TL; DR: The Systems Change Problem, Agile Death Spirals—Food for Agile Thought #287
Welcome to the 287th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 30,878 peers. This week, we address the systems change problem and that an ‘agile transformation’ is often no more than the first initiative to clear a path to introduce agile ways of working. Also, we explain the Haier Model—Rendanheyi, microenterprises, micro-communities, and ecosystems—in a short animation.
We then discuss the two first principles of continuous product discovery; we enjoy a war story from the trenches of product discovery at Victoria’s Secret, and we come back to the common idea that ‘prioritization’ is a trivial mechanical process run on autopilot. (Spoiler alert: it’s not that trivial.)
Lastly, we point at the elephant in the room: companies use unsuitable metrics to track their innovation efforts.
Did you miss the previous Food for Agile Thought’s issue #286?
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🏆 The Tip of the Week: The Systems Change Problem
(via Stanford Social Innovation): We’re Beating Systems Change to Death
Kevin Starr claims systems change is rather a destination than a journey and proposes an approach to getting there.
➿ Agile & Scrum
and (via Agile Alliance): Escaping the Death Spiral of Your Agile Transformation
Jutta Eckstein, Eric Abelen, and Hendrik Esser claim that an ‘agile transformation’ is often no more than the first initiative to clear a path to introduce agile ways of working.
(via Corporate Rebels): 📺 Video Animation: How Haier Works
Corporate Rebels explain the Haier Model—Rendanheyi, microenterprises, micro-communities, and ecosystems—in a short animation.
: Teal Organization: Do You Have What it Takes?
Michael Sahota reflects on Frederic Laloux’s idea of the ultimate high-performance organization and how to achieve that organizational success level.
🎓 🖥 🇬🇧 Professional Scrum Master Online Training w/ PSM I Certificate: April 27-30, 2021
Discover Scrum’s four success principles in this official Scrum.org Professional Scrum Master training class, leading to and including the industry-recognized PSM I certification. The training is designed as a live virtual class of 4 hours per day from 9 to 13 o’clock CEST and will be offered in English.
Learn more: 🖥 🇬🇧 Professional Scrum Master Online Training w/ PSM I Certificate: April 27-30, 2021.
Customer voices: “The class with Stefan was very well structured, delivering a helpful hands-on approach to all the Scrum basics. He managed to cover participants with different levels of expertise and from various fields easily and delivered knew knowledge and value to all of them from my point of view. The culture during these four days was excellent, so that everyone felt capable to speak up. Very much worth the invested time and money!” (Link.)
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🎯 Product
and : Why There’s No Single “Right” Way to Do Discovery: Part 3
Teresa Torres and Hope Gurion discuss the two first principles of continuous product discovery.
: Selling underwear: How developers learned to love talking to customers
Jeff Gothelf shares a war story from the trenches of product discovery.
: Prioritization Beyond Algorithms
Rich Mironov confronts us with the common idea that ‘prioritization’ is a trivial mechanical process run on autopilot.
📯 App Prototyping with Absolute Beginners – Creating a Shared Understanding of How Empiricism Works
Yes, even absolute beginners can prototype an app. And learn a lot about agile product management, Scrum, empiricism, product design, and user experience along the way.
If you intend to live up to Scrum and agile product development’s full potential, creating a shared understanding of how empiricism works among all co-workers in your organization is essential. This low-cost exercise of creating clickable prototypes will significantly improve your organization’s agile transformation.
Learn more: App Prototyping with Absolute Beginners – Creating a Shared Understanding of How Empiricism Works.
🛠 Tools & Measuring
: I’m Busting the Myths About Innovation Metrics
Barry O’Reilly points at the elephant in the room: companies use unsuitable metrics to track their innovation efforts.
: ‘OKRs in Agile’ infographic
Allan Kelly shares Yoan Thirion’s infographic illustrating Allan’s book ‘Succeeding with OKRs in Agile.’
📅 Scrum Training & Event Schedule
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See all upcoming classes here.
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Join us on April 20, 2021, for a live virtual workshop on driving product innovation with the Zones of Value framework. (Participation is free.)
📺 Join 2,700-plus Agile Peers on Youtube
Now available on the Age-of-Product Youtube channel:
- 🆕 Scrum Guide 2020: Eight Remarkable Changes — Hands-on Agile #28.
- Remote Agile (1) Replay: Practices and Tools for Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches, and Product Owners.
- Scrum Sprint Retrospective Anti-Patterns.
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