Food for Agile Thought #462: Enabling Agility in Large Organizations, Product Team Topologies, Feature Parity, Requirements?

Welcome to the 462nd edition of the ‘Food for Agile Thought’ newsletter, shared with 42,839 peers. I am Stefan Wolpers, offering hands-on, actionable advice to agile professionals.

This week, Nick van der Meulen explores how large organizations can achieve agility like startups by empowering teams through four decision rights guardrails. Itamar Gilad examines decision-making challenges, advocating for decentralization and context-sharing, while Petra Wille and Elias Lieberich offer strategies for optimizing team topologies to enhance flow and productivity. Also, Willem-Jan Ageling highlights how organizational culture often undermines the autonomy promised by Agile principles, and Pim de Morree discusses how self-managing organizations, functioning as dynamic networks, drive innovation and adaptability.

Next, Marcus Castenfors warns against giving too much autonomy too soon during product transformations, highlighting the need for clear leadership and team competence. Maarten Dalmijn challenges the traditional view of requirements, emphasizing the need to anchor them in actual needs, and Saeed Khan advises against chasing feature parity with competitors, advocating instead for market-driven, value-differentiated product strategies. Moreover, Afonso Franco calls for viewing cross-functional teams as a unified discipline, focusing on collective jobs-to-be-done to enhance collaboration and reduce siloed thinking.

Lastly, Doc Norton shares his take on Opportunity Solution Trees, emphasizing collaborative problem-solving and iterative experimentation for achieving outcomes. Wes Kao offers practical advice on delivering bad news effectively, focusing on clarity, avoiding blame, and maintaining agency. Additionally, Melissa Perri explores the role of Product Ops, addressing key pillars, scaling, and the skills essential for a CPO, and Tobi Lütke, CEO of Shopify, shares insights on his journey from coder to tech leader, discussing cultural contrasts, coding, and retail’s future with VR and AI. Finally, IDEO highlights the potential of integrating AI with Design Thinking to enhance creativity and user-centric innovation.

📯 David Pereira published a new, free Miroverse template; check out Product Experiment Results!

👉 Join the Free HoA25 on Feb 4-6: Hands-on Agile 2025 Is Here: From Concept-Based to Context-Based Agility. (Check out the article below.) 👈

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🎓 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 my professional students' brand-new Hands-on Agile community.
• The course will only be available for sign-up until October 31, 2024!

🏆 Tip of the Week

MIT Sloan Management Review: Nick van der Meulen discusses how large organizations can achieve agility comparable to startups by empowering teams through four decision rights guardrails: aligning actions with purpose, democratizing access to data, simplifying policies, and providing dynamic resource allocation. These guardrails enable faster decision-making while maintaining strategic alignment and reducing risk: "The Four Guardrails That Enable Agility."

🍋 Lemon of the Week

We are Lemon-free this week.

➿ Agile & Leadership

• Itamar Gilad discusses how organizations struggle with decision-making, emphasizing the importance of differentiating decision types, decentralizing decision-making, and sharing context to improve decision speed and quality: "A Culture of Good Decision-Making (Part 1)."

• Mind The Product: Petra Wille and Elias Lieberich offer practical insights on implementing team topologies and share strategies for optimizing team structures for flow, alignment, and productivity in rapidly evolving organizations: "Optimizing teams: A dual perspective on Team Topologies."

• Willem-Jan Ageling explores how organizational culture undermines the autonomy promised by Agile, emphasizing the gap between Agile principles and the reality many developers face in their work environments: "Organizational Culture Eats Developer Autonomy For Breakfast."

• Corporate Rebels: Pim de Morree explores how self-managing organizations outperform traditional hierarchies by functioning as dynamic, interconnected networks. This structure fosters adaptability, innovation, distributed leadership, resilience, and higher employee engagement: "The Anatomy of a Self-Managing Organization: Why Networks Trump Hierarchies."

🎓 🖥 🇬🇧 Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills Class w/ PSFS Certificate — November 21, 2024

The Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills (PSFS) training by Berlin Product People is a one-day official Scrum.org class for advanced Scrum practitioners and agile coaches, including the industry-acknowledged PSFS certification. This PSFS training class is in English.

Enjoy the benefits of a live virtual immersive class with like-minded agile peers from 09:00 – 17:30 CET.

Learn more: 🖥 🇬🇧 Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills Class w/ PSFS Certificate — November 21, 2024.

Customer review: “Great experience – “You reap what you saw.” What I really liked about it was the constant usage of facilitation techniques & Liberating Structures to engage all participants & harness the collective knowledge while reaching the goal of the exercises during the workshop. Therefore, my experience was great because I could really leave with some insights from the whole group that I could apply in my daily work starting from the next day. “You reap what you saw” and in this case, it was the collective intelligence of everyone in the training class.” (Link.)

🎯 Product

• Marcus Castenfors explains the anti-pattern of giving too much autonomy too soon during a product transformation, emphasizing the need for leadership to provide clear direction and develop team competence to avoid chaos: "Introduction & Anti-pattern #1: ‘Giving too much autonomy, too soon.’"

• Maarten Dalmijn challenges the traditional view of requirements, emphasizing the importance of understanding the actual needs behind them and warning against the dangers of unanchored, floating requirements: "WTF is a Requirement?"

• Afonso Franco advocates viewing cross-functional teams as a discipline, focusing on collective jobs-to-be-done rather than individual roles to foster collaboration, adaptability, and elimination of siloed thinking within product development teams: "A different lens of seeing a product team."

• Medium: Saeed Khan argues that striving for feature parity with competitors is a losing strategy, urging companies to focus on market needs, differentiate through real value, and avoid reactive product development driven by competitors: "Why Trying to Achieve Feature Parity with Competitors is a Bad Idea."

🛠 Concepts, Tools & Measuring

• 🎙 Melissa Perri discusses Product Ops with Afonso Franco, its key pillars, misconceptions, and how it supports product teams and leaders. She also covers scaling, measuring success, and the essential skills for a CPO: "Product Ops Guide."

• Doc Norton describes the Opportunity Solution Trees as connecting experiments to desired outcomes by identifying problems and solutions, emphasizing collaborative problem-solving and iterative experimentation, and focusing on small, testable steps to validate solutions: "Opportunity Solution Trees."

• Wes Kao shares tips on delivering bad news when it’s not your fault, emphasizing the importance of avoiding negative language, keeping messages concise, not accepting blame, and reminding others of their agency: "How to deliver bad news when it's not your fault."

• IDEO U: The author(s) highlights how integrating AI with design thinking enhances creativity and problem-solving. Combining AI’s data-driven insights with human-centered design drives innovation and user-centric solutions: "The Intersection of Design Thinking and AI: Enhancing Innovation."

🎶 Encore

• 🎙 Tobi Lütke, CEO of Shopify, discusses his journey from German coder to tech leader with Tyler Cowen. They explore cultural contrasts, coding insights, and the future of retail through VR and AI: "Tobi Lütke on Creating Shopify for Americans as a German in Canada."

📅 Training Classes, Meetups & Events

Upcoming classes and events:

• 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 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)
• 🖥 💯 🇩🇪 Nov 6-7 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German)
• 🖥 🇬🇧 Nov 18-19 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Master - Advanced Training (PSM II; English)
• 🖥 🇬🇧 Nov 21 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills Class (PSFS II; English)
• 🖥 🇩🇪 Dec 4-5 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Master Training (PSM I; German)
• 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Feb 4-6, 2025 — Hands-on Agile 2025: From Concept-Based to Context-Based Agility

See all upcoming classes here.

📺 Youtube Channel

• David Pereira: From Backlog Manager to Product Manager.

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