TL; DR: Change Agent Tips — Food for Agile Thought #425
Welcome to the 425th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 49,156 peers. This week, John Cutler presents 20 change agent tips. Additionally, in two academic studies, Kristin Geffers, Karen Eilers, Sarah Oeste-Reiß, and Ulrich Bretschneider explore Agile Leadership’s key roles, while Christiaan Verwijs and Daniel Russo examine diversity’s impact on software teams. Moreover, Charity Majors discusses the necessity of engineering managers in startups.
Then, Jason Cohen shares WP Engine’s eight-step journey to success, emphasizing fit and strategic, retention-focused development, and Lenny Rachitsky interviews Will Larson on systems thinking and productivity in product and engineering. Also, Petra Wille explores impactful product culture and leadership, and Maarten Dalmijn introduces ‘humble planning’ as essential in Agile practices for creating valuable products, discussing friction and intent-based leadership.
Lastly, J. Meadows critiques the belief in maximum staff utilization in software organizations, showing its negative impact on productivity and innovation. Adam Thornhill explains Brooks’ Law, where adding staff to delayed projects increases delays, and Kent Beck discusses the complexities of measuring engineering productivity and suggests a balanced approach. Finally, Dave Hora explores the changing role of research in organizations, stressing the importance of understanding current states for effective product integration.
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🏆 The Tip of the Week
: 20 tips for self-described change agents
John Cutler offers 20 insightful tips for change agents, focusing on self-awareness, patience, learning, and relationship-building to foster meaningful and sustainable change.
🍋 Lemon of the Week
(via Medium): Agile has failed. Officially
This week’s Lemon is a classic rant, where the practice is dismissed as a colossal failure, nostalgically yearning for the ‘good old’ project management days of the 1990s. It’s a prime example of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, mixed with a heavy dose of nostalgia and a sprinkle of sarcasm.
➿ Agile & Scrum
(via ResearchGate): Leading Teams in Today's Dynamic Organizations: The Core Characteristics of Agile Leadership
Geffers, Eilers, Oeste-Reiß, and Bretschneider identify Agile Leadership as critical to agile transformations, outlining its five perspectives and emphasizing its role in fostering organizational adaptability and success.
: The Double-Edged Sword of Diversity: How Diversity, Conflict, and Psychological Safety Impact Software Teams
Christiaan Verwijs and Daniel Russo explore the impacts of diversity on software teams, finding age and gender diversity influence effectiveness and conflict moderated by psychological safety.
: Questionable Advice: ‘My boss says we don’t need any engineering managers. Is he right?’
Charity Majors debates the necessity of engineering managers in startups, arguing their importance in organizational structure, information management, and team coordination.
🎓 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Product Backlog Management Cohort Class of Jan 23 to Feb 20, 2024
Discover the Product Owner success principles in this engaging Product Backlog Management cohort class and accelerate your professional growth and career perspective with tried & tested, hands-on practices:
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- Learn to distinguish between valuable and useless ideas.
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🎯 Product
(via Jason Cohen): The roadmap to Product/Market Fit
Jason Cohen outlines an eight-step process leading WP Engine to unicorn status, emphasizing personal and market fit, customer interaction, and strategic, retention-focused development.
and : 🎙 The Engineering Mindset
Lenny Rachitsky's interview with Will Larson, CTO of Carta, covers systems thinking, managing product and engineering teams, measuring developer productivity, and developing company values.
(via Notion): Churn to Earn — products role in managing retention
The article discusses how B2B Product Management drives business growth by focusing on customer retention, addressing churn causes, and utilizing Gross and Net Revenue Retention strategies.
: What Makes a Great Product Culture? A Guide for Product Leaders
Petra Wille delves into the essence of a great product culture, focusing on leadership behavior and the integration of values throughout an organization beyond just the scope of a Community of Practice.
📺 Humble Planning — Maarten Dalmijn at the 57. Hands-on Agile Meetup
In this fascinating talk, Maarten introduced the concept of humble planning and why it’s crucial for succeeding with an Agile way of working and building products of exceptional value. During his talk, he covered concepts like friction, the three gaps model of Bungay, intent, intent-based leadership, humble planning, sprint goals, the fog of beforehand, and the fog of speculation. It is a must-see for all agile practitioners!
📺 Watch the video now: Humble Planning — Maarten Dalmijn at the 57. Hands-on Agile Meetup.
🛠 Concepts, Tools & Measuring
(via Medium): Utilization Considered Harmful. Why It’s Costly Keeping Everyone Busy.
J. Meadows challenges the entrenched belief in software organizations that maximizing staff utilization is beneficial, highlighting the detrimental effects on productivity, quality, and innovation.
(via CodeScene): Brooks's Law
Adam Thornhill visualizes Brooks’ Law, demonstrating how adding more people to a late software project can paradoxically delay it further due to increased coordination and communication overhead.
: Productivity Measurement as a Tradeoff
Kent Beck highlights the tradeoffs in measuring engineering productivity, warns against data distortion from metrics, and advocates for a balance between measurement and direct executive engagement with teams.
🎶 Encore
: Where Research Is Working
Dave Hora discusses the evolving role of research in organizations, emphasizing the need to understand current states and trajectories for effective product and customer context integration.
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📺 Join 5,000-plus Agile Peers on Youtube
Now available on the Age-of-Product Youtube channel to improve learning, for example, about Change Agent Tips:
- Hands-on Agile 54: Overcoming Common Product Backlog Management Traps with David Pereira.
- Hands-on Agile 53: An Agile Coaches Guide to Storytelling with Bob Galen.
- 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.
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