Food for Agile Thought’s issue #160—shared with 19,162 peers—addresses a need we all share: our whiteboard skills. We also follow Ian Mitchell’s idea to move from predicting a shipping date to providing a likelihood of completion with Monte Carlo forecasting. We also appreciate Ron Jeffries’ thoughts beyond XP and Scrum.
We then revisit a favorite topic—how to deal with our nemesis, the sales folks—, we consider complementing Design Thinking with Scrum, and we learn how to become faster than the competition in identifying the non-obvious, yet lucrative market opportunity.
Lastly, we have another survey running: join 140-plus peers and share your greatest success solving an issue outside your sphere of control.
Have a great week!
🏆 The Essential Read
(via Medium): Learn these two simple techniques that will dramatically improve your whiteboard skills
Yuri Malishenko helps you to become a pro when working with whiteboards.
Agile, Monte Carlo Forecasting & Scrum
: New Framework? XP Revisited? No…
Ron Jeffries shares his recent reflections on agile practices, XP, Scrum, and ‘all that jazz.’
(via Scrum.org): Monte Carlo forecasting in Scrum
Ian Mitchell suggests focussing on the likelihood of completion instead of providing a delivery date to satisfy stakeholders’ curiosity.
: Turn Up The Good with the ”The Good, The Great, and The Amazing” Retrospective
Viktor Cessan created a short retrospective format based upon practices and elements that are already good to make them even better.
Survey: How Do You Solve Impediments?
No matter if you are a Scrum Master or an agile coach, sooner or later, you will run into a problem that’s outside of the team’s sphere of control. The question is: How do you solve impediments of this kind? What approach has worked best for you in the past?
Barry Overeem, Christiaan Verwijs and I teamed up to provide some transparency in this matter and share your best techniques and approach with the agile community. All it takes to contribute is five minutes of your time to participate in the anonymous ‘how to solve impediments’ survey. (We expect results to be available in November.)
Participate in the ‘how to solve impediments’ survey now!
Product & Lean
(via Mind The Product): Relationship Goals: How to Resolve the Tension Between Product Management and Sales
Liz Love suggests three simple steps to turn your relationship with sales around.
(via Medium): Try Design Thinking + Scrum
Takeshi Yoshida believes that Design Thinking and Scrum are complementary agile approaches—why not combine both?
(via First Round Capital): Future Founders, Here’s How to Spot and Build in Nonobvious Markets
Elad Gil on how to find what bucks conventional wisdom before anyone else and scaling it into a high-growth company.
📺 Join 725-plus Agile Peers on Youtube
Now available on the Age-of-Product Youtube channel:
- Agile Maturity and Agility Assessment: Is Agile a Fad or Trend?
- Agile Failure Patterns 2.0
- Product Owner Anti-Patterns
✋ Do Not Miss Out: Join the 3,925-plus Strong ‘Hands-on Agile’ Slack Community
I invite you to join the “Hands-on Agile” Slack Community and enjoy the benefits of a fast-growing, vibrant community of agile practitioners from around the world.
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.
🗞️ Last Week’s Food for Agile Thought Edition
Read more: Food for Agile Thought #159: Agile Industrial Complex, Scrum Team Kick-off, Idea Funnel, Product Discovery..
