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.

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Navigating the Agile Job Crisis: Strategies for Success

TL; DR: How to Deal with the Agile Job Crisis

While the current Agile job crisis is apparent, there is also hope for practitioners willing to refine their skills, share knowledge, and network with peers.

This article outlines actionable strategies for thriving in challenging times, emphasizing that growth and success are achievable by leveraging community strength and readily accessible resources. Check out also how I can support you on your journey below.

Navigating the Agile Job Crisis: Strategies for Success — Age-of-Product.com
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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
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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
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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
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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.)
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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.

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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
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📅 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
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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.

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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
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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?

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Food for Agile Thought #433: The Right Product Idea, Accountability & Safety, Mitigating Product Risk, Self-Management Transition

TL; DR: The Right Product Idea — Food for Agile Thought #433

Welcome to the 433rd edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 42,271 peers. This week, Jeanette Mellinger provides a guide for customer discovery to support your search for the right product idea, while Marc Abraham discusses building high-performing teams, as seen in Christina Wodtke’s book. Tom Hunsaker highlights execution gaps in change initiatives based on a study of 257 firms. Joost Minnaar suggests a self-management transition for organizations. Plus, we share strategies to navigate the Agile job crisis, emphasizing skill refinement, networking, and community support for growth and success in the Agile field.

Then, Paweł Huryn and Aakash Gupta interview Marty Cagan, sharing insights on transitioning to product operating models, stressing empowerment and product discovery. Jason Cohen addresses AI startups’ unique challenges against incumbents, underlining the need for innovative strategies, and Phil Vander Broek discusses AI development risks, advocating for technical research and iterative learning to enhance product education. Lastly, Ant Murphy discusses the power of niching down, using Square, Lululemon, and Amazon as examples, and introduces the Niche Canvas tool for market segmentation and strategic growth.

Lastly, Dr. Amy Edmondson and Dr. David Rock dismantle the myth that psychological safety and accountability can’t coexist in high-performing teams. Gabriel Robaina and Kieran Murphy share insights from their experiment on daily pair rotation in programming, highlighting its enhanced benefits and addressing common concerns. Moreover, Carmen DeCouto presents ten essential metrics for assessing freemium and free trial performance, focusing on comprehensive customer and product insights. Finally, we explore the concept of entropy, clarifying its role in increasing life’s complexity and its integral connection to the passage of time.

Food for Agile Thought #433: The Right Product Idea, Accountability & Safety, Mitigating Product Risk, Self-Management Transition - Age-of-Product.com
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Food for Agile Thought #432: Agility Creates Valuable Firms, Product Focus, Down Paying Tech Debt, Balancing LTV and CAC

TL; DR: Agility Creates Valuable Firms — Food for Agile Thought #432

Welcome to the 432nd edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 42,247 peers. This week, Steve Denning reveals how agility creates valuable firms by focusing on customer value and empowerment. Matt Van Itallie and Cassidy Williams discuss the importance of addressing tech debt for improved outcomes. Also, Tom Kerwin and John Cutler present strategies for leaders in complexity, advocating for innovation through embracing uncertainty. Stephanie Ockerman critiques productivity culture’s impact on agility, suggesting a shift towards outcome-focused approaches.

Then, Richard Mironov emphasizes the importance of product leaders providing support for product managers to focus by using strategic refusals. David Pereira explains the necessity of balancing customer lifetime value and acquisition costs for sustainable growth and profitability. Moreover, Lea Hickman and Marty Cagan critique the “theater” in product management and leadership that blocks true transformation, while Itamar Gilad critiques the “hype economy” in tech, arguing for an evidence-guided approach over salesmanship for smarter product decisions and a healthier organizational culture.

Lastly, Tanmay Vora addresses the pitfalls of misapplying metrics in line with Goodhart’s Law, advocating for a balanced approach of qualitative and quantitative measures to ensure desired behaviors. Douglas Squirrel introduces the “Elephant Carpaccio” concept from his talk, and Wes Kao champions the practice of Super Specific Feedback (SSF) on work outputs, underlining the importance of precise, actionable advice for elevating team performance and decision-making skills.

Food for Agile Thought #432: Agility Creates Valuable Firms, Product Focus, Down Paying Tech Debt, Balancing LTV and CAC — Age-of-Product.com
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