Food for Agile Thought #150: The Agile Manager, Changing Culture, Product Prioritization

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.

Have a great week!

Food for Agile Thought #150: The Agile Manager, Changing Culture, Product Prioritization

🏆 The Essential Read

(via McKinsey Quarterly): The agile manager

McKinsey Quarterly looks at the ‘Spotify’ model from the perspective of the incumbent middle management. (Probably not realizing that there is no ‘Spotify’ model.)

Agile Manager & Scrum

Jutta Eckstein (via Agile Alliance): Changing the Culture by Changing Habits

Jutta Eckstein and John Buck point to the fact that culture will not change by propagating different values, but by changing habits and behaviors.

Michael Sahota: How To Change Your Organizational Culture

Michael Sahota claims there are the six essential steps to change your organization’s culture.

Ron Jeffries: Iterative and Incremental

Ron Jeffries details why Scrum and eXtreme Programming are both iterative and incremental.

📯 Agile Transformation: Mastery, Autonomy & Purpose

Master autonomy purpose — in this article, Michael Gibson presents a slightly different way of viewing agile maturity, through Dan Pink’s lens of Mastery, Autonomy, and Purpose; as a simple and useful way of fostering conversations and ensuring all relevant perspectives are considered.

Mastery Autonomy Purpose — Age-of-Product

Read more: Agile Transformation: Mastery, Autonomy & Purpose.

Product & Lean

Scott Hurff (via O'Reilly Radar): How to decide what product to build

Scott Hurff shares the third chapter from his book ‘Designing Products People Love.’

John Cutler (via Medium): Just One More Sprint!?

John Cutler highlights some fundamental product development prioritization concepts.

Andrew Chen: Required reading for marketplace startups: The 20 best essays

Andrew Chen of a16z shares a great curation of articles on how to create and grow marketplaces.

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🗞️ Last Week’s Food for Agile Thought Edition

Read more: Food for Agile Thought #149: Multitasking Fallacy, Scaling Scrum, Agile Is a Cult, Agile Org Design.

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