Food for Agile Thought #118: Scrum Troubles, Brilliant Jerks, How to Experiment, Sprint Review for POs

Food for Agile Thought’s issue #118—shared with 12,812 peers—addresses the not so apparent Scrum troubles: it is hard, expensive and utterly useless if implemented half-heartedly.

Jeff Patton explains a range of human flaws and failures during product discovery, which is the reason that AirBnB runs experiments diligently—learn from Jan how that works in detail.

Lastly, we cover once more the issue of brilliant engineers who also happen to be jerks, and the pointy-haired Boss finally reveals the purpose of predictions.

Have a great week!

Food for Agile Thought #118: Scrum Troubles, Brilliant Jerks, How to Experiment, Sprint Review for POs

🏆 The Tip of the Week

Jeff Patton: Thud: Why it’s not failure you should be afraid of

Jeff Patton explains in this video that we are equally great at celebrating our wild product successes as well as finding people to blame for catastrophic failures.

Agile & Scrum Troubles

John Cutler (via Hacker Noon): The Trouble With Scrum

John Cutler believes that Scrum needs to come with a warning label—it is HARD and yet not enough.

Duncan Evans (via Scrum.org): Scrum is often a waste of money

Duncan Evans dives into the reality of half-implemented Scrum.

Brendan Gregg: Brilliant Jerks in Engineering

Brendan Gregg distinguishes between selfless and the selfish jerks and describes their behavior in detail.


From the Blog: The Overall Retrospective

After rebuilding an existing application on a new tech stack within time and under budget our team had an overall retrospective with stakeholders this week to identify systemic issues. We found more than 20 problems in total and derived eight detailed recommendation the organization will need to address when moving forward to the next level of agile product creation.

Age of Product: The Overall Retrospective for Team and Stakeholders

Read More: The Overall Retrospective.

Product & Lean

Jan Overgoor (via Airbnb Engineering): Experiments at Airbnb

Jan Overgoor details how AirBnB uses controlled experiments to learn and make decisions at every step of product development, from design to algorithms.

Dan Kaplan (via Hacker Noon): The Complete Moral Bankruptcy of Manipulating Human Psychology To Turn Users Into Addicts

Dan Kaplan responds to Nir Eyal’s essay “Morality Of Manipulation,” claiming it solely exists on a spectrum from “highly immoral” to “absolutely, relentlessly evil.”

Roman Pichler: Sprint Review Tips for Product Owners

Roman Pichler shares tips for getting the most out of the sprint review.

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Last Week’s Food for Agile Thought Edition

Read more: Food for Agile Thought #117: The Agile Periodic Table, Scrum Guide 2017, AMA W/ Steve Portigal.

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