Food for Agile Thought’s issue #208—shared with 23,551 peers—sheds light on the fate of Six Sigma; we introduce the free Zombie Scrum Checker for your Scrum Team, and we address once again the cycle-time/velocity prediction issue.
We also delve into Booking.com’s experimentation culture; we learn which traps to avoid when handling payment in a B2C application, and we enjoy a Twitter rant on the uselessness of timeline roadmaps.
Lastly, we thank Ron Jeffries for pointing at the obvious: you get paid for shipping valuable software every single Sprint. Period.
Did you miss last week’s Food for Agile Thought’s issue #207?
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🏆 The Essential Read: The Demise Six Sigma
(via Quartz): Whatever happened to Six Sigma?
Oliver Staley analyzes the fate of Six Sigma the corporate management religion that promised to take on complexity once and for all.
Agile, Scrum & Six Sigma
: No Software: No Agile, No Scrum
Ron Jeffries points at a simple truth: to be agile means to deliver valuable, working software every single Sprint or iteration.
(via Scrum.org): Introducing the Zombie Scrum Symptom Checker
Christiaan Verwijs and Johannes Schartau published a new free tool that you can use to diagnose your Scrum Team.
: Measure Cycle Time, Not Velocity
Johanna Rothman recommends that teams use their cycle time to see how long a task might take.
📅 Professional Scrum Master Training PSM I — Berlin, October 8-9, 2019
Join your peers for this hands-on Scrum Master training, including up to two attempts at the Professional Scrum Master® I certification by Scrum.org. Learn everything about empiricism, self-organization & the ‘Definition of Done’ in two energizing days in Berlin, Oct 8-9, 2019.
Learn more: 📅 Professional Scrum Master Training PSM I — Berlin, October 8-9, 2019.
Product & Lean
(via Harvard Business Review): At Booking.com, Innovation Means Constant Failure
HBS Professor Stefan Thomke points at Booking.com, which embraced a culture where testing, experimentation, and failure are essential.
: 10 lessons learned from asking our users to pay
Gil Bouhnick looks back at what they have learned in over a decade dealing with payment in a B2C product.
(via ProdPad): Timeline roadmaps suck
Janna Bastow takes to Twitter to explain why most product roadmaps set their teams up for failure.
📯 New Post: Scrum Accountability
‘Autonomy without accountability equals anarchy’ summarizes an essential design element of any agile organization. Without these checks and balances in place any aspiration to transform an organization is likely to fail. (Or at best level out at a mechanistic level.) Learn more about how Scrum deals with accountability.
Learn more: Scrum Accountability.
📅 Scrum Training & Event Schedule
You can secure your seat for Scrum training classes, workshops, and meetups directly by following the corresponding link in the table below:
| Date | Class and Language | City | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| 💯 🇩🇪 May 19-20, 2026 | Guaranteed: Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German; Live Virtual Class) | Live Virtual Class | €1,299 incl. 19% VAT (If applicable.) |
| 💯 🇬🇧 May 28 to June 25, 2026 | Guaranteed: AI4Agile BootCamp #7 (English; Live Virtual Cohort) | Live Virtual Cohort | €499 incl. 19% VAT (If applicable.) |
| 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 June 8, 2026 | GUARANTEED: Claude Cowork: Stop Prompting. Start Delegating. (English; Self-paced Online Course) | Self-Paced Online Course | $129 incl. 19% VAT (If applicable.) |
| 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 June 9, 2026 | GUARANTEED: HoA 74: "CLAUDE.md" — The One File That Makes AI Remember How You Work. (English) | Meetup | FREE |
| 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 June 10-July 2, 2026 | GUARANTEED: Claude Cowork BootCamp #2 (English; Live Virtual Cohort) | Live Virtual Cohort | $249 incl. 19% VAT (If applicable.) |
| 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 June 11, 2026 | GUARANTEED: HoA 75: Token Economics. (English) | Meetup | FREE |
| 🇩🇪 June 30-July 1, 2026 | Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German; Live Virtual Class) | Live Virtual Class | €1,299 incl. 19% VAT (If applicable.) |
| 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 July 1, 2026 | GUARANTEED: AI 4 Agile Course v3 — Master AI for Agile Practitioners (English; Self-paced Online Course) | Self-Paced Online Course | $149 incl. 19% VAT (If applicable.) |
You can book your seat for the training directly by following the corresponding links to the ticket shop. If the procurement process of your organization requires a different purchasing process, please contact Berlin Product People GmbH directly.
📺 Join 1,650-plus Agile Peers on Youtube
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