Food for Agile Thought #181: Dark Agile, Agile Governance, Scrum Master Trends Report, Product Reviews

Food for Agile Thought’s issue #181—shared with 21,092 peers—addresses transparency, the lack thereof and other forms of dark agile. Moreover, we get a backstage view at the Scrum Master Trends Report, and we borrow from Atlassian’s team health tool.

We also get some new ideas about how to create product reviews people like to participate in; we refresh our memory why the traditional governance approach is unsuited for ’agile,’ and embrace the idea that product launches do not have to be a troublesome thing.

Lastly, Ron Jeffries asks what the agile community can do to reach out to those practitioners who haven’t yet experienced the real thing as outlined in the Manifesto for Agile Software Development. What are your thoughts?

Did you miss last week’s Food for Agile Thought’s issue #180?

Food for Agile Thought #181: Dark Agile, Agile Governance, Scrum Master Trends Report, Product Reviews

🏆 The Essential Read

Dave West and Stefan Wolpers (via InfoQ): 2019 Scrum Master Trends Report Published

InfoQ interviews Dave West and me on the key findings of the 2019 Scrum Master Trends Report.


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Dark Agile & Scrum

Ron Jeffries: Responsibility – for our non-students?

Ron Jeffries contemplates on the responsibilities of the community regarding ‘agile’ teams that have never been in contact with the real thing before.

Jeremy Jarrell: Spotting the Dark Matter Tasks on Your Team

Jeremy Jarrell points at the importance of transparency to avoid waste.

Archana Rao (via Atlassian): The simple, powerful way to boost your IT team's performance

Archana Rao explains how to use Atlassian’s health check tool for teams and why it is beneficial for everyone.

From the Blog: 📯 Technical Debt & Scrum

If technical debt is the plague of our industry, why isn’t the Scrum Guide addressing the question of who is responsibly dealing with it? To make things worse, if the Product Owner’s responsibility is to maximize the value customers derive from the Development Team’s work, and the Development Team’s responsibility is to deliver a product Increment (at least) at the end of the sprint adhering to the definition of “Done,” aren’t those two responsibilities possibly causing a conflict of interest?

This post analyzes the situation by going back to first principles, as laid out in the Scrum Guide to answer a simple question: Who is responsible for keeping technical debt at bay in a Scrum Team?

Technical Debt & Scrum: Who Is Responsible?

Read more: Technical Debt & Scrum: Who Is Responsible?

Product & Lean

Johanna Rothman: Cost vs Value Measurements for Agile Approaches

Johanna Rothman reflects on value, cost of delay, complexity, and why the traditional governance approach is unsuited for ’agile.’

Dan Slate (via Medium): Running Product Reviews People Actually Look Forward To

Dan Slate shares his strategy for running effective product reviews to create an empowered product culture.

Derek Gleason (via CXL): Product Launches: 5 Unexpected Lessons from the Real World

Derek Gleason notes that while product launches are a risk, they’re not as risky as you might think.

📺 Join 1,200-plus Agile Peers on Youtube

Now available on the Age-of-Product Youtube channel:

✋ Do Not Miss Out and Learn about Dark Agile: Join the 4,875-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.

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

If you like to join 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 #180: Micromanagement Perils, Scaling Agile Teams, Impact vs. Output, MVP Viability

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