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Food for Agile Thought #188: Scrum Roots, Alignment & Agile, A/B Testing’s Dark Side, Hero’s Journey

Food for Agile Thought’s issue #188—shared with 21,733 peers—delves into Scrum roots, the perils caused by a ubiquitous misconception of ‘Agile,’ and how to tackle typical organizational anti-patterns impeding the collaboration of multiple Scrum teams.

Moreover, we analyze the dark side of A/B testing, we learn about a new framework claiming to be able to predict the future success of new products, and we embrace the idea of the ‘Hero’s Journey’ to understand our users’ way of interacting with our applications better.

Lastly, we reflect on the lessons learned from WeWork’s CTO on how to scale technology and the organization simultaneously.

Did you miss last week’s Food for Agile Thought’s issue #187?

🏆The Essential Read: Scrum Roots

Jeff Sutherland (via Scrum Inc): Why Less Communication is Better!

Jeff Sutherland reflects on the roots of Scrum, Auftragstaktik, and why more communication is terrible, referring to Jeff Bezos.

The roots of Scrum lie in fighter pilot training and that training was based on the work of John Boyd, the world’s greatest fighter pilot.

Agile & Scrum Roots

Dave Dame (via Scrum.org): What Good is Agility without Alignment?

Dave Dame reflects on why the typical misconception that ‘Agile’ is about speed is shortsighted, causing a bigger problem—misalignment.

Randy Shoup (via GitPrime): Scaling Technology and Organizations Together

Randy Shoup unpacks several strategies that organizations can undertake as they grow to scale as painlessly as possible.

Roland Flemm (via Scrum.org): How I transformed ‘multiple Scrum teams’ into ‘multiple team Scrum’

Roland Flemm shares some common collaboration problems—from the lack of product focus to poor release management to component ownership—and how to overcome those.

Product & Lean

Alex Weinstein (via Venturebeat): The dark side of A/B testing

Alex Weinstein pokes holes in one of the most sacred practices in tech, A/B testing.

(via Board of Innovation): How to predict the future success of new products?

Nick De Mey advocates using the 'Value Disc' to predict the future success of new products.

John Rhea (via Smashing Magazine): The User’s Perspective: Using Story Structure To Stand In Your User’s Shoes

John Rhea applies a simple structure— Joseph Campbell ‘Hero’s Journey’—to walk in the user’s shoes and understand where and how they interact with our websites.

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🗞️ Last Week’s Food for Agile Thought Edition

Read more: Food for Agile Thought #187: Agile ROI, Failure of Focus, Flow & Value, Dynamic Reteaming Works.

Categories: News
Stefan Wolpers: Stefan, based near Hamburg, Germany, has worked for 18-plus years as a Product Manager, Product Owner, Agile Coach, and Scrum Master. He is a Professional Scrum Trainer (PST) with Scrum.org and the author of Pearson’s “Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide.” He has developed B2C as well as B2B software, for startups as well as corporations, including a former Google subsidiary. Stefan curates the ‘Food for Agile Thought’ newsletter and organizes the Hands-on Agile Conference, a Barcamp for agile practitioners.
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