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Welcome to the 473rd edition of the ‘Food for Agile Thought’ newsletter, shared with 42,878 peers. I am Stefan Wolpers, offering hands-on, actionable advice to agile professionals.
This week, Santiago Comella-Dorda and co-authors share data-driven strategies for effective product teams, while Jurgen Appelo critiques Agile’s commodification, advocating fresh paradigms. Simon Powers reflects on Agile’s relevance amidst leadership fatigue and AI’s rise, and Donna Spencer and Murray Robinson discuss organizational politics with John Cutler. Also, Martin Lohmann and Jorgen Krabbe’s case study on Alm Brand highlights lessons from descaling 25 Scrum teams, emphasizing role clarity, iterative change, and balancing simplicity with structure.
Next, Lenny Rachitsky interviews Seth Godin on crafting remarkable products, building trust through branding, and leveraging viral strategies. Aakash Gupta hosts Melissa Perri to explore strategic leadership, continuous discovery, and balancing user and business goals, and Eira Hayward analyzes 2024 product manager salaries, highlighting regional and industry trends amidst a challenging market. Moreover, Alexander Hipp underscores the value of aligning work with company goals to turn busy work into impactful progress.
Lastly, Dennis Hambeukers critiques the Double Diamond design model, emphasizing the need for adaptability in managing resistance. Teresa Torres provides strategies for tackling inherited backlogs, balancing historical value with forward-looking priorities, while Nilam Ganenthiran reflects on solving startup challenges through “code-yellow” crises, promoting focus and urgency over perfection. Finally, Gaurav Vohra introduces the Unfair Advantages Framework, helping startups craft marketing strategies by leveraging unique strengths and customer insights for unbeatable momentum.
Could you do me a favor and forward this email to someone who will enjoy it? You’re awesome, thank you! 🙏
🎓 🖥 🇬🇧 Align, Discover, Deliver: The Advanced Product Backlog Management Course — Release Date: January 27, 2025
Are you facing problems aligning vision, stakeholders, and your team and delivering real value?
Is your contribution as a product leader questioned?
Then, prepare to transform your career with my comprehensive, self-paced online class. Dive deep into professional Product Backlog management techniques supported by videos, exercises, and an engaging online community.
👉 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 February 3, 2025!
🎓 Join the Launch on January 27: Learn How to Master the Most Important Artifact for any Successful Agile Practitioner!
🏆 Tip of the Week
McKinsey & Company: Santiago Comella-Dorda and co-authors analyzed data from 1,700-plus product teams, revealing how capabilities like agile funding, product management, and automation empower teams to boost effectiveness, engagement, and value delivery: "What makes product teams effective?"
🍋 Lemon of the Week
Medium: The author’s burn-up chart analysis hilariously attempts to predict delivery in complex environments, ignoring its futility. Monte Carlo simulations meet reality: complexity doesn’t care about your cute graphs or optimistic probabilities: "How to use Burn-Up Chats and a Burn-Up Chart Analysis to Predict Delivery Dates"
➿ Agile & Leadership
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Jurgen Appelo reflects on Agile’s evolution, critiquing its commodification while highlighting the need for fresh paradigms to address contemporary challenges, urging agility without clinging to the Agile brand: "Agile Is Undead… A Synthesis."
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Simon Powers explores the decline of Agile change programs, linking it to overwhelming macroeconomic events, leadership fatigue, and AI’s rise, urging Agile professionals to adapt for continued relevance: "The Decline of Agile Change Programs."
- 🎙 Donna Spencer and Murray Robinson host John Cutler on the No Nonsense Agile Podcast. The episode delves into navigating organizational politics, focusing on survival strategies like alliance-building, narrative creation, and adapting to today’s complex, trust-deficient tech environments: "Surviving organisational politics with John Cutler."
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Agile Alliance: Martin Lohmann and Jorgen Krabbe’s case study on Alm Brand’s Agile descaling journey reveals insights from restructuring 25 Scrum teams. Key lessons include prioritizing role clarity, fostering alignment, iterating changes, and balancing simplicity with structure: "Lessons from descaling 25 Scrum teams."
🎓 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Align, Discover, Deliver: Advanced Product Backlog Management Cohort Class of March 6-April 3, 2025
Improve your career prospects by turning your Product Backlog into a strategic tool for empowered product teams to discover solutions, align stakeholders, and deliver measurable outcomes.
Are you ready to elevate your Product Management practice and drive meaningful outcomes for your team and stakeholders, living up to the promises of the product operating model?
This immersive cohort class will guide you in turning your Product Backlog into a strategic asset that aligns your vision, stakeholders, and team with customer needs and business goals:
- 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:
- You will join an exclusive community of product professionals comprising participants from all my classes since 2019.
- You will have free access to the corresponding online course; please just go ahead and revisit all cohort topics whenever you get a chance.
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 March 6, March 20, and April 3, 2025, from 3-6 pm CET. The class will be offered in English.
👉 Join now: 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Align, Discover, Deliver: The Product Backlog Management Cohort Class of March 6-April 3, 2025.
🎯 Product
- 💰 Mind The Product: Eira Hayward’s analysis outlines 2024 product manager salaries amidst a challenging job market. Regional variations, industry-specific trends, resilience, and tailored applications are key for navigating recruitment hurdles: "How much are product managers getting paid in 2024?"
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Alexander Hipp highlights the importance of strategic visibility in product management, emphasizing how mapping work to company goals and solving real user problems transforms busy work into meaningful progress: "Why strategic visibility matters."
🛠 Concepts, Tools & Measuring
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Medium: Dennis Hambeukers critiques the idealized Double Diamond design model, highlighting the role of resistance—denial, excuses, and delays—in real-world processes, emphasizing adaptability and change management for successful design implementation: "The real Double Diamond process of design."
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Teresa Torres highlights strategies for handling inherited product backlogs, balancing their historical value with relevance for future priorities, emphasizing customer feedback, outcome alignment, and tools like generative AI for analysis: "What Do You Do When You Inherit a Giant Product Backlog?"
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Nilam Ganenthiran reflects on leveraging “code-yellow” crises to solve challenging startup problems, emphasizing sweating problems through focus, parallel solutions, discomfort, and prioritizing urgency over perfection in problem-solving: "Time for a Code-Yellow?: A Blunt Instrument That Works."
🎶 Encore
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Gaurav Vohra explains the Unfair Advantages Framework for startups to craft marketing strategies by identifying customer hangouts and leveraging unique strengths, creating unbeatable momentum through aligned channels and amplification: "The Unfair Advantages framework."
📺 The Lean Tech Manifesto with Fabrice Bernhard — Hands-on Agile #65
Join Fabrice Bernhard on how the “Lean Tech Manifesto” solves the challenge of scaling Agile for large organizations and enhances innovation and team autonomy. (The recording is in English.)
📺 Watch the video now: The Lean Tech Manifesto with Fabrice Bernhard — Hands-on Agile #65.
📅 Training Classes & Cohorts, Courses, Meetups & Events
Upcoming events:
See all upcoming classes here.
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Best,
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