Age-of-Product.com

Gaming Velocity

by Stefan Wolpers | 2024-07-22 Featured Agile and ScrumAgile Transition

TL; DR: Gaming Velocity

Imagine your team’s line manager insists that a successful team improves velocity regularly. How could you, as a team, satisfy this strange, unsuitable demand without working more? How can you make gaming velocity a reality?

I run this exercise with my students of entry-level Scrum Master and Product Owner classes to help them reflect on the tricky nature of measuring success, metrics, and, of course, Goodhart’s Law: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”

For the following article, I aggregated suggestions from more than 50 classes on how to “best” game velocity.

Scrum Master JobGPT: Your New Tool for Thriving in the Current Job Market

by Stefan Wolpers | 2024-06-17 Featured Agile and Scrum

TL; DR: Scrum Master JobGPT — Learn to Thrive in Today’s Job Market

Given the current turbulent times for Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches, our community must stand united. This brings me to the Scrum Master JobGPT, your new ally in navigating the job market. This free tool, available with a paid ChatGPT account, delivers actionable insights on job hunting, interview prep, and evaluating Agile maturity in potential employers, based on my years-long writing on identifying suitable employers and clients, passing job interviews with flying colors, and hiring team members while respecting Scrum’s principles.

With Scrum Master JobGPT, you’ll get practical guidance—from deciphering job ads to excelling in interviews and ensuring the right cultural fit. Let’s weather this storm together—leverage Scrum Master JobGPT to secure your next Scrum Master or Agile Coach role and advance your career.

👉 Check out the free Scrum Master JobGPT now! (Please note that accessing GPTs requires a ChatGPT subscription.)

Scrum Master JobGPT: Your Essential Tool for Thriving in the Current Job Market — Age-of-Product.com

The Advanced Product Backlog Management Course — Release Date: July 1, 2024

by Stefan Wolpers | 2024-03-21 Featured Agile and ScrumResourcesVideos

Transform Your Skills and Career with the Advanced Product Backlog Management Course

Are you facing challenges in aligning vision, stakeholders, and your team and delivering real value? Then, prepare to transform your career with my comprehensive, self-paced online class: The Advanced Product Backlog Management Course.

Dive deep into professional Product Backlog management techniques supported by videos, exercises, and an engaging online community of like-minded peers supporting each other:

👉 Transform Your Skills, Transform Your Career — all for an Introductory Price of $99!

Join the Advanced Product Backlog Management Course by Stefan Wolpers — Berlin-Product-People.com

Please note:

The course includes membership in a new community of agile professionals.
Become fully reimbursed if you choose to join the Advanced Product Backlog Management Cohort of June 13-July 11, 2024, at € 399.
The course will only be available until July 8, 2024, for sign-up!

The Scrum Master Salary Report 2024

by Stefan Wolpers | 2024-02-18 Featured Agile and Scrum

TL; DR: The Scrum Master Salary Report 2024 — How Do You Compare?

The Scrum Master Salary Report 2024 is the fifth edition of the industry survey after 2017, 2019, 2022, and 2023. This free report is based on the answers of 1,114 participants globally. If you are considering a career decision this year, maybe whether you should join the industry as a junior Scrum Master, move to a new organization, or go independent, you will find the report’s information beneficial.

By the way, the average salary of the participants in the survey is $87,800, with a standard deviation of about $46,400. In the complete report, you will find more detailed information; see for yourself by downloading your copy of the Scrum Master Salary Report 2024 below.

Scrum Master Salary Report 2024 — Age-of-Product.com

Getting Hired as a Scrum Master or Agile Coach

by Stefan Wolpers | 2024-02-05 Featured Agile and ScrumAgile Transition

TL; DR: Getting Hired as a Scrum Master or Agile Coach

Are you considering a new Scrum Master or Agile Coach job? However, you are not sure that it is the right organization? Don’t worry; there are four steps of proactive research to identify suitable employers or clients for getting hired as a Scrum Master and avoid disappointment later.

I have used those four steps for years to identify organizations I would like to work with, and they never failed me. Read on and learn how to employ search engines, LinkedIn’s people search, reach out to peers in the agile community, and analyze the event markets in the quest for your next Scrum Master job.

Getting Hired as a Scrum Master or Agile Coach — Age-of-Product.com

New: The ‘Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide’ Free Email Course

by Stefan Wolpers | 2024-01-10 Featured Agile and ScrumBooks

Embark on Your Journey to Excellence with the Free Scrum Anti-Patterns Email Course

Are you ready to transform your Scrum practices and elevate your agile journey? Dive into my exclusive, free email course based on the acclaimed “Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide” book. This course is a treasure trove of insights, offering a sneak peek into the crucial anti-patterns that could hinder your team’s success.

This course illuminates the common pitfalls in Scrum roles — from the Scrum Master to the Product Owner and stakeholders — and Scrum events. You’ll gain an understanding of the subtle missteps, team dynamics, and resulting patterns.

Learn About the ‘Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide’ w/ a Free Email Course by the author Stefan Wolpers — Age-of-Product.com

60 ChatGPT Prompts Plus Prompt Engineering Guide for Scrum Practitioners

by Stefan Wolpers | 2023-05-15 Featured Agile and Scrum

TL; DR: 60 ChatGPT Prompts for Agile Practitioners

ChatGPT can be an excellent tool for those who know how to create prompts. The simplest form of prompting ChatGPT is to feed it the task and ask for results. However, this approach is unlikely to trigger the best response from the model.

Instead, invest more time in prompt engineering, and provide ChatGPT with a better context of the situation, desired outcomes, data, constraints, etc. The following article offers a primer to creating ChatGPT prompts for Scrum practitioners to get you started running. You will learn:

Prompt engineering basics
Prompt engineering with services like PromptPerfect
Using ChatGPT for prompt engineering. (Yub, that works, too.)

Free Download 60 ChatGPT Prompts for Scrum Masters, Product Owners, Product Managers — Age-of-Product.com

Free Ebook: 83 Scrum Master Interview Questions to Identify Suitable Candidates

by Stefan Wolpers | 2022-06-17 Featured Agile and Scrum

TL; DR: The Scrum Master Interview Guide to Identify Genuine Scrum Masters

In this comprehensive Scrum Master Interview guide, we delve into 83 critical questions that can help distinguish genuine Scrum Masters from pretenders during interviews. We designed this selection to evaluate the candidates’ theoretical knowledge, practical experience, and ability to apply general Scrum and “Agile “principles effectively in real-world scenarios—as outlined in the Scrum Guide or the Agile Manifesto. Ideal for hiring managers, HR professionals, and future Scrum teammates, this guide provides a toolkit to ensure that your next Scrum Master hire is truly qualified, enhancing your team’s agility and productivity.

If you are a Scrum Master currently looking for a new position, please check out the “Preparing for Your Scrum Master Interview as a Candidate” section below.

So far, this Scrum Master interview guide has been downloaded more than 25,000 times.

Scrum Master Interview — How to Prepare Yourself to Stand Out — Age-of-Product.com

Hiring: 82 Scrum Product Owner Interview Questions to Avoid Agile Imposters

by Stefan Wolpers | 2021-09-26 Featured Agile and Scrum

TL; DR: 82 Product Owner Interview Questions to Avoid Imposters

If you are looking to fill a position for a Product Owner in your organization, you may find the following 82 interview questions useful to identify the right candidate. They are derived from my sixteen years of practical experience with XP and Scrum, serving both as Product Owner and Scrum Master and interviewing dozens of Product Owner candidates on behalf of my clients.

So far, this Product Owner interview guide has been downloaded more than 10,000 times.

82 Product Owner Interview Questions to Avoid Imposters — Age-of-Product.com

📅 Upcoming Scrum Training Classes, Liberating Structures Workshops, and Events

by Stefan Wolpers | 2020-10-10 Featured Workshops

TL; DR: Scrum Training Classes, Liberating Structures Workshops, and Events

Age-of-Product.com’s parent company — Berlin Product People GmbH — offers Scrum training classes authorized by Scrum.org, Liberating Structures workshops, and hybrid training of Professional Scrum and Liberating Structures. The training classes are offered both in English and German.

Check out the upcoming timetable of training classes, workshops, meetups, and other events below and join your peers.

Upcoming Scrum and Liberating Stuctures training classes and workshops — Berlin Product People GmbH

Food for Agile Thought #453: Product Management Organizations, Improving ProductOps, New Feature Revenue Estimations, Quo Vadis Agile?

by Stefan Wolpers | 2024-07-26 News

TL; DR: Product Management Organizations — Food for Agile Thought #453

Welcome to the 453rd edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 42,652 peers. This week, we feature insights from Melissa Perri, who provides a framework for robust product management organizations focusing on alignment, efficiency, and continuous improvement. Stefan Lindegaard warns about Organizational Debt Syndrome and the need for proactive leadership to maintain agility, and Jennifer Riggins reveals a study highlighting developers’ lost productivity due to management inefficiencies, stressing better communication. Also, Evan Leybourn discusses the future of Agile, shifting from anecdotes to data-driven insights. At the same time, Terry Danylak shares strategies to move from firefighting to proactive management, enhancing productivity and workplace health.

Then, Itamar Gilad critiques the “user-needs-first” approach, advocating for a flexible strategy that aligns ideas with company goals for high-impact products. John Cutler suggests that percentage allocations obscure priorities and advocates prioritizing based on value and urgency, and Jon Odo provides five tips for trimming Product Backlogs, emphasizing removing outdated and unclear items to boost team efficiency. Moreover, Zach Dunn highlights the pitfalls of overestimating revenue from sales feedback and offers strategies to avoid these mistakes when prioritizing features.

Lastly, Johanna Rothman advocates for continual planning over quarterly planning to help agile teams adapt and deliver maximum value. Jenny Wanger introduces a product operations tool using process maps to diagnose inefficiencies and improve workflows, and Chris Matts explains Karl Weick’s Sensemaking framework for better organizational dynamics and collaboration. Jurgen Appelo presents 32 key concepts from systems thinking and complexity theory, highlighting their importance in Lean and Agile approaches. Finally, Rory Sutherland discusses marketing and behavioral science with Lenny Rachitsky, focusing on the role of psychology, product success paradoxes, and the pitfalls of metrics-driven workplaces.

Food for Agile Thought #453: Product Management Organizations, Improving ProductOps, New Feature Revenue Estimations, Quo Vadis Agile? Age-of-Product.com

Food for Agile Thought #452: Agile Implementation Differences, Output to Outcome, LeSS Scrum Guide, Alignment Tools

by Stefan Wolpers | 2024-07-19 News

TL; DR: Agile Implementation — Food for Agile Thought #452

Welcome to the 452nd edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 42,633 peers. This week, Alistair Cockburn and Jon Kern discuss differences in global Agile implementation. Hrishikesh Karekar explores evolving Scrum Master roles, and Maarten Dalmijn critiques overreliance on the Agile Manifesto. Yossi Kreinin advocates for incompetent management benefits, while Derk-Jan de Grood balances stable and restructured teams. We also enhance team effectiveness with alignment tools.

Next, Teresa Torres emphasizes the shift from outputs to outcomes for product success, and Vladimir Kalmykov champions the ‘MVP Razor’ for efficient feature development. Ian Vanagas outlines strategies for deciding what to build next. Moreover, Lenny Rachitsky interviewed Jeff Weinstein about customer obsession and impactful metrics at Stripe.

Lastly, Craig Larman and Bas Vodde introduce the LeSS version of the Scrum Guide, enhancing multi-team alignment. Prateek Singh explores the value of small-batch deliveries and continuous learning, and Ben Kuhn stresses the role of trust in team efficiency. Finally, Jim O’Shaughnessy advocates for handwritten journaling to maintain accurate self-reflection.

Food for Agile Thought #452: Agile Implementation Differences, Output to Outcome, LeSS Scrum Guide, Alignment Tools — Age-of-Product.com

Alignment Tools: Creating Better Relationships Between Stakeholders and Teams

by Stefan Wolpers | 2024-07-15 Agile and ScrumLean and Product

TL;DR: Alignment Tools

Understanding and implementing the right alignment tools in agile product development can significantly enhance the effectiveness of your team and organization. Fostering better relationships between stakeholders and teams can ensure strategic clarity, improve adaptability, and maintain a user-centric focus.

This article provides actionable insights on leveraging these tools to build trust, enhance collaboration, navigate risks, and maximize value creation. This will ultimately lead to more successful product outcomes aligned with organizational goals.

Alignment Tools: Creating Better Relationships Between Stakeholders and Teams — Age-of-Product.com.

Food for Agile Thought #451: Product Manager Replacement, Agile Backlash: Try XP, Sales-Driven to Product-Led, Defending Vanity Metrics

by Stefan Wolpers | 2024-07-12 News

TL; DR: Product Manager Replacement — Food for Agile Thought #451

Welcome to the 451st edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 42,601 peers. This week, Mike Taylor shows how close AI is as a product manager replacement, often outperforming humans in complex PM tasks, while Dave Rooney addresses Agile backlash and advocates for Extreme Programming (XP). Woody Zuill highlights the benefits of Mob Programming, and Maarten Dalmijn introduces a Sprint Goal template to avoid anti-patterns. Also, Todd Lankford emphasizes reducing dependency on experts to reclaim team flow, and we ask: Why don’t we regard teams as investors?

Next, Jason Knight explores the challenges of transforming sales-driven companies into product-led ones. Moreover, Johanna Rothman shares five critical ideas for effective product development, including understanding customers and solving one problem at a time. Richard Mironov highlights building executive coalitions by understanding C-level priorities, and Roman Pichler emphasizes involving key stakeholders in co-creating product strategies and roadmaps for successful execution.

Lastly, Jeff Gothelf argues that vanity metrics, while not ultimate success measures, provide early insights into activities and idea resonance. Wes Kao emphasizes the importance of effectively defending your work to build leadership credibility. At the same time, Pim de Morree critiques downsizing, advocating for employee engagement and innovation instead. Aatir Abdul Rauf shares how the SPACER framework aligns Product Managers and Marketers on feature value. Finally, Gergely Orosz discusses recent changes in the tech industry and their impact on software engineering in a post-pandemic world.

Food for Agile Thought #451: Product Manager Replacement, Agile Backlash: Try XP, Sales-Driven to Product-Led, Defending Vanity Metrics — Age-of-Product.com

Agile Teams as Investors: A Deeper Dive into Maximizing Organizational Value

by Stefan Wolpers | 2024-07-08 Agile and ScrumAgile Transition

TL; DR: Agile Teams as Investors

Stakeholders often regard Scrum and other agile teams as cost centers, primarily focused on executing projects within budgetary confines. This conventional view, however, undervalues their strategic potential. If we reconsider agile teams as investors—carefully allocating their resources to optimize returns—they can significantly impact an organization’s strategic objectives and long-term profitability.

This perspective not only redefines their role but also enhances the effectiveness of their contributions to the business by solving the customers’ problems.

Agile Teams as Investors: A Deeper Dive into Maximizing Organizational Value — Age-of-Product.com