What is your take on the Retrospective: A routine exercise at the end of a Sprint, supported by standard operating procedures? Or a critical part of a Scrum team’s journey of continuous improvement? As you may assume, I advocate for the latter. In my experience, Scrum teams start utilizing Retrospectives to their full potential when they embrace a short set of Retrospective first principles, outlining the essence of the Why, the What, and the How.
TL; DR: Agility: Scaling Innovation, #NoBacklogs — Food for Agile Thought #358
Welcome to the 358th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 35,833 peers. This week, Steven Sinofsky analyzes the challenges of scaling innovation, delving into concepts, tools, culture, and change. Also, Allan “Nuke the backlog” Kelly delves into the current discussion regarding the Product Backlog’s usefulness. Furthermore, we analyze research papers on cross-functionality from Google Scholar and point to the moment when deteriorating software quality insects with a higher demand for new features.
Then, Wes Kao and Lenny Rachitsky cover how to engage your audience and improve your communication for product success. Moreover, we dissect aspects of product leadership, from strategic thinkers to the get-it-done thinkers, and we explain the negative consequences of employing SAFe® for product management, for example, its obsession with process.
Finally, we share Brad Dunn’s new approach to product management: replace the product manager role with a value manager and a discovery engineer. Additionally, we provide a concept of gathering health indicators to support better product decisions, plus a canvas to help you “avoid creating the right solution to the wrong problem.”
TL; DR: Product Backlog Refinement First Principles
The Product Backlog refinement is a continuous process to create actionable Product Backlogs, enabling a Scrum Team to run Sprint Plannings at a moment’s notice. Consequently, refinement is about creating alignment among all team members about the Why, the What, the How, and probably even the Who regarding the upcoming work for the Scrum team’s Product Goal. As a result, Product Backlog refinement is a critical success factor as it drastically increases the team’s capability to deliver valuable Increments regularly.
The following 14 first principles describe in broad strokes the foundation of a successful approach to refinement.
TL; DR: Agility: Timeless, Team Dynamics — Food for Agile Thought #357
Welcome to the 357th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 35,789 peers. This week, we celebrate the Agile 2022 keynote of Joshua Kerievsky, where he reflects on why “Agility isn’t a formula, a framework, nor a set of roles and rituals to follow” but a timeless way of thinking. Also, Linda Rising, Diana Larsen, and James Shore delve into the dynamics that make and break Agile teams, from the importance of trust to the Tuckman model. Moreover, we suggest six ways of encouraging feedback from team members, from creating psychological safety to leading by example, and we close with a rant about mission statements.
Then, we listen to Mary Cagan, sharing his learnings after more than 20 years at the forefront of product management, from Steve Jobs to building product teams to which trends to ignore. Additionally, we analyze the four most significant threats to building great products and how to deal with them, from difficult developers to executive bullies, and we tackle product roadmaps from a pragmatic angle.
Finally, we share a new game to “find a golden path to delivering maximum business value by benefiting from collaboration vs. getting stuck in dependencies” and a “primer on what you need to know to leverage VSM to chart your lean journey.” Lastly, inspired by Kurt Vonnegut’s lecture on “the simple shapes of stories,” Ash Maurya shows that JTBD’s customer stories also have archetypical shapes.
TL; DR: The Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills Training (PSFS)
It does not happen often, but Scrum.org announced a class: Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills (PSFS)!
The Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills (PSFS) training is a one-day Scrum.org class for advanced Scrum practitioners and agile coaches, including the industry-acknowledged PSFS certification. I will offer PSFS training classes both in English and German.
Given the importance of a viable Definition of Done for a Scrum team’s success, it has always puzzled me how complacent or ignorant many Scrum teams are regarding their Definition of Done. So, let me share with you the ten first principles of this critical Scrum success factor to improve your team’s effectiveness, team spirit, and reputation.
