Food for Agile Thought’s issue #155—shared with 18,683 peers—focuses on effective team building, how agile data can support your storytelling during an agile transition, and why the change agent needs to be ahead of the game at any time.
We also have a look at the silent estimation technique and why it may replace planning poker, and why professional product backlogs have the shape of an iceberg.
Lastly, we ask ourselves: is ‘lean startups’ probably nothing more than a failed ideology, a useless tool if your organization is looking to improve its innovation game?
Food for Agile Thought’s issue #154—shared with 18,591 peers—focuses on agile’s many faces, be it the progress of business agility, mob programming, or descaling the organization to ‘scale agile.’
We also have a look at Scrum.org’s brand-new advanced scrum master class, and share a reading tip — Jez Humble’s recent book on building and scaling high-performance technology organizations is eye-opening.
Lastly, we applaud Peter Casinelli who advocates that developers should conduct user tests, we learn six principles of modern product discovery, and we take to heart that no one is immune to cognitive bias.
Food for Agile Thought’s issue #153—shared with 18,517 peers—focuses on agnostic agile as a critical element for successful agile transitions and the havoc a dogmatic use of any of the agile frameworks may cause. Which leads to the question of whether we need all the ceremonies anyway? (There is a Spotify experiment that may help to answer this question.)
We also get back to team building—starting from scratch or starting over—, and we cherish a free book on continuous innovation from InfoQ.
Finally, we address the odd couple again—(UX) design and agile—and try to make things work for everyone.
Food for Agile Thought’s issue #152—shared with 18,406 peers—focuses agile estimates: are they always waste or are there situations where agile estimates are useful? Moreover, in the latter case how to make sure that you provide the right estimates?
We also enjoy a sample chapter from a good book on product design, listing nine critical tools, and shed light on the questions whether infrastructure teams need product management, too.
Finally, John Cutler shares his observations on how coaching engagements often start and also come to an end. (Let’s create a list of these signs — so we can prepare yourselves for next time when it is our turn.)
Food for Agile Thought’s issue #151—shared with 18,292 peers—focuses on beyond budgeting and the emerging business agility trend. We also learn about a study that provides scientific proof for a familiar gut feeling among knowledge workers: open floor plans suck.
We then take a deep dive into product vision principles and why you should look beyond MMRs to differentiators if you want your product to succeed.
Finally, the results of the scrum master survey are in, delivering a benchmark for the all-important question: scrum master, whatchadoing all day?
Food for Agile Thought’s issue #150—shared with 18,194 peers—focuses on the role of the agile manager — from the perspective of the incumbent middle management. We also address changing the culture: what six steps are required and why putting up new value posters is futile.
We then take a deep dive into product prioritization and how to figure out what is worth building. Moreover, Andrew Chen provides a great collection of essays for those working on marketplaces.
Finally, the question of whether Scrum is iterative or incremental is answered.
