Food for Agile Thought #152: Agile Estimates, #NoEstimates, #WhyEstimates, Product Design Tools, Top-Down or What?

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.)

Have a great week!

Food for Agile Thought #152: Agile Estimates, #NoEstimates, #WhyEstimates, Product Design Tools, Top-Down or What?

🏆 The Essential Read

John Cutler (via Medium): The Canary Dies

John Cutler reflects on a personal pattern of how coaching engagements start—and end.

Agile Estimates & Scrum

Ron Jeffries: #NoEstimates isn't crazy

Ron Jeffries’ view on estimates is simple: they are always waste.

Johanna Rothman (via HPE): IT project estimation techniques that will keep you out of trouble

Johanna Rothman shares how to deliver the ‘right estimate’ if your organization (still) requires estimations.

John Cutler (via Hackernoon): #WhyEstimates

John Cutler’s article lists 20 reasons why estimates may be useful in your organization.

📅 The Agile Fluency Game ™ — August 24th, 2018, in Zurich

Join me in Zurich on August 24th, 2018, for a round of the Agile Fluency Game ™.

The Agile Fluency Game ™ is designed to simulate these situations, gives room to play through these processes in different ways and helps you to make informed and conscious decisions for your organization.

Agile Fluency Game ™ in cooperation with the Swiss Agile Association

Learn more: The Swiss Agile Association presents The Agile Fluency™ Game in Switzerland.

Product & Lean

Laura Klein (via O'Reilly Radar): 9 critical tools for designing a product

Laura Klein shares a chapter from her book ‘UX for Lean Startups: Designing for Validation.’

Rich Mironov: Do Infrastructure Teams Need Product Management?

Rich Mironov advocates that a development team deserves a product manager—why burden an engineer with the associated tasks?

Liz Love (via ProdPad): Product Management approaches: top down, bottom up or both?

Liz Love suggests pursuing a hybrid of the top down as well as the bottom-up PM strategy.

📺 Join 550-plus Agile Peers on Youtube

Now available on the Age of Product Youtube channel:



✋ Do Not Miss Out: Join the 3,650-plus Strong ‘Hands-on Agile’ Slack Team

I invite you to join the “Hands-on Agile” Slack team and enjoy the benefits of a fast-growing, vibrant community of agile practitioners from around the world.

Large scale agile: Join the Hands-on Agile Slack Group

If you like to join now all you have to do now is provide your credentials via this Google form, and I will sign you up. By the way, it’s free.

Scrum Master Interview Question: free download of the most popular ebook on Scrum Master job interviews — by Age-of-Product

🗞️ Last Week’s Food for Agile Thought Edition

Read more: Food for Agile Thought #151: Beyond Budgeting, Open Workspace Horror, Product Vision Principles.

Find this content useful? Share it with your friends!