Food for Agile Thought #474: Bureaucracies, Proactive Product Quality, Dark Lean, Growing Professional Relationships

Welcome to the 474th edition of the ‘Food for Agile Thought’ newsletter, shared with 42,883 peers. I am Stefan Wolpers, offering hands-on, actionable advice to agile professionals.

This week, John Cutler examines the tension between adhocracies and bureaucracies in tech, while Miljan Bajić uses Kuhn’s paradigm shift theory to frame the transition from Waterfall to true agility. Christoph Roser warns against “Dark Lean,” where cost-centric misuse of lean practices undermines safety and respect. Maarten Dalmijn highlights the importance of simplicity and emergence in navigating uncertainty, and John Rauser champions probabilistic thinking and adaptive systems for large-scale software delivery success. Also, we consider whether “pure Scrum” is actually applicable.

Next, Richard Mironov emphasizes the need for product managers to tailor communication to diverse audiences, aligning with stakeholder needs. Pavel Samsonov highlights the pitfalls of focusing on product problems over customer needs, advocating outcome-driven planning. Aakash Gupta shares strategies for proactive product quality, including pre-mortems, lifecycle planning, user testing, and robust monitoring to build trust and avoid reactive issues.

Lastly, Gergely Orosz and Sean Goedecke discuss navigating Big Tech projects, blending technical expertise with management savvy, and Jason Yip challenges traditional productivity metrics, focusing on value and impact. Tejas Kumar introduces the TJS Collaboration Model to foster meaningful professional relationships, while Madeleine Wyatt explores navigating office politics with integrity to build authentic and effective connections.

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

John Cutler contrasts adhocracies in rapid-growth tech companies with bureaucracies in enterprises, exploring implicit bureaucracy, cultural swings, and the balance between team independence and global collaboration to drive organizational success: "Adhocracies and Bureaucracies."

🍋 Lemon of the Week

The author delivers a misguided takedown of Scrum’s Definition of Done, confusing a critical quality alignment tool for bureaucratic blame-shifting, all while ignoring its intent to empower teams toward shared excellence: "Definition of Dumb."

➿ Agile & Leadership

• Miljan Bajic explores the journey from Waterfall to Agile and beyond, using Kuhn’s paradigm shift theory to highlight the evolution toward true organizational agility as a systemic capability: "Moving from Agile to Agility — Kuhn’s Cycle."

• Christoph Roser points to “Dark Lean,” drawing parallels to “Dark Scrum,” highlighting how misusing lean practices to prioritize cost over safety, quality, and respect can harm workers and long-term success: "Dark Lean."

• Maarten Dalmijn explains Agile as working with knowns to uncover unknowns, cautioning against premature optimization, overcomplication, and false certainty while emphasizing emergence, simplicity, and embracing uncertainty to adapt effectively: "Agile in One Sentence."

• InfoQ: John Rauser advocates for probabilistic thinking and adaptive systems in large-scale software delivery, emphasizing systems design, risk control, and embracing uncertainty to achieve consistent outcomes and thrive beyond traditional planning: "Beat the Plan: Probabilistic Strategies for Successful Software Delivery at Scale."

🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills Class w/ PSFS Certificate — February 27, 2025

Berlin Product People GmbH’s Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills (PSFS) training is a guaranteed one-day official Scrum.org class for advanced Scrum practitioners and agile coaches. It includes 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 — February 27, 2025.

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

• Rich Mironov emphasizes the importance of tailoring communication to diverse audiences, urging product managers to adapt their messaging, structure, and style to align with stakeholders’ needs and organizational contexts: "Reading the Room / Knowing Your Audience."

• Medium: Pavel Samsonov highlights how low-performing teams focus on product problems instead of solving real customer needs, emphasizing the importance of outcome-driven planning to create meaningful and practical solutions: "Stop inventing product problems; start solving customer problems."

• Aakash Gupta outlines proactive strategies for product quality, emphasizing prevention through pre-mortems, lifecycle planning, user testing, and robust monitoring to avoid reactive firefighting and build user trust: "Proactive Product Quality - How to Prevent Issues Before Users Even Notice."

🛠 Concepts, Tools & Measuring

• 📺 Gergely Orosz discusses how to ship projects in Big Tech with Sean Goedecke, emphasizing technical skills, management lingo, proactive demos, and strategies for thriving in remote engineering roles: "Shipping projects at Big Tech with Sean Goedecke."

• Medium: Jason Yip critiques traditional productivity metrics, advocating for a focus on delivered value and impact, using intermediate outcomes as shorter-term indicators to bridge lagging impact in product development: "Bad idea: You can’t measure productivity."

• Tejas Kumar introduces the TJS Collaboration Model, outlining seven states of professional relationships, from competition to collaboration, emphasizing synergy, alignment, and actionable steps to strengthen meaningful connections: "How to Grow Professional Relationships."

🎶 Encore

• 🎙 Harvard Business Review: Madeleine Wyatt explores how leaders can navigate office politics with integrity, emphasizing sincerity, networking, and influence to build authentic relationships and enhance workplace effectiveness: "How to Master Office Politics Without Compromising Your Values."

📅 Training Classes & Cohorts, Courses, Meetups & Events

Upcoming events:

• 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Jan 27 — Online Class Release: Align, Discover, Deliver — The Advanced Product Backlog Management Course
• 🖥 🇩🇪 Jan 28-31 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German)
• 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Feb 4-6, 2025 — Live Virtual Open Space: Hands-on Agile 2025: From Concept-Based to Context-Based Agility
• 🖥 🇬🇧 Feb 12-13 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Master - Advanced Training (PSM II; English)
• 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Feb 27 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills Class (PSFS; English)
• 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Mar 6-Apr 3 — Live Virtual Cohort: Align, Discover, Deliver: The Product Backlog Management Cohort Class (English)
• 🖥 🇩🇪 Mar 11-12 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German)
• 🖥 🇬🇧 Mar 26-27 — Live Virtual Class: Professional Scrum Master - Advanced Training (PSM II; English)

See all upcoming classes here.

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 worldwide.

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

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 42,883 peers.

Best,