Food for Agile Thought #466: Product Discovery Guide, Competitive Research Guide, Agile Fatigue, Fuzzy Product Strategy

Welcome to the 466th edition of the ‘Food for Agile Thought’ newsletter, shared with 42,928 peers. I am Stefan Wolpers, offering hands-on, actionable advice to agile professionals.

This week’s issue features Afonso Franco in a masterclass with Teresa Torres and Petra Wille on mastering product discovery, while James Morgan dissects Agile’s limitations, promoting critical thinking over rigidity. John Cutler and Tom Kerwin satirically tackle extreme leadership in “Ultra Founder Mode,” and Lisa Gill highlights self-managing teams’ struggles with autonomy. Also, Wes Kao delves into understanding bureaucrats’ mindsets to foster better collaboration.

Next, David Pereira advocates using AI as a co-pilot to elevate PM effectiveness, while Aatir Abdul Rauf offers a detailed guide to competitive research for B2B SaaS. In an interview with Aakash Gupta, George Harter shares his approach to understanding users, and Melissa Perri provides strategies for achieving clarity amid ambiguous company visions.

Lastly, Itamar Gilad shares practical techniques for fostering a strong decision-making culture using clear roles and evidence-based approaches. Moreover, Ant Murphy shares his observations about John Cutler’s prioritization course, which is focused on urgency. Gregor Ojstersek discusses the importance of metrics like DORA and SPACE, and Evan Armstrong emphasizes storytelling and psychology in influencing leadership. Finally, Cedric Chin explores how business frameworks intersect with human nature through lessons from Sam Zemurray’s banana trade success.

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🏆 Tip of the Week

📺 Afonso Franco delivers a 2-hour masterclass on product discovery with industry legends Teresa Torres and Petra Wille, diving deep into topics like framing outcomes, closing the strategy-discovery loop, and avoiding key pitfalls: "Product Discovery Guide: Teresa @TTorres and Petra @loomista Wille."

🍋 Lemon of the Week

Medium: The author’s dVx metric tries to measure “external stories” in Scrum, turning agility into a numbers game instead of focusing on delivering real value. This is classic nonsense in action: "dVx: The Metric Scrum Teams Need to Succeed."

➿ Agile & Leadership

• John Cutler and Tom Kerwin explore “Ultra Founder Mode,” a satirical take on extreme leadership, emphasizing relentless accountability, radical ownership, and full immersion in every challenge without excuses or dilution of responsibility: "Ultra Founder Mode."

• Corporate Rebels: Lisa Gill shares critical challenges self-managing teams often face, emphasizing the need to shift away from ingrained command-and-control habits and develop new mindsets that empower genuine team autonomy and accountability: "Overcoming the Top Challenges of Self-Managing Teams."

• Lean Enterprise Institute: James Morgan explores Agile’s limitations, emphasizing critical thinking and experimentation to adapt methodologies like Lean and Agile for specific contexts, advocating for thoughtful application over rigid adherence to frameworks: "From Agile Fatigue to Experimentation: Finding a Better Way in Development."

• Wes Kao explains why founders need to understand bureaucrats’ risk-averse mindset, suggesting strategies like using social proof, minimizing perceived risk, and empathizing with their cautious decision-making approach to drive successful collaboration: "“What will I tell my boss?”: Why founders should understand the worldview of bureaucrats."

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• The course will only be available for sign-up until February 3, 2025!

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🎯 Product

• David Pereira emphasizes using AI as a co-pilot to amplify PMs’ potential, covering critical areas like creating prototypes, synthesizing insights, framing problems, and leveraging empathy to achieve success: "How PMs Can Benefit from Generative AI Instead of Being Replaced by It."

• Aatir Abdul Rauf offers a comprehensive guide to competitive research, emphasizing its importance for PMs and PMMs in B2B SaaS. The guide covers competitor analysis techniques, tools, and actionable insights to inform strategy and go-to-market practices: "The Practical Guide to Competitive Research for Product & GTM Teams."

• 📺 In an interview with Aakash Gupta, George Harter shares his two-part strategy for PMs actually to know their users. The approach focuses on listening tours and user surveys while exploring leadership challenges, AI, and the evolving role of PMs: "The Ultimate Guide to Knowing Your Users as a PM".

• Melissa Perri shares strategies for gaining clarity when a company’s vision is vague, offering practical questions to align initiatives with value drivers, and confidently navigating ambiguous priorities: "How to Get Clarity When Your Company's Strategy is… ’Fuzzy.’"

🛠 Concepts, Tools & Measuring

• Itamar Gilad shares practical techniques for fostering a good decision-making culture, emphasizing clear decision roles (ACID model), “disagree and commit” practices, avoiding outcome bias, and incorporating evidence-based approaches to reduce risk: "A Culture of Good Decision-Making (Part 2)."

• Ant Murphy shares key lessons from John Cutler’s course on prioritization, which emphasizes urgency as a critical factor. He introduces John’s collaborative prioritization activity, which is designed to surface the right conversations and make better decisions: "Prioritization & Urgency: Key lessons from John Culter’s Prioritization Course."

• Gregor Ojstersek emphasizes using the right engineering metrics like DORA, SPACE, and DevEx to drive team success, prioritizing transparency and learning over blame while aligning software development with business outcomes: "How to use engineering metrics for the success of engineers and teams."

• Every: Evan Armstrong shares his journey from frustrated analyst to effective persuader by using narratives, understanding decision-makers' psychology, and preparing for objections to influence leadership and shape company strategy: "How to Win Arguments and Manipulate Managers."

🎶 Encore

• Commonplace: Cedric Chin explores how business, despite modern frameworks, is rooted in human psychology and economic realities, drawing lessons from Sam Zemurray’s journey to scale in the early banana trade: "Business Reality Without Frameworks."

📅 Training Classes, Meetups & Events

Upcoming classes and events:

• 🖥 💯 🇩🇪 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)
• 🖥 💯 🇩🇪 Dec 12 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Product Discovery and Validation Training (PPDV; 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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