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Our posts by Stefan Wolpers
Stefan—based in Berlin, Germany—has been working for 14-plus years as an agile coach, Scrum Master, and Product Owner. He is a Professional Scrum Trainer (PST) with Scrum.org. He has developed B2C as well as B2B software, for startups as well as corporations, including a former Google subsidiary. Stefan curates the ‘Food for Agile Thought’ newsletter and organizes the Agile Camp Berlin, a Barcamp for coaches and other agile practitioners.
TL; DR: Agile Lies, 15. State of Agile Survey — Food for Agile Thought #302
Welcome to the 302nd edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 32,531 peers. This week, we lament the state of agile in the industry today, from its perception to agile lies to what people experience in the trenches. Also, we refer to a recent article by Jeff Patton that claims that the Agile Manifesto lacks a value statement, and we reflect on the benefits of creating situations for personal growth where failure will be safe.
We then summarize why the relationship between the marketing and engineering has been tense and filled with frustration for a long time. Moreover, we delve into how to set up ProductOps for the first time, and we provide a detailed guide on how to get going with the mystical minimum viable product.
Lastly, we download the latest version of the ‘State of Agile Survey,’ and we suggest planning and estimating a massive software project, requiring several teams, across several quarters of effort.
TL; DR: Linking Strategy to Everyday Work w/ John Cutler — ACB21
In this highly engaging speaker session from the Agile Camp Berlin 2021, John Cutler delves into the advantages of linking strategy to everyday work: Motivation, inspiration, seeing the big picture despite working on a small iteration.
TL; DR: Ignoring Self-Management — Undermining Scrum from the Start
There are plenty of failure possibilities with Scrum. Given that Scrum is a framework with a reasonable yet short “manual,” this effect should not surprise anyone. One of Scrum’s first principles is self-management. It is based on the idea that the people closest to a problem are best suited to find a solution. Therefore, the task of the management is not to tell people what to do when and how. Instead, its job is to provide the guardrails, the constraints within which a Scrum team identifies the best possible solution. Join me and explore the consequences of management ignoring self-management and what you can do about it.
TL; DR: Knowledge Work & Cottage Industry, Pre-Mortems — Food for Agile Thought #301
Welcome to the 301st edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 32,359 peers. This week, we reflect on knowledge work, Taylorism, management & trust, and the future of working from home. Also, we tell the story of an empowered Agile product group of three Scrum teams working as contractors for the U.S. federal government, and we learn that digital marketing agencies can succeed in applying Scrum in a non-software environment.
We then talk about becoming the best product manager you can be; we combine Agile, Lean, and Design Thinking in a novel way, and we learn how to apply pre-mortems to avoid ship-wrecking major product launches. (There is a template for running the session, too.)
Lastly, we enjoy John Cutler and Shreyas Doshi delving into the dos and don’ts of a product manager’s career growth, creative intelligence, and product leadership.
TL; DR: Sustainable Agility at the Enterprise Level w/ Jorgen Hesselberg — ACB21
In this highly engaging speaker session on sustainable agility from the Agile Camp Berlin 2021, Jorgen Hesselberg delves into the root cause of failing agile transformation efforts: Rejection by the organization as the transformation does not address the organization’s needs. Do we dare to say: Sometimes, agility is a solution looking for a problem?
TL; DR: Killing Product Thinking — Food for Agile Thought #300
Welcome to the 300th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 32,162 peers. This week, we delve into killing product thinking w/ Jeff Patton. Also, we remind ourselves why the idea that “building software should be like building a house” is an unsuitable metaphor and why structure drives strategy so often. (Spoiler alert: the preferred way would be way messier.)
We then reflect on the many ways you can turn a hypotheses validation into a v1, and we explain how user research fits into continuous product discovery. Moreover, we present the “3Q-DO NO HARM” framework to help you avoid causing harm at scale with your product.
Lastly, we share a team alignment exercise built on Liberating Structures.
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