TL; DR: Top One Percent Product Managers — Food for Agile Thought #378
Welcome to the 378th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 36,661 peers. This week, we reflect on the (product management) industry’s obsession with the top one percent, given the ambiguity about what product managers do. Also, we analyze why Lean Startup is an excellent blueprint for Scrum teams seeking to extend their knowledge of the problem and solution space while breaking down Scrum into components and composite elements, asking: Is Scrum process-heavy? Moreover, we enjoy Jason Yip’s approach to becoming a leadership whisperer.
Then, ProductPlan released the latest edition of its ‘data-backed exploration of how product teams support the entire product lifecycle, from idea to launch and beyond,’ and we learn from a 17th-century naval disaster how not to pursue product design. Speaking of which: We are thirty years into ‘Agile,’ and Jeff Gothelf asks why so few companies incentivize learning and experimentation.
Finally, we list seven estimation anti-patterns, from pretending certainty to effort tampering to story point inflation, and reflect on the increasing popularity of tracking velocity across teams, according to data from the Annual State of Agile reports. Moreover, Sally Goble shares proven practices to get your codebase back into shape, and we advocate that forcing change is often fruitless; why not persuade them with science?
