Food for Agile Thought #463: Product Transformation, The Aha! Framework, PMs & Technical Expertise, Are Scrum Masters Overhead?

Welcome to the 463rd edition of the ‘Food for Agile Thought’ newsletter, shared with 42,865 peers. I am Stefan Wolpers, offering hands-on, actionable advice to agile professionals.

This week, Christian Idiodi shares product transformation tactics to empower product managers in a podcast with Aakash Gupta, while Maarten Dalmijn questions the necessity of Scrum Masters in startups. We revisit Agile’s core principles, with John Cutler emphasizing leadership trust and collaboration, Johanna Rothman advocating for autonomy through less micromanagement and Aha! presenting its flexible framework contrasting Scrum, SAFe®, and Kanban’s complexities.

Next, Gojko Adzic highlights how bugs and feature requests reveal product opportunities, while Chris Butler, in conversation with Jason Knight, argues that product managers don’t need technical expertise for effective collaboration. Mike Goitein stresses continuous discovery and empowerment over command-driven management, and Louron Pratt calls for product managers to focus on tracking feature adoption to optimize value.

Lastly, Fred Hebert warns against using incentives in complex situations, urging for systemic understanding over organizational pressure. Mike Cohn discusses the dangers of perfect estimates, offering practical ways to improve accuracy. Andy Sparks emphasizes the benefits of time audits for leaders, while Tanmay Vora highlights how mindful language fosters psychological safety, referencing Tom Geraghty’s “Seven Deadly Sins of Psychological Safety.”

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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

🎙 In this podcast with Aakash Gupta, SVPG partner Christian Idiodi explains why even successful startups may need product transformation, sharing key tactics to drive change, empower disillusioned PMs, and navigate the limits of transformation: "The Tactics of Product Transformation: How to Build a Better Working Environment with Christian Idiodi."

🍋 Lemon of the Week

Entrepreneur's Handbook: The author boldly declares Agile is dead, blaming it for tech bloat and inefficiency—completely missing that Agile isn’t the problem, but poor execution and leadership are. Tossing out Agile? Sure, let’s throw out common sense while we’re at it: "The Slow, Painful Death Of Agile and Jira."

➿ Agile & Leadership

• Maarten Dalmijn argues that having a separate Scrum Master can often become unnecessary overhead, especially for startups, advocating for Scrum to remain in the background rather than dominate discussions: "Are Scrum Masters Too Much Overhead?"

• John Cutler emphasizes the need for leaders to reduce information distance, increase exchange frequency, and foster trust, psychological safety, and cognitive flexibility to effectively navigate dynamic, uncertain situations: "Chat, Breathe, and Reflect."

• Johanna Rothman explains how reducing micromanagement and delegating problems rather than tasks leads to greater team autonomy, increased collaboration, and better flow metrics, ultimately delivering improved products: "How to Create More Autonomy and Finish More Work with Just Enough Delegation."

• Aha! Blog: Aha! highlights how its development framework blends strategy and flexibility, contrasting it with Scrum, SAFe®, and Kanban, which often introduce unnecessary complexity, lack strategic focus, or create bureaucratic overhead: "The Aha! Framework vs. Scrum vs. SAFe® vs. Kanban."

🎓 🖥 🇬🇧 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

• Gojko Adzic explores the overlap between bugs and feature requests, suggesting mismatches and exploits as hidden product opportunities to expand a product’s appeal by addressing unmet user expectations and needs: "From Bugs to BEAM."

• 🎙 Jason Knight and Chris Butler discuss Chris’s view that product managers don’t need technical expertise. Chris argues it could even harm their relationship with engineers, promoting better collaboration without a technical focus: "Product Managers DON'T Need to be Technical (with Chris Butler, Staff Product Operations Manager @ GitHub)."

• Michael Goitein emphasizes the importance of continuous discovery, empowering teams, and starting from strategy to build successful products, contrasting it with outdated command-and-control management that stifles innovation and collaboration: "Reimagining Product Development from Command to Collaboration."

• Mind The Product: Louron Pratt reveals that only 6.4% of product features drive 80% of user engagement, urging product managers to track feature adoption and focus on simplifying, promoting, and targeting high-value features: "Users engage with only 6% of product features: Product benchmark findings."

🛠 Concepts, Tools & Measuring

• Fred Hebert argues that using incentives in complex situations like incident response often worsens outcomes by adding pressure, obscuring goal conflicts, and eroding trust, urging for deeper systemic understanding instead: "Carrots, sticks, and making things worse."

• Mike Cohn explains how pursuing perfect estimates harms teams, encouraging organizations to treat estimates as approximations, not guarantees, and offering five practical ways to improve estimating accuracy and trust: "5 Ways to Create Accurate Estimates Agile Teams & Orgs Trust."

• Andy Sparks explains how conducting a time audit helps leaders manage their time effectively, delegate tasks, and boost organizational efficiency while encouraging others to do the same for overall improvement: "Conducting a Time Audit."

🎶 Encore

• Tanmay Vora highlights how mindful language fosters psychological safety by contrasting blame versus learning approaches. He recommends Tom Geraghty’s insights on the “Seven Deadly Sins of Psychological Safety” for creating safer work environments: "7 Deadly Sins of Psychological Safety."

📅 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)
• 🖥 🇩🇪 Dec 10-11 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO 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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