Age-of-Product.com

Transformation to Agile Primitives: Rebuilding Agility from the Ground Up

by Stefan Wolpers | 2024-10-07 Featured Agile and ScrumAgile Transition

TL;DR: A Guide to Escape Agile Framework Fatigue

Undergoing a transformation to Agile Primitives from a botched [insert your failed agile framework of choice here] isn’t about adopting another framework; it’s about returning to core principles that empower teams and deliver real value. (Please note: If you haven’t read the article on Agile Primitives, please do so now.)

This journey requires leaders to model desired behaviors, embrace vulnerability, and foster a culture where failure is a learning opportunity. Middle management should be engaged as enablers, not obstacles. It’s not a quick fix but a commitment to genuine agility through people-centric practices.

By focusing on the Agile Primitives, organizations can reignite the spirit of agility and achieve meaningful, lasting transformation. Start today with this comprehensive sketch of what you need to address in your organization to overcome dysfunction, create value, and become competitive and profitable again.

Transformation to Agile Primitives: Rebuilding Agility from the Ground Up — A Guide to Escape Agile Framework Fatigue. By Age-of-Product.com.

Hands-on Agile 2025 Is Here: From Concept-Based to Context-Based Agility

by Stefan Wolpers | 2024-09-23 Featured Agile and ScrumNews

Hands-on Agile 2025 is Here: From Concept-Based to Context-Based Agility

We’re thrilled to announce that the virtual Hands-on Agile 2025 is officially on the horizon and will be free to attend from February 4-6, 2025. This time, we will focus on how Agile needs to evolve from concept-based agility to context-based agility.

But before we discuss what that means, let’s take a step back and consider why Hands-on Agile 2025 is going to be a can’t-miss event for everyone in the agile community.

For those unfamiliar, Hands-on Agile isn’t just another conference. It’s an event built around the Barcamp model, meaning it’s a self-organized, community-driven gathering with one goal: Sharing knowledge and experiences.

From February 4 to 6, 2025, we will spend three energizing days engaging in sessions, practicing agile games, sharing war stories, and learning directly from each other. Hands-on Agile is all about creating a space for practitioners, coaches, leaders, and newcomers to connect in a truly hands-on way.

Hands-on Agile 2025 Is Here: From Concept-Based to Context-Based Agility — Berlin-Product-People.com

Hands-on Agile’s Upcoming Transformation

by Stefan Wolpers | 2024-08-12 Featured Agile and ScrumNews

TL; DR: Reinventing Hands-on Agile

For years, I have supported the Agile community with a wealth of free resources and opportunities for growth. From the Food for Agile Thought newsletter to the Scrum Master Salary Report to tools like the Scrum Master Job GPT, and from ebooks like the Scrum Master Interview Questions Guide to the Hands-on Agile Slack and Meetup groups, I’ve consistently provided value without asking for anything in return than your support and participation. As for all communities, there is a simple rule: the more, the merrier; the benefit of being a member increases with the size of the community and those who contribute themselves. Giving back to the community is a win-win proposition.

However, the landscape is changing. The recent economic downturn and a noticeable backlash against Scrum have presented new challenges. As a result, the business model that has sustained these efforts—financing by subsidies through my Professional Scrum classes—has become increasingly unsustainable. Consequently, my approach to continuing to support this incredible community will need to evolve, too.

The Upcoming Transformation of Hands-on Agile: Embracing change by creating a new community and relaunching BarCamps — Age-of-Product.com

The Advanced Product Backlog Management Course — Release Date: January 27, 2025

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!

Advanced Product Backlog Management Online Course — January 2025, by Stefan Wolpers

Please note:

The course includes membership in the brand-new Hands-on Agile community of my former professional students.
The course will only be available until February 3, 2025, 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

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

by Stefan Wolpers | 2024-10-04 News

TL; DR: Product Transformation — Food for Agile Thought #463

Welcome to the 463rd edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 42,865 peers. 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.”

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

Agile Primitives — Beyond Frameworks

by Stefan Wolpers | 2024-09-30 Agile and ScrumAgile Transition

TL;DR: Agile Primitives

Are we losing sight of what truly matters in Agile? The future isn’t about rigidly adhering to or outright dismissing frameworks like Scrum or SAFe. Instead, it’s about returning to the fundamental principles — the Agile Primitives — that genuinely empower teams to adapt, innovate, and deliver real value. By refocusing on these core elements, organizations can move beyond mere methodological compliance and embrace authentic agility.

Dive in to explore how the Agile community is coming full circle, rediscovering the essence that made Agile transformative in the first place.

Agile Primitives: Come full circle beyond applying frameworks and rediscover the core principles of agility — Age-of-Product.com.

Food for Agile Thought #462: Enabling Agility in Large Organizations, Product Team Topologies, Feature Parity, Anatomy of Self-Management

by Stefan Wolpers | 2024-09-27 News

TL; DR: Enabling Agility — Food for Agile Thought #462

Welcome to the 462nd edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 42,839 peers. This week, Nick van der Meulen explores how enabling agility in large organizations works by empowering teams through four decision rights guardrails. Itamar Gilad examines decision-making challenges, advocating for decentralization and context-sharing, while Petra Wille and Elias Lieberich offer strategies for optimizing team topologies to enhance flow and productivity. Also, Willem-Jan Ageling highlights how organizational culture often undermines the autonomy promised by Agile principles, and Pim de Morree discusses how self-managing organizations, functioning as dynamic networks, drive innovation and adaptability.

Next, Marcus Castenfors warns against giving too much autonomy too soon during product transformations, highlighting the need for clear leadership and team competence. Maarten Dalmijn challenges the traditional view of requirements, emphasizing the need to anchor them in actual needs, and Saeed Khan advises against chasing feature parity with competitors, advocating instead for market-driven, value-differentiated product strategies. Moreover, Afonso Franco calls for viewing cross-functional teams as a unified discipline, focusing on collective jobs-to-be-done to enhance collaboration and reduce siloed thinking.

Lastly, Doc Norton shares his take on Opportunity Solution Trees, emphasizing collaborative problem-solving and iterative experimentation for achieving outcomes. Wes Kao offers practical advice on delivering bad news effectively, focusing on clarity, avoiding blame, and maintaining agency. Additionally, Melissa Perri explores the role of Product Ops, addressing key pillars, scaling, and the skills essential for a CPO, and Tobi Lütke, CEO of Shopify, shares insights on his journey from coder to tech leader, discussing cultural contrasts, coding, and retail’s future with VR and AI. Finally, IDEO highlights the potential of integrating AI with Design Thinking to enhance creativity and user-centric innovation.

Food for Agile Thought #462: Enabling Agility in Large Organizations, Product Team Topologies, Feature Parity, Anatomy of Self-Management — Age-of-Product.com

Food for Agile Thought #461: Bringing Problems to Leaders, Backlash for Product Managers, Dangerous Founder Mode, Fueling Product Discovery

by Stefan Wolpers | 2024-09-20 News

TL; DR: Bringing Problems to Leaders — Food for Agile Thought #461

Welcome to the 461st edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 42,821 peers. This week, Ant Murphy advocates for bringing problems to leaders to foster collaboration and empathy over the ‘don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions’ mindset, while Melissa Perri critiques Paul Graham’s ‘Founder Mode,’ urging founder CEOs to balance vision with scalable strategies. Murray Robinson, Shane Gibson, and William Malek explore Haier’s decentralized operating model, and Shane Hastie and Declan Whelan emphasize the importance of technical health and Agile practices. Chris Matts critiques escalations, highlighting their role in reinforcing dysfunctional leadership, and a deep dive explores the perils of Founder Mode’s micromanagement and lack of transparency.

Next, Peter Yang addresses the growing negativity towards product managers, offering ten actionable insights to regain respect. Also, in conversation with Lenny Rachitsky, Camille Fournier discusses platform engineering frustrations and tips for new managers. Rohan Dehal explores how business models shape product strategy, focusing on aligning user needs with business goals, and Andrew Chen critiques common startup pivots, urging founders to prioritize refining their core product and targeting top users for success.

Lastly, John Cutler highlights three models—capability trees, customer journeys, and growth loops—that prevent siloed thinking in product development. At the same time, Maarten Dalmijn urges teams to prioritize value over timelines, Bandan Jot Singh critiques NPS, advocating for real-time sentiment analysis in D2C companies, and Paweł Huryn shares 12 key sources for product discovery. Finally, Jason Cohen explores the accuracy of crowd wisdom in objective scenarios but warns against its stifling effect on innovation in creative work.