Food for Agile Thought #164: Servant Leaders, Scaling Agile and Product Organizations, Minimum Lovable Products

Food for Agile Thought’s issue #164—shared with 19,635 peers—focuses on successful behavioral patterns of servant leaders, the reasons why change at an organizational level is so hard, and how to cherry-pick existing agile scaling frameworks from SAFe® to Nexus and LeSS.

We also learn from Trello’s example how to scale a product organization, what path Buffer chose to create their new minimum lovable analytics tool, and that distributed teams do not stand in the way of building excellent products.

Lastly, we follow Dave West when he outlines the five most pressing challenges of agile transformations and how to deal with them.

Have a great week!

Food for Agile Thought #164: Servant Leaders, Scaling Agile and Product Organizations, Minimum Lovable Products

🏆 The Essential Read: Servant Leaders

Jennifer Garvey Berger (via Farnam Street): The Mental Habits of Effective Leaders

In this interview, Jennifer Garvey Berger and Shane Parrish touch a lot of the areas servant leaders like Scrum Masters or agile coaches should be familiar with—from mental models to dealing with complexity to listening and making others feel great.

Agile & Scrum

Robert Galen: A Different Take on Agile Scaling

Robert Galen mined some of the most popular scaling frameworks for useful patterns to support an organization’s need to scale agility.

Dave West (via InfoQ): Managing to the Next Century — The Five Big Things for Agile Transitions

Dave West analyzes why the move to agile is a much more fundamental change than the mere adoption of a new methodology or process framework.

(via Corporate Rebels): The 5 Barriers To Organizational Change (According To Harvard Professor Moss Kanter)

Rosabeth Moss Kantor defines five main barriers to change: from ‘not my job’ to ‘what will be my place two years from now?’

Webinar #9: Sprint Review Anti-Patterns — November 6, 2018

The ninth Hands-on Agile webinar on sprint review anti-patterns addresses twelve anti-patterns of the sprint review—from death by PowerPoint to side-gigs to none of the stakeholders cares to attend.

Webinar Sprint Review Anti-Patterns — Hands-on Agile Webinar #9

Download your invitation now: Webinar #9: Sprint Review Anti-Patterns — November 6, 2018.

Product & Lean

Tom Redman (via Buffer): Product Scope: The Path to a Minimum Lovable Product

Tom Redman shares the story how his team built a brand new social analytics solution—Buffer Analyze.

Tim Herbig (via Mind The Product): How do you Make Product Management Work Effectively in a Distributed Team?

Tim Herbig reflects on the challenge of distributed teams: breaking free from existing paradigms or amplifying existing weaknesses?

Nikita Dyer Miller (via First Round Capital): Trello’s Product Lead on the Unique Ramp to a 10-Person Product Org

Nikita Dyer Miller shares her insights into leading a product team from scrappy early-stage startup to a company with processes that can scale.

📺 Join 800-plus Agile Peers on Youtube

Now available on the Age-of-Product Youtube channel:

✋ Do Not Miss Out: Join the 4,075-plus Strong ‘Hands-on Agile’ Slack Community

I invite you to join the “Hands-on Agile” Slack Community and enjoy the benefits of a fast-growing, vibrant community of agile practitioners from around the world.

Large scale agile: Join the Hands-on Agile Slack Group

If you like to join now all you have to do now is provide your credentials via this Google form, and I will sign you up. By the way, it’s free.

Scrum Master Interview Question: free download of the most popular ebook on Scrum Master job interviews — by Age-of-Product

🗞️ Last Week’s Food for Agile Thought Edition

Read more: Food for Agile Thought #163: Building Agile Teams, Curiosity and Discovery, Squandering Brilliant Ideas..

Find this content useful? Share it with your friends!