a market."

🛠 Concepts, Tools & Measuring

• VistalyApp: Matt O’Connell shares a collection of Opportunity Solution Tree (OST) patterns observed in teams’ workflows, offering strategies for segmenting user needs, managing backlogs, and enhancing team collaboration without requiring specific tools: "Opportunity Solution Tree (OST) Patterns."

• Willem-Jan Ageling criticizes organizational silos, advocating for collaboration and trust to replace isolated working environments, emphasizing that true success comes from unified objectives and shared efforts across the organization: "Trust and collaboration go a long way."

• Medium: Nick Brown explores measuring predictability in agile teams beyond traditional “say-do” ratios, using Process Behavior Charts to objectively assess variation and stability in ASOS Tech’s delivery processes: "Objectively measuring ‘predictability.’"

🎶 Encore

• Steven Sinofsky recalls the profound impact the Apple Macintosh’s launch in 1984 had on his college years and computing path, highlighting its revolutionary ease of use and empowering technology: "Hello. Happy Anniversary Macintosh!"

📯 Agile Laws: From Conway to Goodhart to Parkinson to Occam’s Razor

On many occasions, working with agile teams has amplified existing organizational, technical, and cultural challenges in many organizations. Starting to change always requires the acceptance that there is a problem that needs attention.

The following article addresses some of the most prevailing impediments to achieving agility by revisiting several agile laws that are particularly relevant to any team’s effectiveness in solving customer problems.

Learn more: Agile Laws: From Conway to Goodhart to Parkinson to Occam’s Razor.

📅 Training Classes, Meetups & Events

Upcoming classes and events:

• 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 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)
• 🖥 🇬🇧 Mar 26-27 — Live Virtual Class: Advanced Professional Scrum Master Training (PSM II; English)
• 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 April 2-30 — Live Virtual Cohort: Product Backlog Management Cohort (English)

See all upcoming classes here.

📺 Youtube Channel

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

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