Food for Agile Thought #453: Product Management Organizations, Improving ProductOps, Revenue Estimations, Quo Vadis Agile?

Welcome to the 453rd edition of the ‘Food for Agile Thought’ newsletter, shared with 42,652 peers.

This week, we feature insights from Melissa Perri, who provides a framework for robust product management focusing on alignment, efficiency, and continuous improvement. Stefan Lindegaard warns about Organizational Debt Syndrome and the need for proactive leadership to maintain agility, and Jennifer Riggins reveals a study highlighting developers’ lost productivity due to management inefficiencies, stressing better communication. Also, Evan Leybourn discusses the future of Agile, shifting from anecdotes to data-driven insights. At the same time, Terry Danylak shares strategies to move from firefighting to proactive management, enhancing productivity and workplace health.

Then, Itamar Gilad critiques the “user-needs-first” approach, advocating for a flexible strategy that aligns ideas with company goals for high-impact products. John Cutler suggests that percentage allocations obscure priorities and advocates prioritizing based on value and urgency, and Jon Odo provides five tips for trimming Product Backlogs, emphasizing removing outdated and unclear items to boost team efficiency. Moreover, Zach Dunn highlights the pitfalls of overestimating revenue from sales feedback and offers strategies to avoid these mistakes when prioritizing features.

Lastly, Johanna Rothman advocates for continual planning over quarterly planning to help agile teams adapt and deliver maximum value. Jenny Wanger introduces a product operations tool using process maps to diagnose inefficiencies and improve workflows, and Chris Matts explains Karl Weick’s Sensemaking framework for better organizational dynamics and collaboration. Jurgen Appelo presents 32 key concepts from systems thinking and complexity theory, highlighting their importance in Lean and Agile approaches. Finally, Rory Sutherland discusses marketing and behavioral science with Lenny Rachitsky, focusing on the role of psychology, product success paradoxes, and the pitfalls of metrics-driven workplaces.

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🎓 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 for sign-up until September 8, 2024!

🏆 Tip of the Week

Melissa Perri shares a comprehensive framework for building robust product management organizations. The framework focuses on organizational design, strategy, operations, and culture to ensure alignment, efficiency, continuous improvement, and high-value products to customers and stakeholders: "Building a Great Product Management Organization."

🍋 Lemon of the Week

Medium: Prateek Singh claims Agile needs to ditch Scrum, likening it to Apple discontinuing the iPod. He suggests that true agility means abandoning the tried-and-true, ignoring that Scrum’s foundational principles remain relevant even amidst modern advancements. There is no iPhone equivalent in “Agile:” "Killing the iPod (and Scrum)."

➿ Agile & Scrum

• Stefan Lindegaard highlights the dangers of Organizational Debt Syndrome, emphasizing the need for proactive leadership to identify and address accumulated shortcuts in culture and practices to maintain agility and competitiveness, not to mention the people: "Organizational Debt Syndrome Poses a Threat."

• The New Stack: Jennifer Riggins discusses a study revealing that developers lose one day a week to inefficiencies due to management’s lack of understanding, highlighting the need for better communication and targeted improvements to boost productivity and satisfaction: "Why Do Developers Lose 1 Day a Week to Inefficiencies?"

• 🎙 Agile Uprising: Evan Leybourn from the Business Agility Institute discusses the future of Agile, sharing insights on industry trends and potential directions, moving from anecdotal evidence to more concrete data: "Where is Agile going with Evan Leybourn, Business Agility Institute."

• Terry Danylak offers strategies for transitioning from constant firefighting to proactive management by implementing strategic systems, tactical tools, and cultural conventions. This will ultimately enhance productivity and foster a healthier work environment: "How To Stop Constantly Fighting Fires At Work."

🎓 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 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

• Itamar Gilad highlights the limitations of the “user-needs-first” approach, advocating for a more flexible product development strategy that prioritizes ideas against company goals to create high-impact products: "You’re Not Just Solving User Problems."

• John Cutler critiques using percentage allocations for strategy deployment, suggesting they obscure true priorities and expected outcomes. He advocates prioritizing based on value and urgency, treating allocations as hypotheses rather than strict guidelines: "How to Reconcile Prioritization and $/Time Allocation."

• Jon Odo shares five tips for trimming your Product Backlog, emphasizing focus and clarity by removing outdated, non-immediate, and unclear items, ultimately enhancing team efficiency and product success: "Honey, I Shrunk the Backlog."

• Rally: Zach Dunn warns product teams about overestimating revenue based on sales feedback, highlighting four common pitfalls when prioritizing features by business value, and offers strategies to avoid these mistakes: "Why product teams overestimate revenue from sales feedback."

🛠 Concepts, Tools & Measuring

• Johanna Rothman suggests replacing quarterly planning with continual planning, enabling agile teams to adapt to changes and deliver maximum value through small, frequent deliverables and rolling wave replanning: "Think Big, Plan Small: How to Use Continual Planning."

• Jenny Wanger introduces an all-in-one product operations tool that uses process maps to diagnose, visualize, and prototype changes. This tool helps teams identify inefficiencies, improve workflows, and gain buy-in for future improvements: "My all-in-one product operations process improvement tool."

• Chris Matts explains Karl Weick’s Sensemaking framework, emphasizing its importance in understanding organizational dynamics and fostering shared meaning, which enhances collaboration and navigates change effectively: "Sensemaking and Nonsensemaking."

• Jurgen Appelo offers a synthesized overview of 32 key concepts from systems thinking and complexity theory. It emphasizes their foundational role in modern organizational approaches like Lean and Agile, using AI to blend insights from various discourse sources: "32 Key Concepts in Systems Thinking and Complexity Theory."

🎶 Encore

• 🎙 Rory Sutherland discusses marketing and behavioral science with Lenny Rachitsky, emphasizing psychology over logic, the paradox of product success, the value of fame and timing, and the pitfalls of metrics-driven workplaces: "What most people miss about marketing | Rory Sutherland (Vice Chairman of Ogilvy UK, author)."

📅 Training Classes, Meetups & Events

Upcoming classes and events:

• 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 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 1-2 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German)
• 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Oct 9 — Live Virtual Meetup: Hands-on Agile 65: The Lean Tech Manifesto with Fabrice Bernhard (English)
• 🖥 🇬🇧 Oct 15-16 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Master - Advanced Training (PSM II; English)

See all upcoming classes here.

📺 Youtube Channel

• David Pereira: From Backlog Manager to Product Manager.

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