Food for Agile Thought’s issue #123—shared with 13,624 peers—addresses Scrum 2018: Scrum Alliance’s latest survey is available, John Cutler’s opinion piece on today’s state of ‘Scrum,’ indications of lipstick agile to watch out for, and ten prevailing scrum myths.
We then focus on how to figure out what is worth building: from creating a bulletproof product strategy to developing an experimentation system and why you need to be careful when using the Net Promoter Score®¸
Lastly, we learn more about the organizational patterns of progressive companies. Have a successful 2018!
🏆 The Tip of the Week: Scrum 2018
(via Scrum Alliance): Download: 2017-18 State of Scrum Report
Scrum Alliance published the ‘State of Scrum 2017-2018’ report based on the feedback of more than 2,000 agile professionals.
Agile & Scrum 2018
(via Hackernoon): Scrum is the Best Thing in the Whole Wide World
John Cutler reflects on Scrum and how it is perceived, sold and practiced at the moment.
and : A Summary of the 10 Scrum Myths
Barry Overeem and Christiaan Verwijs provide a handy summary of ten persistent Scrum myths.
(via Corporate Rebels): On What We Learned This Year: The 8 Habits Of Highly Progressive Workplaces
Corporate Rebels identified eight habits which distinguish the progressive organizations from the others.
📯 Lipstick Agile — Happiness in the Trenches?
Have you noticed how many people in the agile field are unhappy with their work situation — caught in a lipstick agile situation where an organization already struggles doing agile? (Not to mention ‘becoming agile.’)
Scrum masters, and agile coaches who are close to either burnout or indifference. Product owners who “own” the product by name only, and developers who are questioning why Scrum a) skips all the practices that make XP work, and b) often turns out to be just another form of micromanagement.
📕 Now Available: ‘How to Get Hired as a Scrum Master’
Scrum Master Career: How to Get Hired as a Scrum Master: From Job Ads to Your Trial Day — Learn How to Pick the Right Employer or Client details how Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches can systematically identify suitable employers or clients to avoid mismatches and disappointments at a later stage. If you are planning a career move into the Scrum Master profession, don’t miss out on these tips.
Scrum Master Career: How to Get Hired as a Scrum Master is currently available as a Kindle ebook. Shortly, the paperback version will be available, too.
Product & Lean
(via Noteworthy): How To Design a Bulletproof Product Strategy
Richard Banfield shares his view of why an excellent product strategy isn’t the domain of mythological heroes.
: How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Design Thinking
Christina Wodtke on why she no longer believes that ‘design thinking’ is merely a smart rebranding effort by IDEO to charge twice as much.
(via Reforge): The Growth Experiment Management System that Tripled Our Testing Velocity
Joey DeBruin and his team built an experimentation system that costs virtually nothing and allows to accelerate learning massively.
: Net Promoter Score® Considered Harmful (and What UX Professionals Can Do About It)
Jared Spool takes on the most beloved product success metric—the Net Promoter Score®—and reveals its flaws.
✋ Do Not Miss Out: Join the 2,260-plus Strong ‘Hands-on Agile’ Slack Team
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Last Week’s Food for Agile Thought Edition
Read more: Food for Agile Thought #122: Top Agile Blogs, Stop Playing with Teams, Steve Jobs on Self-Management.