Food for Agile Thought #455: Creative Destruction Canvas, Identifying Digital Products, Descaling for Fun and Profit, Perfectionism?

Welcome to the 455th edition of the ‘Food for Agile Thought’ newsletter, shared with 42,701 peers. I am Stefan Wolpers, and I offer actionable advice to agile professionals.

This week, Jeff Patton explores how identifying digital products is crucial for adopting a product operating model, while Esther Derby, Diana Larsen, and David Horowitz discuss updates in their second edition of Agile Retrospectives. Barry Overeem addresses Agile Coach burnout and the importance of creating supportive environments, and Henry E. Pozzetta examines the impact of cognitive biases on Agile, offering strategies to mitigate them. Also, Shane Gibson and Murray Robinson interview Arnold Stroobach about the Buurtzorg model, showcasing the success of small, self-managed teams in delivering high-quality, cost-effective care.

Next, Janna Bastow and Leah Tharin discuss the evolving role of product managers in the age of AI, stressing that AI should enhance rather than replace human judgment. Todd Lankford offers a three-step guide to building effective product teams by fostering ownership and adaptability, and Alexandre Serrurier shares his experiences at ManoMano, highlighting the critical role of ProductOps in optimizing product environments with strong leadership and structured initiatives. Moreover, Marty Cagan clarifies that adopting a product model doesn’t require reorganization; organizational design should align with business strategy and product vision.

Lastly, Philipp Pelka and Johannes Schartau introduce the Creative Destruction Canvas, a tool to help teams trim bloated products by removing unnecessary features. Aakash Gupta delivers a comprehensive analysis of the product analytics market, emphasizing its importance in product management, and Gregor Ojstersek and Jordan Cutler discuss the detrimental effects of perfectionism on engineering productivity, advocating for progress over perfection. Then, dynomight7 explores why advice often fails, offering strategies to enhance its effectiveness through simplicity and practicality, and, finally, Pavel Samsonov examines Nike’s costly reliance on easily gathered data, stressing the importance of qualitative insights in product strategy.

👉 Could you do me a favor and forward this email to someone who will enjoy it? Thank you! 🙏

🎓 Launch on October 23: Learn How to Master the Most Important Artifact in the Advanced Product Backlog Management Course!

👉 Please note:

• The course includes membership in the brand-new Hands-on Agile community of my professional students.
• The course will only be available for sign-up until October 31, 2024!

🏆 Tip of the Week

Jeff Patton delves into identifying digital products as the first step in adopting a product operating model. He explains using a simple product decomposition model to organize teams around digital products for effective software development: "Identifying your org’s digital products."

🍋 Lemon of the Week

The author claims that Scrum is a tool for corporate control rather than Agile empowerment, overlooking the true potential of Scrum when implemented correctly. His solution? Engineers need to own companies to escape the horrors of micro-management! Seriously? "Scrum is the Symptom, not the Problem."

➿ Agile & Scrum

• 📺 Diana Larsen, Esther Derby, and David Horowitz discuss updates in the second edition of ‘Agile Retrospectives,’ sharing new insights, practices, and real-life stories to enhance team learning and improvement: "What’s New in the 2nd Edition of Agile Retrospectives."

• The Liberators: Barry Overeem reflects on Agile Coach burnout, highlighting their struggles with lack of mandate and respect, and suggests using Liberating Structures to foster supportive and impactful environments for better team collaboration and decision-making: "Are Agile Coaches Burning Out?"

• 🎙 Shane Gibson and Murray Robinson talk with Arnold Stroobach about the Buurtzorg model, where small, self-managed teams deliver decentralized, high-quality, cost-effective home care, illustrating the potential for wider organizational efficiency and effectiveness: "The Buurtzorg Model with Arnold Stroobach."

• Henry Pozzetta highlights the challenges Agile faces due to cognitive biases and offers solutions like promoting risk awareness, fostering experimentation, and embracing diverse perspectives to enhance team decision-making and innovation: "Agility Shares an Expected Utility Problem. Here's a Solution."

🎓 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 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

• 📺 Leah Tharin and Janna Bastow discuss the role of product managers in the age of AI, emphasizing that AI should assist, not replace, human judgment. She highlights the importance of product road mapping, stakeholder alignment, and understanding revenue connections: "The challenges and opportunities AI brings to Product Management."

• Silicon Valley Product Group: Marty Cagan explains that adopting a product model doesn’t necessitate reorganization. Organizational design should align with business strategy and product vision, leveraging either the GM or Functional model based on specific needs: "The Product Model and Org Design."

• Mind The Product: Alexandre Serrurier shares insights from his experience at ManoMano on the crucial role of ProductOps in optimizing product environments, emphasizing the importance of leadership support, structured community initiatives, and resilient implementation: "Product ops is the fuel of your product environment’s health."

• Medium: Todd Lankford shares a three-step guide for building powerful product teams: removing boundaries and governance, fostering end-to-end ownership, creating safety, and cultivating adaptability for better outcomes: "How I Build Powerful Product Teams Without Boundaries and Governance."

🛠 Concepts, Tools & Measuring

• Holisticon: Philipp Pelka and Johannes Schartau introduce the Creative Destruction Canvas, a tool to help teams reflect on and remove product functionalities effectively, addressing the common issue of bloated products due to our tendency to add features rather than remove them: "Discover the Power of Creative Destruction."

• Aakash Gupta provides an in-depth analysis of the product analytics market, including interviews with leaders, a market map, and insights into top tools, emphasizing their critical role in product management: "The Product Analytics Market: Overview and Deep Dive."

• dynomight: The author examines why advice often fails, suggesting reasons like incomplete understanding, lack of willpower, and cognitive biases while offering insights into improving advice effectiveness by focusing on simplicity and practicality: "Why doesn't advice work?"

• Gregor Ojstersek and Jordan Cutler share their personal experiences of how perfectionism hampers productivity in the engineering industry. They emphasize the importance of progress over perfection for better mental health and efficiency: "Perfectionism - one of the biggest productivity killers in the engineering industry."

🎶 Encore

• UX Collective: Pavel Samsonov highlights Nike’s $25B mistake, showing the pitfalls of relying solely on easy-to-gather data for decisions, and underscores the need for qualitative insights and human judgment in product and UX strategy: "Nike’s $25B blunder shows us the limits of ‘data-driven.’"

📅 Training Classes, Meetups & Events

Upcoming classes and events:

• 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Aug 20-21 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Master - Advanced Training (PSM II; English)
• 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 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.

Don’t Miss Out: Join the 20,000-plus Strong ‘Hands-on Agile’ Slack Community

I invite you to join the Hands-on Agile Slack team and enjoy the benefits of a fast-growing, vibrant community of agile practitioners from around the world.

If you want to join now, you must provide your credentials via this Google form, and I will sign you up. By the way, it’s free.

How Would You Rate this Issue?

Just click one of the following links and maybe even leave a comment:

• 😍 You made my day!
• 😐 Okayish
• 😞 You can do better!

If you like the newsletter, please forward it to a friend or colleague—it would mean a lot to me! 🙏

Last but not least, if you are a first-time reader of this newsletter, click here to subscribe and join 42,701 peers.

Best,