Gaming Velocity

TL; DR: Gaming Velocity

Imagine your team’s line manager insists that a successful team improves velocity regularly. How could you, as a team, satisfy this strange, unsuitable demand without working more? How can you make gaming velocity a reality?

I run this exercise with my students of entry-level Scrum Master and Product Owner classes to help them reflect on the tricky nature of measuring success, metrics, and, of course, Goodhart’s Law: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”

For the following article, I aggregated suggestions from more than 50 classes on how to “best” game velocity.

Gaming Velocity – Age-of-Product.com
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Agile Teams as Investors: A Deeper Dive into Maximizing Organizational Value

TL; DR: Agile Teams as Investors

Stakeholders often regard Scrum and other agile teams as cost centers, primarily focused on executing projects within budgetary confines. This conventional view, however, undervalues their strategic potential. If we reconsider agile teams as investors—carefully allocating their resources to optimize returns—they can significantly impact an organization’s strategic objectives and long-term profitability.

This perspective not only redefines their role but also enhances the effectiveness of their contributions to the business by solving the customers’ problems.

Agile Teams as Investors: A Deeper Dive into Maximizing Organizational Value — Age-of-Product.com
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The Meta-Retrospective — Check Out the Free Miroverse Template

TL; DR: The Meta-Retrospective

The Meta-Retrospective is an excellent exercise to foster collaboration within the extended team, create a shared understanding of the big picture, and immediately create valuable action items. It comprises team members of one or several product teams—or a representative from those—and stakeholders. Participants from the stakeholder side are people from the business as well as customers. Meta-Retrospectives are useful both as a regular event, say once a quarter, or after achieving a particular milestone, for example, a specific release of the product.

Read more on how to organize such a Meta-Retrospective and do not forget to check out the free Miro Meta-Retrospective template.

The Meta-Retrospective — Check Out the Free Miroverse Template — Age-of-Product.com
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Help Create the Anti-Patterns Canvas

TL; DR: Introducing the “Anti-Patterns Canvas”

Join me in developing the Anti-Patterns Canvas, a dynamic and free tool that extends the insights of the “Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide” book. Share your expertise through the survey, see below, and test-drive tools, practices, and exercises through a series of upcoming Hands-on meetups. In other words, help me create a resource that enhances agile practice and value creation.

👉 Join the Anti-Patterns Canvas survey here.

Help Create the Anti-Patterns Canvas — Age-of-Product.com
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The Top Three System-Level Scrum Stakeholder Anti-Patterns

TL; DR: System-Level Scrum Stakeholder Anti-Patterns

Learn how outdated organizational structures manifest themselves in system-level Scrum stakeholder anti-patterns that easily impede any agile transformation to a product-led organization. We cover the perils of a lack of transparency, limited to non-existing leadership support, and why penny-pinching is the wrong approach.

The Top Three System-Level Scrum Stakeholder Anti-Patterns — Age-of-Product.com
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“Agile” Does Not Work for You? Tackling Fake Agility with Johanna Rothman at the 59th Hands-on Agile Meetup

TL; DR: Tackling Fake Agility with Johanna Rothman

Your team is supposed to use an agile approach, such as Scrum. But you have a years-long backlog, your standups are individual status reports, and you’re still multitasking. You and your team members wish you had the chance to do great work, but this feels a lot like an “agile” death march. There’s a reason you feel that way. You’re using fake agility—a waterfall lifecycle masquerading as an agile approach. Worse, fake agility is the norm in our industry. Now, there is light at the end of the tunnel; let’s delve into Tackling Fake Agility with Johanna Rothman!

“Agile” Does Not Work for You? Tackling Fake Agility with Johanna Rothman at the 59th Hands-on Agile Meetup — Age-of-Product.com

📺 Watch the video now: “Agile” Does Not Work for You? Tackling Fake Agility with Johanna Rothman at the 59th Hands-on Agile Meetup.

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