Food for Agile Thought #447: Effective Product Teams, Coaching Mastery, Fixing the Double Diamond, Athletic Agile

Welcome to the 447th edition of the ‘Food for Agile Thought’ newsletter, shared with 42,561 peers.

This week, John Cutler explores how effective product teams prioritize customer interactions, data-driven decisions, and collaboration over estimations and internal requests. Shreyas Doshi clarifies that mastery-level coaching focuses on self-awareness and transformative leadership, and Sjoerd Nijland shares strategies for transforming teams through self-management and accountability. Also, Francis Laleman examines the crucial Scrum values that build trust and support empirical pillars, and Ari Tikka emphasizes creating a culture of Trust, Care, and Love for team success and psychological safety in diverse environments.

Next, Arne Kittler underscores the necessity of clarity for product managers, offering practical steps for vision, strategy, and priority alignment. At the same time, Lenny Rachitsky presents 27 examples of using the AI-powered search engine Perplexity to enhance growth strategies and market research, and Roman Pichler details a four-step process for adopting outcome-based product roadmaps. Moreover, Janna Bastow highlights the importance of feedback analysis and AI tools for transforming user interactions into strategic insights.

Lastly, Paweł Huryn critiques the Double Diamond of Design Thinking, suggesting a more flexible, iterative approach that separates discovery from delivery. Ivar Jacobson explores the evolution of use cases in Agile practices, emphasizing their complementarity with user stories, and Emily Webber introduces a framework for maintaining team memory and fostering connections in hybrid organizations through intentional communication. Finally, Gareth Edwards chronicles Don Estridge’s transformative journey in building the IBM PC, showcasing his rebellious approach that defied corporate norms.

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🏆 Tip of the Week

John Cutler explores how effective product teams optimize their time, emphasizing direct customer interactions, data-driven decision-making, and internal collaboration while reducing focus on estimations, internal feature requests, and dependency management: "Where More Effective Product Teams Spend More (and Less) Time."

🍋 Lemon of the Week

We are Lemon-free this week.

📢 Shoutout to the Community: 2024 Bad Ass Coaching Day

Check out Bob Galen’s 2024 Badass Agile Coaching Day, September 17-19, 2024:

“And this year, we’re honoring all women coaches in our agile community by solely inviting their voices to the event. We have three incredible women hosting each regional event, and they’ll be crafting a powerful program with incredible women in Agile. We will have twelve; count them TWELVE, world-class, incredibly experienced, and BadAss coaches presenting various topics for your learning pleasure. Please review the three agendas below.”

👉 Tickets are $35 plus a donation of your choice, and the expected high surplus will provide funds to two incredibly worthwhile causes that support women within in agile community—Women in Agile and African Agility: Get Your Ticket Now!

➿ Agile & Scrum

• 📺 YouTube: Shreyas Doshi discusses the misconception that coaching is merely about giving instructions, feedback, or selflessly aiding others. Mastery-level coaching focuses on helping individuals understand themselves, using observations and questions to foster self-awareness and transformative leadership: "How to Get to Coaching Mastery — a 16 minute masterclass with principles & examples."

• Medium: Sjoerd Nijland discusses transforming teams from “whimsical” to “athletic” Agile by fostering self-management, accountability, and a coaching mentality rather than relying on maturity models that treat professionals like children: "From Whimsical to Athletic Agile."

• Medium: Francis Laleman examines the five Scrum values—commitment, Focus, Openness, Respect, and Courage—highlighting their essential role in fostering trust and supporting Scrum's empirical pillars: "About the Scrum Values. (like five jars watering a garden)."

• Gosei: Ari Tikka emphasizes building a culture of Trust, Care, and Love in teams, highlighting essential patterns and effective leadership to foster psychological safety, collaboration, and success in remote and co-located environments: "Trust, Care, and Love."

🎓 Launch on July 1, 2024: Learn How to Master the Most Important Artifact in the Advanced Product Backlog Management Course!

👉 Please note:

• The course includes membership in a new community of agile professionals.
• The course will only be available until July 8, 2024, for sign-up!

🎯 Product

• Arne Kittler emphasizes the importance of clarity for product managers, discussing directional clarity and providing practical steps to ensure clear vision, strategy, and priorities in collaborative work: "Clarity for Product Managers: Part 1, Directional Clarity."

• Lenny Rachitsky shares 27 examples of how product managers use the AI-powered search engine Perplexity to craft growth strategies, conduct market research, and learn best practices: "How to use Perplexity in your PM work "

• ProdPad: Janna Bastow discusses how effective feedback analysis can transform user interactions into valuable insights for improving product strategy, emphasizing AI tools for faster, more effective data interpretation: "Feedback Analysis: How to Extract Insights to Fuel Your Product Strategy."

• Roman Pichler outlines a four-step process for transitioning to outcome-based product roadmaps. This process focuses on setting measurable goals, aligning features to outcomes, reviewing progress, and building a comprehensive roadmap: "How to Get Started with Outcome-Based Product Roadmaps."

🛠 Concepts, Tools & Measuring

• Pawel Huryn critiques the Double Diamond of Design Thinking, advocating for a more iterative, flexible approach that separates product discovery from delivery and ensures validated ideas before development: "How to Fix the Double Diamond of Design Thinking?"

• Emily Webber presents a framework for maintaining team memory, fostering connections, and creating serendipitous opportunities in hybrid organizations, emphasizing intentional communication and inclusive information-sharing practices: "A framework for thinking about team memory, joining up and serendipity in hybrid organisations."

• 🎙 InfoQ: Ivar Jacobson discusses the evolution of use cases in modern software engineering, highlighting their role in Agile practices and iterative development and how they complement user stories by addressing different levels of granularity: "The Evolution of Use Cases in Modern Software Engineering."

🎶 Encore

• Every: Gareth Edwards chronicles Don Estridge’s journey in building the IBM PC, highlighting his rebellious approach, which defied IBM’s rules. He ultimately transformed personal computing but faced corporate backlash: "The Misfit Who Built the IBM PC."

📯 The Meta-Retrospective — Check Out the Free Miroverse Template

The Meta-Retrospective is an excellent exercise to foster collaboration within the extended team, create a shared understanding of the big picture, and immediately create valuable action items. It comprises team members of one or several product teams—or a representative from those—and stakeholders. Participants from the stakeholder side are people from the business as well as customers. Meta-retrospectives are useful both as a regular event, say once a quarter, or after achieving a particular milestone, for example, a specific release of the product.

Read more on how to organize such a Meta-Retrospective and do not forget to check out the free Miro Meta-Retrospective template.

Learn more: The Meta-Retrospective — How to Bring Stakeholders Onboard.

📅 Training Classes, Meetups & Events

Upcoming classes and events:

• 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 June 25 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills Training (PSFS; English)
• 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 July 3 — Live Virtual Meetup: Hands-on Agile 63: The Anti-Patterns Canvas — A Tool Session (1) (English)
• 🖥 💯 🇩🇪 Jul 9-10 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German)
• 🖥 🇬🇧 Aug 20-21 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Master - Advanced Training (PSM II; English)
• 🖥 🇩🇪 Aug 27-28 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Master Training (PSM I; German)
• 🖥 🇩🇪 Sep 3-6 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German)

See all upcoming classes here.

📺 Youtube Channel

• Fortune Buchholtz: Toyota Kata Coaching for Agile Teams & Transformations.

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