TL; DR: Working Backward at Amazon, “Marty Cagan’ization?” — Food for Agile Thought #417
Welcome to the 417th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 49,538 peers. This week, we delve into Working Backward at Amazon with Lenny Rachitsky and Bill Carr and explore Viktor Cessan’s proposition of borrowing ecology’s “Interspecific Interactions” framework to enhance workplace interactions. Peter Stevens sheds light on ten agile contract models, evaluating their alignment with operational agility. Further, Alexey Krivitsky and Roland Flemm provide insights on transitioning from Component Teams to more flexible organizational designs, drawing from James Shore’s talk. Lastly, we uncover the detrimental Scrum anti-patterns across planning, communication, and quality adherence that often lead to underperformance in Scrum teams.
Then, Bandan Jot Singh’s critical take on the global ‘Marty Cagan’ization’ in the product domain urges a balanced evaluation of its impact on product professionals. Scott Belsky explores AI’s potential to disrupt business models, hinting at a meritocratic shift in creative fields yet posing questions on brand perception. Lenny Rachitsky delves into a discussion with Eric Ries on the Lean Startup methodology, while Michael H. Goitein highlights the perilous ‘Product Gap’ in organizational transformations, drawing a vivid analogy to point at the dangers of assigning critical Product roles to the inexperienced.
Lastly, Paulo Caroli illuminates the ‘Design Ahead’ technique to synchronize design and development phases. Moreover, Kyle Byrd explores the subtle effects of OKRs on strategic choices, delving into the dichotomy of causal and effectual reasoning. Also, Aatir Abdul Rauf introduces an efficient method for PMs to harness AI tools to sift through customer feedback, refine product strategies, and gauge competitive standing. Conversely, Steven Sinofsky critiques the President’s Executive Order on AI as an impulsive move, potentially thwarting innovation while bypassing democratic scrutiny and lacking accountability and transparency.
📖 Preorder the Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide book now for delivery in January 2024!
🗞️ Exclusively on my Substack Newsletter: Product Owner Anti-Patterns — An Excerpt from the Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide (2).
🥇 The most popular discussion on LinkedIn last week was: The #DailyScrum is the most misunderstood Scrum event. 🤷♂️
Did you miss the previous Food for Agile Thought’s issue 416?
🎓 Join Stefan in one of his upcoming Professional Scrum training classes!
👉 Join 575-plus peers and help create the next edition of the Scrum Master Salary Report!
🏆 The Tip of the Week: Working Backward at Amazon
and : 🎙 Unpacking Amazon’s unique ways of working
In this podcast, Lenny Rachitsky interviews Bill Carr. They clarify Amazon’s ‘working backward’ approach, the essence of ‘single-threaded leaders,’ and how to foster a culture of risk-taking and innovation.
🍋 Lemon of the Week
(via gitconnected): Ditch Scrum and Switch to Kanban: Why Kanban is the Superior Agile Methodology
Sam Haynes misinterprets Scrum’s flexible framework while overly praising Kanban’s alignment with Lean principles. His narrow view overlooks Scrum’s adaptability and underestimates its potential for cross-functional collaboration and continuous improvement in agile environments.
➿ Agile & Scrum
: Enhancing Organizational Performance with Ecological Models
Viktor Cessan discusses the untapped potential in improving workplace interactions for enhanced performance, citing various methodologies. He suggests learning from ecology’s “Interspecific Interactions” framework to observe better and evaluate interactions in organizational settings.
: Ten Agile Contracts Infographic
Peter Stevens evaluates ten common contract models for agile product development, categorizing them from “Not Agile/Fake Agile” to well-aligned with operational agility, highlighting the merits and drawbacks of each.
and : Case Study: from Component Teams to Team Topologies to FaST Agile
Alexey Krivitsky and Roland Flemm analyze James Shore’s talk on transitioning from Component Teams to Team Topologies to a FaST Agile ecosystem, emphasizing the pitfalls of component-focused teams and the merits of stream-aligned and flexible organizational designs.
🎓 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills Class w/ PSFS Certificate — November 28, 2023
The Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills (PSFS) training by Berlin Product People is a guaranteed one-day official Scrum.org class for advanced Scrum practitioners and agile coaches, including the industry-acknowledged PSFS certification. This PSFS training class is in English.
Enjoy the benefits of a compact immersive class with like-minded agile peers from 09:00 – 17:30 o’clock CEST.
Learn more: 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills Class w/ PSFS Certificate — November 28, 2023.
👉 From time to time, we can offer last-minute seats for training classes at cost to individuals who do not have access to a corporate training budget. If you like to be notified about these opportunities, please register here.
🎯 Product
: The dark side of Marty Cagan'ization
Bandan Jot Singh critiques the widespread influence of Marty Cagan’s methodologies—termed ‘Marty Cagan’ization’—on the global product domain, acknowledging its clarity but also urging a mindful appraisal of its costs on product managers and leaders.
: Strange Ways AI Disrupts Business Models, What’s Next For Creativity & Marketing, Some Provocative Data
Scott Belsky discusses the unconventional ways AI might alter business models, from challenging time-based billing to shaking the core and periphery model in entertainment, suggesting AI’s potential to bring meritocracy to creative fields while questioning its impact on brand perception in purchase decisions.
and : 🎙 Reflections on a movement
Lenny Rachitsky interviews Eric Ries on Lean Startup methodology, MVPs, handling uncertainty with AI, structuring companies around core values, and his current project: the Long-Term Stock Exchange.
(via Medium): How ‘The Product Gap’ Has Already Doomed Your Transformation To Failure
Michael H. Goitein discusses the ‘Product Gap’ in organizational transformations, highlighting the peril of assigning inexperienced individuals to critical Product roles, likening it to a receptionist suddenly tasked with doctor duties.
📯 Scrum Team Failure — Scrum Anti-Patterns Taxonomy (3)
Scrum team failure addresses three categories from the Scrum anti-patterns taxonomy that are closely aligned: Planning and process breakdown, conflict avoidance and miscommunication, and inattention to quality and commitment, often resulting in a Scrum team performing significantly below its potential.
Learn how these Scrum anti-patterns categories manifest themselves and how they affect value creation for customers and the organization’s long-term sustainability.
This is the third of three articles analyzing the 183 anti-patterns from the upcoming Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide book. The other two articles, see below, address adhering to legacy systems, processes, practices, and communication and collaboration issues.
Learn more: Scrum Team Failure — Scrum Anti-Patterns Taxonomy (3).
🛠 Concepts, Tools & Measuring
: Design Ahead: Harmonizing Design and Development Timelines for Optimal Results
Paulo Caroli sheds light on the ‘Design Ahead’ approach, aimed at aligning design and development timelines by enabling a thorough design phase before development, beneficial in complex or iterative projects, and noting its limitations in highly agile or resource-constrained environments.
(via UX Collective): Are OKRs improving or inhibiting decision-making?
Kyle Byrd delves into the nuanced impact of OKRs on strategic decision-making, exploring the balance between causal rationality and effectual reasoning and highlighting potential pitfalls like goal-induced blindness and distorted incentives.
: How PMs can use AI tools to analyze customer feedback
Aatir Abdul Rauf shares a method for PMs to utilize AI tools, specifically Browse AI and Claude, to efficiently analyze customer feedback from review sites like G2, streamlining the gathering of insights to improve product offerings and compare with competitors.
🎶 Encore
: Regulating AI by Executive Order is the Real AI Risk
Steven Sinofsky critiques the President’s Executive Order on AI as a premature, pessimistic political move, arguing it circumvents democratic processes and might stifle innovation while lacking the accountability and transparency inherent in legislative actions.
📅 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:
See all upcoming classes here.
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 5,000-plus Agile Peers on Youtube
Now available on the Age-of-Product Youtube channel to improve learning, for example, about the Feature Team Fallacy:
- Hands-on Agile 53: An Agile Coaches Guide to Storytelling with Bob Galen.
- Hands-on Agile 52: From Wild West to the Agile Manifesto with Jim Highsmith.
- Hands-on Agile EXTRA: How Elon Musk Would Run YOUR Business with Joe Justice.
- Hands-on Agile 50: The Product Community of Practice with Petra Wille.
- Hands-on Agile 43: Outcome-Based Product Planning with Jeff Gothelf.
- Hands-on Agile 42: Lean Roadmapping and OKRs with Janna Bastow.
- Hands-on Agile 38: The Product Owner with Roman Pichler.
✋ Do Not Miss Out and Learn More About Working Backward at Amazon — Join the 19,000-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.
If you like to join 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.
Help your team to learn about Working Backward at Amazon by pointing them to the free Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide:
