TL; DR: Scrum Product Goal, Psychological Safety—Food for Agile Thought #277
Welcome to the 277th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 30,112 peers. This week, we delve into the Scrum Product Goal, and we address what happens to psychological safety when the leadership opens the pressure valve like in the case of Boeing. Also, we enjoy an interview on how to build super-cohesive teams.
We then apply lessons learned from FBI hostage negotiator Chris Voss to stakeholder management, and we are crossing the chasm with Geoffrey Moore: How do you drive innovation? Moreover, we explore defining objectives and key results for your product team.
Lastly, we appreciate a list of 76 prioritization frameworks, and we analyze the reasons for the fall of Kodak and what it means for product management.
TL; DR: Agile at Tesla, Roadmap Bankruptcy—Food for Agile Thought #276
Welcome to the 276th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 30,023 peers. This week, we delve into Agile at Tesla; we learn how Retrospectives work in the most unlikely places, and we embrace a new approach of risk-mitigating by utilizing the Product Backlog.
We then analyze what product managers can do to deliver more value with existing processes; we detail three cases that indicate that your product roadmap is not up to the job but in desperate need of a restart, and we point at three common mistakes when calculating customer lifetime value.
Lastly, we explore a simple visualization tool to help teams turn learnings into a better way of working, and we ask: Is SAFe® safe?
TL; DR: Bureaucratic Blunderland, Saying No—Food for Agile Thought #275
Welcome to the 275th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 29,852 peers. This week, we delve into the sheer variety of folly at play in any bureaucratic blunderland; we analyze different kinds of technical debt and how to best measure it, and we embrace a simple process to apply swarming as a team practice to solve critical challenges.
We then learn five practical tips to say no without offending senior or assertive stakeholders, and we enter a quest for magic metrics by ‘counting things that happened that you care about.’ We also check general product manager salary data based on January 2021.
Lastly, we examine a formula and a process that may allow us to figure out why things are less agile than hoped.
TL; DR: Scrum History, State of PM 2021 Report — Food for Agile Thought #274
Welcome to the 274th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 29,681 peers. This week, we delve into Scrum history, and we enjoy an interview with Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber on the changes of the Scrum Guide 2020 and what motivated them. Also, we dissect the dilemma surrounding the estimation process.
We then enjoy the results of two product management related surveys; we discuss user stories, tasks, and features in disguise to release more value sooner, and we learn from Martin Eriksson’s decision stack.
Lastly, we welcome John Cutler’s comprehensive checklist to support decision-making at a high-quality level, maintaining the decision flow. Speaking of decision-making, you may be interested in the ‘Six Thinking Hats’ tool as well. (That’s right, there is a tool section now.)
TL; DR: Visual Collaboration, Rejecting Requests — Food for Agile Thought #273
Welcome to the 273rd edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 29,133 peers. This week, we appreciate the merits of visual collaboration; we detail the path of agility from the team level to the organizational level, and we reflect on cost-saving with ‘Agile’ and its inherent trickiness.
We then delve into the differences between user stories and use cases; we share a hands-on guide on how to move toward a balanced, outcome-driven way of product development, and we embrace an approach that allows understanding which stakeholder requests to accept or reject—without burning bridges. We also welcome a set of 50 team building activities, games, and exercises from communication to collaboration to alignment and vision.
🎉 Wishing you a joyous Holiday season and a happy and peaceful New Year. The next edition of ‘Food for Agile Thought’ will be available on January 10th, 2021.
TL; DR: Awesome Remote Teams, Agile Iron Triangle — Food for Agile Thought #272
Welcome to the 272nd edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 28,937 peers. This week, we embrace a set of lessons learned, tools, and practices for awesome remote teams. We also address the necessary buy-in to an agile transformation’s underlying philosophy, and we revisit the once-popular project management tool that still might be beneficial in the age of agility.
We then analyze the difference between product management and Product Ownership; we identify product-driven companies’ cultural principles, and we reflect on why so many product teams end up in the feature factory.
Lastly, we delve into the ‘one-[framework]-fits-all’ myth of agile transformation approaches.
