TL; DR: Unfinished Action Items: How to Make Retrospectives Useful
If your team consistently creates action items during Retrospectives but rarely completes them, you’re not alone. Unfinished action items are a major productivity killer and lead to stalled progress. This article highlights five actionable practices to ensure Retrospective tasks get done, including limiting action items in progress, assigning clear ownership, and adding a review of the progress in every Retrospective.
The key to real improvement isn’t in creating long lists—it’s in following through. By treating Retrospective action items with the same importance as other Sprint tasks, your team can finally break the cycle of unfinished improvements and see real, beneficial change, individually and at the team level.
TL; DR: Reverse Product Roadmap — Food for Agile Thought #465
Welcome to the 465th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 42,913 peers. This week, John Utz promotes a “reverse product roadmap” approach, focusing on feature elimination to simplify products. Mark Graban critiques command-and-control leadership for sabotaging Lean transformations by prioritizing cost-cutting, while Maarten Dalmijn warns against blindly adopting frameworks like SAFe without context. Also, Pim de Morree shares lessons from transforming Indaero into a bossless organization, and Ula Ojiaku highlights the dangers of “framework fever,” advocating for tailored, context-aware methodologies to prevent costly misalignments.
Next, Paolo Lacche introduces “product washing,” where companies falsely claim to implement product management, reducing PMs to powerless roles. Todd Lankford emphasizes delivering value over managing backlogs, offering actionable tips for Product Owners, and Warren Schirtzinger demystifies the misunderstood “crossing the chasm” concept, highlighting critical misapplications. Moreover, Aakash Gupta and Gagan Biyani delve into Maven’s cohort-based learning model, its scalability, the value of Product Management in startups, and long-term career strategies for job seekers.
Lastly, Viktor Cessan outlines how Viafree leveraged a remote Self-Selection process to transition disbanded teams, ensuring smooth integration and maintaining motivation, and Jock Busuttil addresses the backlash against the Spotify Model, emphasizing its evolution and enduring lessons. Eric Brechner shares strategies to avoid knowledge loss when key employees leave, while Soren Kaplan offers actionable steps to manage team conflict. Finally, Jerry Neumann challenges the belief in accelerating technology adoption, exploring the factors that truly influence adoption speed and societal impact.
TL;DR: Scrum Master Salary Report 2025 — An Anonymous Poll by the Community for the Community
The purpose of this anonymous Scrum Master salary report is to create a clear, data-backed benchmark that allows everyone in the Agile community to understand whether their compensation is adequate. The report will cover Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches, both employed and freelancing.
The goal is to have at least 1,000 replies by the end of December 2024 to create the report in time for February 2025. The report will be available for free.
TL; DR: Rapid Prototyping with Claude — Food for Agile Thought #464
Welcome to the 464th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 42,881 peers. This week, Henrik Kniberg showcases rapid prototyping with Claude, transforming sketches into fully functional apps in minutes, while Steve Blank outlines how innovators can defend against incumbent sabotage. John Cutler discusses using enabling constraints to manage rapid growth, and Adam Ard critiques the overuse of ‘Agile,’ advocating core practices to enhance agility. Also, Bob Galen addresses Agile coach burnout, emphasizing resilience and proactive leadership.
Next, Avi Siegel advises product managers to ignore most feature requests to prevent feature bloat and maintain focus on long-term value. Maarten Dalmijn critiques the unnecessary complexity that can arise with both Product Owners and Product Managers, urging a more streamlined approach, and Martin Eriksson explains why many company visions fail, offering tips to craft a vision that motivates teams and drives results. Moreover, Melissa Suzuno identifies 12 common challenges product trios face, providing solutions to improve collaboration and decision-making.
Lastly, Charles Lambdin delves into estimating the cost of delay, focusing on confidence intervals and structured conversations to prioritize work. Linus Dahlander and Francis de Véricourt explore how Lean Startup methods can be adapted for deep-tech ventures to mitigate technological uncertainty. Then, Gustavo Razzetti advocates for expanding your circle of influence by focusing on what you can control, and Diana Stepner encourages product leaders to adopt a “learn-it-all” mindset, using smart questioning to drive innovation. Finally, Corporate Rebels will feature Bayer’s transformation to self-management and Dynamic Shared Ownership (DSO).
Undergoing a transformation to Agile Primitives from a botched [insert your failed agile framework of choice here] isn’t about adopting another framework; it’s about returning to core principles that empower teams and deliver real value. (Please note: If you haven’t read the article on Agile Primitives, please do so now.)
This journey requires leaders to model desired behaviors, embrace vulnerability, and foster a culture where failure is a learning opportunity. Middle management should be engaged as enablers, not obstacles. It’s not a quick fix but a commitment to genuine agility through people-centric practices.
By focusing on the Agile Primitives, organizations can reignite the spirit of agility and achieve meaningful, lasting transformation. Start today with this comprehensive sketch of what you need to address in your organization to overcome dysfunction, create value, and become competitive and profitable again.
TL; DR: Product Transformation — Food for Agile Thought #463
Welcome to the 463rd edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 42,865 peers. This week, Christian Idiodi shares product transformation tactics to empower product managers in a podcast with Aakash Gupta, while Maarten Dalmijn questions the necessity of Scrum Masters in startups. We revisit Agile’s core principles, with John Cutler emphasizing leadership trust and collaboration, Johanna Rothman advocating for autonomy through less micromanagement and Aha! presenting its flexible framework contrasting Scrum, SAFe®, and Kanban’s complexities.
Next, Gojko Adzic highlights how bugs and feature requests reveal product opportunities, while Chris Butler, in conversation with Jason Knight, argues that product managers don’t need technical expertise for effective collaboration. Mike Goitein stresses continuous discovery and empowerment over command-driven management, and Louron Pratt calls for product managers to focus on tracking feature adoption to optimize value.
Lastly, Fred Hebert warns against using incentives in complex situations, urging for systemic understanding over organizational pressure. Mike Cohn discusses the dangers of perfect estimates, offering practical ways to improve accuracy. Andy Sparks emphasizes the benefits of time audits for leaders, while Tanmay Vora highlights how mindful language fosters psychological safety, referencing Tom Geraghty’s “Seven Deadly Sins of Psychological Safety.”
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