How Scrum Teams Fail Stakeholders and What You Can Do About It

TL; DR: How Scrum Teams Fail Stakeholders

In this article, we uncover typical ways in which Scrum teams fail stakeholders, from overpromising results to poor risk communication to neglecting feedback. Moreover, we will also explore actionable strategies to overcome these anti-patterns by building trust, aligning priorities, and enhancing collaboration for successful product development.

How Scrum Teams Fail Stakeholders and What You Can Do About It — Age-of-Product.com
Continue reading How Scrum Teams Fail Stakeholders and What You Can Do About It

The Advanced Product Backlog Management Course —  Release Date: May 30, 2024

Transform Your Skills and Career with the Advanced Product Backlog Management Course

Are you facing challenges in aligning vision, stakeholders, and your team and delivering real value? Then, prepare to transform your career with my comprehensive, self-paced online class: The Advanced Product Backlog Management Course.

Dive deep into professional Product Backlog management techniques supported by videos, exercises, and an engaging online community of like-minded peers supporting each other:

👉 Transform Your Skills, Transform Your Career — all for an Introductory Price of $149!

Join the Advanced Product Backlog Management Course by Stefan Wolpers — Berlin-Product-People.com

🎓 May 30, 2024: Step into Expertise: Secure Your Spot in Advanced Product Backlog Management Course for Just $149!

Continue reading The Advanced Product Backlog Management Course —  Release Date: May 30, 2024

The Scrum Master Salary Report 2024

TL; DR: The Scrum Master Salary Report 2024 — How Do You Compare?

The Scrum Master Salary Report 2024 is the fifth edition of the industry survey after 2017, 2019, 2022, and 2023. This free report is based on the answers of 1,114 participants globally. If you are considering a career decision this year, maybe whether you should join the industry as a junior Scrum Master, move to a new organization, or go independent, you will find the report’s information beneficial.

By the way, the average salary of the participants in the survey is $87,800, with a standard deviation of about $46,400. In the complete report, you will find more detailed information; see for yourself by downloading your copy of the Scrum Master Salary Report 2024 below.

Scrum Master Salary Report 2024 — Age-of-Product.com
Continue reading The Scrum Master Salary Report 2024

Getting Hired as a Scrum Master or Agile Coach

TL; DR: Getting Hired as a Scrum Master or Agile Coach

Are you considering a new Scrum Master or Agile Coach job? However, you are not sure that it is the right organization? Don’t worry; there are four steps of proactive research to identify suitable employers or clients for getting hired as a Scrum Master and avoid disappointment later.

I have used those four steps for years to identify organizations I would like to work with, and they never failed me. Read on and learn how to employ search engines, LinkedIn’s people search, reach out to peers in the agile community, and analyze the event markets in the quest for your next Scrum Master job.

Getting Hired as a Scrum Master or Agile Coach — Age-of-Product.com
Continue reading Getting Hired as a Scrum Master or Agile Coach

New: The ‘Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide’ Free Email Course

Embark on Your Journey to Excellence with the Free Scrum Anti-Patterns Email Course

Are you ready to transform your Scrum practices and elevate your agile journey? Dive into my exclusive, free email course based on the acclaimed “Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide” book. This course is a treasure trove of insights, offering a sneak peek into the crucial anti-patterns that could hinder your team’s success.

This course illuminates the common pitfalls in Scrum roles — from the Scrum Master to the Product Owner and stakeholders — and Scrum events. You’ll gain an understanding of the subtle missteps, team dynamics, and resulting patterns.

Learn About the ‘Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide’ w/ a Free Email Course by the author Stefan Wolpers — Age-of-Product.com
Continue reading New: The ‘Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide’ Free Email Course

60 ChatGPT Prompts Plus Prompt Engineering Guide for Scrum Practitioners

TL; DR: 60 ChatGPT Prompts for Agile Practitioners

ChatGPT can be an excellent tool for those who know how to create prompts. The simplest form of prompting ChatGPT is to feed it the task and ask for results. However, this approach is unlikely to trigger the best response from the model.

Instead, invest more time in prompt engineering, and provide ChatGPT with a better context of the situation, desired outcomes, data, constraints, etc. The following article offers a primer to creating ChatGPT prompts for Scrum practitioners to get you started running. You will learn:

  • Prompt engineering basics
  • Prompt engineering with services like PromptPerfect
  • Using ChatGPT for prompt engineering. (Yub, that works, too.)
Free Download 60 ChatGPT Prompts for Scrum Masters, Product Owners, Product Managers — Age-of-Product.com
Continue reading 60 ChatGPT Prompts Plus Prompt Engineering Guide for Scrum Practitioners

Free Ebook: 73 Scrum Master Interview Questions to Identify Suitable Candidates

Scrum Master Interview: Demand Creates Supply and the Job Market for Agile Practitioners is No Exception

Scrum has proven time and again to be the most popular framework for software development. Given that software is eating the world, a seasoned Scrum Master is nowadays in high demand. And that demand causes the market-entry of new professionals from other project management branches, probably believing that reading one or two Scrum books will be sufficient. Which makes any Scrum Master interview a challenging task.

Suppose you are looking to fill a Scrum Master position in your organization. In that case, you may find the following Scrum Master interview questions helpful to identify the right candidate. They are derived from my sixteen years of practical experience with XP and Scrum, serving both as Product Owner and Scrum Master, and my training experience as a Professional Scrum Trainer with Scrum.org. Also, I have interviewed dozens of Scrum Master candidates on behalf of my clients.

So far, this Scrum Master interview guide has been downloaded more than 25,000 times.

73 Scrum Master Interview Questions to Identify Suitable Candidates — Age-of-Product.com
Continue reading Free Ebook: 73 Scrum Master Interview Questions to Identify Suitable Candidates

Hiring: 82 Scrum Product Owner Interview Questions to Avoid Agile Imposters

TL; DR: 82 Product Owner Interview Questions to Avoid Imposters

If you are looking to fill a position for a Product Owner in your organization, you may find the following 82 interview questions useful to identify the right candidate. They are derived from my sixteen years of practical experience with XP and Scrum, serving both as Product Owner and Scrum Master and interviewing dozens of Product Owner candidates on behalf of my clients.

So far, this Product Owner interview guide has been downloaded more than 10,000 times.

82 Product Owner Interview Questions to Avoid Imposters — Age-of-Product.com
Continue reading Hiring: 82 Scrum Product Owner Interview Questions to Avoid Agile Imposters

📅 Upcoming Scrum Training Classes, Liberating Structures Workshops, and Events

TL; DR: Scrum Training Classes, Liberating Structures Workshops, and Events

Age-of-Product.com’s parent company — Berlin Product People GmbH — offers Scrum training classes authorized by Scrum.org, Liberating Structures workshops, and hybrid training of Professional Scrum and Liberating Structures. The training classes are offered both in English and German.

Check out the upcoming timetable of training classes, workshops, meetups, and other events below and join your peers.

Upcoming Scrum and Liberating Stuctures training classes and workshops — Berlin Product People GmbH
Continue reading 📅 Upcoming Scrum Training Classes, Liberating Structures Workshops, and Events

Agile Metrics — The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

TL; DR: Agile Metrics

Suitable agile metrics reflect either a team’s progress in becoming agile or your organization’s progress in becoming a learning organization.

At the team level, qualitative agile metrics often work better than quantitative metrics. At the organizational level, this is reversed: quantitative agile metrics provide better insights than qualitative ones.

Agile Metrics — Age-of-Product.com
Continue reading Agile Metrics — The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Food for Agile Thought #435: Overcoming the Feature Factory, Product Model First Principles, Output vs Outcome, Overproduction in Software

TL; DR: Overcoming the Feature Factory — Food for Agile Thought #435

Welcome to the 435th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 42,329 peers. This week, John Cutler presents strategies for product managers or overcoming the feature factory by refining skills through customer interaction and collaboration. Elizabeth Ayer discusses the dangers of software overproduction and strategies for value maintenance, and Vadim Kravcenko examines software project failures, emphasizing the need for accountability and collaboration. Also, Maarten Dalmijn compares evolution’s adaptation mechanisms to Agile’s learning-focused approach, advocating adaptation over prediction, while Alex Miguel Meyer offers methods to counteract the highest-paid person’s opinion (HiPPO) in decision-making with fact-based analysis and structured communication.

Then, Paweł Huryn summarizes Marty Cagan’s insights from “TRANSFORMED” on Product Discovery, Delivery, and Culture, which are essential for product managers aiming for superior products and learning culture. Jonny Williams, Paul Brown, Adam Clark, and Ed Seymour champion a product mindset in platform engineering for value enhancement through incremental improvements and user focus. Moreover, Janna Bastow distinguishes between outputs and outcomes in Product Management, urging a focus on meaningful changes, and David Cox critiques the emphasis on “low-hanging fruit” and marginal gains, suggesting strategic efficiency and tackling valuable problems, drawing lessons from British Cycling’s strategic investment success.

Lastly, Jacob Kaplan-Moss emphasizes breaking down software projects into manageable tasks to ensure effective planning and delegation, aligning them with project goals. Johanna Rothman discusses using agility and real-time data to navigate market volatility, recommending a focus on cycle time and throughput for quick decision-making, and Marcus Hammarberg introduces using Monte Carlo Simulation in Google Sheets for backlog prognosis, offering a data-driven planning method. Finally, Suno is revolutionizing music production by allowing users to create professional-level songs through text prompts, sparking debate on its effects on artists and the future of music creation.

Food for Agile Thought #435: Overcoming the Feature Factory, Product Model First Principles, Output vs Outcome, Overproduction in Software — Age-of-Product.com
Continue reading Food for Agile Thought #435: Overcoming the Feature Factory, Product Model First Principles, Output vs Outcome, Overproduction in Software

The Top Ten Continuous Improvement Actions for Teams

TL; DR: Continuous Improvement for Teams

Cultivating a culture of continuous improvement within Scrum teams or Agile teams is pivotal for personal well-being, enhancing effectiveness, building trust with stakeholders, and delivering products that genuinely enhance customers’ lives.

This post dives into the top ten actionable strategies derived from the Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide book, providing a roadmap for teams eager to embrace Kaizen practices. From embracing Scrum values and fostering psychological safety to prioritizing customer feedback and continuous learning, these strategies offer a comprehensive approach to fostering innovation, collaboration, and sustained improvement.

The Top Ten Continuous Improvement Actions for Teams — Age-of-Product.com
Continue reading The Top Ten Continuous Improvement Actions for Teams

Food for Agile Thought #434: Product Management Theater, Fighting Unemployment, The Strategy Stack, From Conflict to Negotiation

TL; DR: Product Management Theater — Food for Agile Thought #434

Welcome to the 434th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 42,302 peers. This week, Marty Cagan, in discussion with Lenny Rachitsky, critiques “product management theater” and the pandemic-induced over-hiring of PMs, offering solutions in his book, “Transformed.” Johanna Rothman advises unemployed agilists on transitioning to impactful roles, while Kurt Bittner and Pierre Pureur advocate combining Agile and Lean in software architecture for sustainability. Also, Fred Wynyk suggests using the Reverse Conway Maneuver to align organizational structures with software architecture goals for innovation, and we delve into Sprint anti-patterns.

Then, Roman Pichler introduces the Strategy Stack, a framework designed to align and clarify business and product strategies for better strategic execution. Itamar Gilad challenges the stereotypes limiting product manager roles, promoting the concept of a ‘Full-Stack PM’ who leads with a blend of strategy and user-centric innovation. At the same time, David Pereira critiques the growing popularity of Product Ops, advocating for role simplification over expansion to tackle fundamental issues. Moreover, Roger Martin discusses how AI impacts strategic thinking, suggesting that while generative AI can streamline the progression from mystery to algorithm, it risks oversimplifying complex heuristics.

Lastly, Derek Jones delves into the intricacies of software effort estimation in 2024, highlighting the role of individual risk profiles. Tanmay Vora shares William Ury’s methods for turning workplace conflicts into constructive negotiations, and Barry Overeem presents ten Retrospective formats based on the Agile Team Effectiveness Model, designed to enhance team improvement processes with Liberating Structures. Finally, Morgan Housel discusses the drawbacks of high intelligence, such as overconfidence and resistance to simpler solutions, challenging the notion that more intelligence directly correlates with better outcomes.

Food for Agile Thought #434: Product Management Theater, Fighting Unemployment, The Strategy Stack, From Conflict to Negotiation — Age-of-Product.com
Continue reading Food for Agile Thought #434: Product Management Theater, Fighting Unemployment, The Strategy Stack, From Conflict to Negotiation

Sprint Anti-Patterns

TL; DR: Sprint Anti-Patterns Holding Your Teams Back

Welcome to Sprint anti-patterns! This article covers the three Scrum accountabilities (formerly roles) and addresses interferences of stakeholders and IT/line management with this crucial Scrum event. Moreover, I added some food for thought. For example, could a month-long Sprint be too short for accomplishing something meaningful? And if so, what are the consequences?

Sprint Anti-Patterns Holding Back Scrum Teams — Age-of-Product.com
Continue reading Sprint Anti-Patterns