Food for Agile Thought #450: Agile’s Trial, Disruption Is Overrated, Lifecycle of Goals, Pessimistic Product Thinking

Welcome to the 450th edition of the ‘Food for Agile Thought’ newsletter, shared with 42,573 peers.

This week, Sjoerd Nijland imagines a mock trial of Agile, highlighting criticisms of Scrum Masters and chaotic environments while defending Agile’s focus on flexibility and continuous improvement. John Cutler reflects on teams losing touch with progress, suggesting tracking key metrics to address challenges, and Tobias Mayer emphasizes Scrum Masters’ roles in organizational transformation, not just team management. Also, Maarten Dalmijn explores SAFe’s popularity over LeSS, attributing its success to its appeal to C-level executives and a non-rebellious narrative comforting traditional businesses, and we gain insights into David Pereira’s approach to turning backlog managers into product managers.

Next, Jason Cohen argues against the obsession with disruption, advocating for useful, desirable products and incremental improvements for sustainable success. April Dunford warns against “overly pessimistic product thinking,” urging teams to leverage product strengths for growth. Meanwhile, Eira Hayward discusses the challenges product managers face in organizations that lack understanding of product management, offering advice from industry leaders on overcoming resistance and implementing effective processes. Moreover, Casey Winters shares insights on scaling and product growth in a podcast, discussing fundamentals, product-market fit, and acquisition strategies from his tech industry experience.

Lastly, Itamar Gilad emphasizes managing the lifecycle of goals through phases of research, discovery, delivery, and monitoring to steer organizations toward outcomes, and Jeff Gothelf breaks down OKRs, stressing the importance of outcome-based key results. Joost Minnaar highlights Mainfreight’s budgetless management model, emphasizing decentralized action, transparency, and culture for success. Dan Pilat and Dr. Sekoul Krastev explain the planning fallacy and suggest strategies like AI, specific goals, and task segmentation to mitigate its effects. Finally, Marc Andreessen shares the journey from co-inventing the web browser to founding Netscape.

🎓 Launch on September 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 September 8, 2024, for sign-up!

🏆 Tip of the Week

Medium: Sjoerd Nijland imagines a mock trial of Agile, with critics targeting Scrum Masters and chaotic work environments. Defenders argue for Agile’s focus on flexibility, accountability, and continuous improvement, emphasizing its role in modern product management and adapting to dynamic environments: "Agile on Trial. The Case That’s Shaking the Tech World."

🍋 Lemon of the Week

We are Lemon-free this week.

➿ Agile & Scrum

• John Cutler reflects on how teams, like individuals, can lose touch with their progress over time. He suggests tracking key metrics and qualitative observations to effectively understand shifts and address challenges: "Staying In Touch."

• Tobias Mayer asserts that Scrum Masters are essential for organizational transformation, not for long-term team management, emphasizing their role in restructuring, reducing waste, and increasing autonomy within the organization: "Who needs scrum masters?"

• Maarten Dalmijn explores why SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework) is more popular than LeSS (Large Scale Scrum), likening it to the marketing failure of “Fight Club.” SAFe succeeds by appealing to C-level executives, avoiding rebellion against the status quo, and crafting a non-shocking, comforting narrative that traditional businesses embrace: "Why Isn't LeSS (Large Scale Scrum) More Popular?"

🎓 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Advanced Product Backlog Management Cohort Class of August 29-September 26, 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.

Additional bonuses:

1. You will become a member of an exclusive community of product professionals comprising participants from all my classes since 2019.
2. You will have free access to the corresponding online course; revisit all topics of the cohort at your convenience.

Quote: “If you are looking to move beyond merely delivering features and want to start consistently delivering outcomes and valuable deliverables to your customers, this course is essential. Stefan provides the focus and tools necessary to embark on a journey toward excellent product management. With a curriculum that includes vision, strategy, roadmap, product discovery, continuous delivery, idea management, hypothesis management, and backlog management, this course promises less than it delivers—a truly transformative experience.” (Hector Feliciano.)

Enjoy the benefits of an immersive cohort class and its community with like-minded agile peers on August 29, September 12, and September 26, 2024, from 3-6 pm CEST. The class will be offered in English.

👉 Join now: 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Product Backlog Management Class of August 29-September 26, 2024.

🎯 Product

• Jason Cohen argues against the obsession with disruption, advocating instead for creating useful, desirable products. He emphasizes that modest, incremental improvements often lead to sustainable success and personal fulfillment: "Not disruptive, and proud of it."

• Mind The Product: Eira Hayward discusses the challenges product managers face in organizations that don’t understand product management, sharing advice from industry leaders on overcoming resistance, gaining advocacy, and implementing effective product processes: "Successful product management in companies where it's least understood."

• April Dunford discusses “overly pessimistic product thinking,” where teams fixate on perceived deficits, undermining effective positioning and commercial success. She emphasizes recognizing and leveraging product strengths to drive growth and success: "Positioning and Pessimistic Product Thinking."

• 🎙 First Round Capital: In this podcast, Casey Winters shares insights on scaling and product growth. He discusses marketplace fundamentals, product-market fit, scaling strategies, and methods for acquiring demand and supply, drawing from his experience with leading tech companies: "How to build and scale winning marketplaces."

🛠 Concepts, Tools & Measuring

• Itamar Gilad emphasizes managing the lifecycle of goals—from definition to completion—through phases of research, discovery, delivery, and monitoring to effectively steer organizations toward business and user outcomes: "The Lifecycle of Goals: Research, Discover, Deliver, Monitor."

• 📺 YouTube: Jeff Gothelf explains OKRs (Objectives and Key Results), breaking down the process into Objectives and Key Results, emphasizing that key results must be outcomes, and providing a practical example: "What is an OKR?"

• Corporate Rebels: Joost Minnaar highlights Mainfreight’s budgetless management model, emphasizing decentralized action, transparency, and unique culture to achieve business success, proving rigid budgeting isn’t necessary for extraordinary results: "Budgetless Companies: The Case of Mainfreight."

• The Decision Lab: Dan Pilat and Dr. Sekoul Krastev explain the planning fallacy, which is our tendency to underestimate the time, costs, and risks for tasks. This leads to poor planning and systemic impacts, but they suggest strategies like using AI, setting specific goals, and segmenting tasks to mitigate it: "Planning fallacy."

🎶 Encore

• 📺 Marc Andreessen shares the origin of Mosaic and Netscape, highlighting the unexpected journey from a small-town background to co-inventing the web browser, navigating early internet challenges, and ultimately founding Netscape: "The true story -- as best I can remember -- of the origin of Mosaic and Netscape."

📅 Training Classes, Meetups & Events

Upcoming classes and events:

• 🖥 💯 🇩🇪 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)
• 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Aug 29-Sep 26 — Live Virtual Cohort: Advanced Product Backlog Management Cohort (English)
• 🖥 🇩🇪 Sep 3-6 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German)
• 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Sep 5 — Live Virtual Meetup: Hands-on Agile 64: Mastering Work Intake: The Key to Sustainability and Flow (English)
• 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Oct 9 — Live Virtual Meetup: Hands-on Agile 65: The Lean Tech Manifesto with Fabrice Bernhard (English)

See all upcoming classes here.

📺 Youtube Channel

• David Pereira: From Backlog Manager to Product Manager.

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