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Food for Agile Thought #197: Agile Decision Making, Project Sabotage, Agile in 1972, Customer Centricity Fad

Food for Agile Thought’s issue #197—shared with 22,468 peers—delves into agile decision making when there is no apparent right answer; we are inspired by a saboteur’s manual to check our projects for similar indications and we go back to a classic on agility from 1972. (Yes, there is life before the Manifesto.)

We also learn about the opportunities that a recent pre-packaged management fad bears for UX folks; we check a flowchart on product prioritization, and we get a better understanding on what companies believe product managers do all day.

Lastly, we applaud Marty Cagan on yet another encouraging video on the challenges product menschen face every.

Did you miss last week’s Food for Agile Thought’s issue #196?

🏆 The Essential Read

Marty Cagan (via Mind The Product): 📺 Product is Hard

Marty Cagan reflects on why Agile and Lean won’t solve all your problems and to how to get your product right anyway.

Agile Decision Making & Scrum

Roman Imankulov (via Doist): Principles for Decision-Making in a Flat Organization

Roman Imankulov shares his experience on agile decision making: How to decide with a group of people when there is no obvious right answer.

We don’t try to reach consensus […] as an end in itself. We use consensus-building as a tool to get to the best technical (and sometimes procedural) outcome when we make decisions.

Kai Gilb: The Happy Project Saboteur

Kai Gilb provides an intuitive list of means, approaches, and mental models on how to kill any project.

(via Harvard Business Review): Evolution and Revolution as Organizations Grow

Another proof that ‘Agile’ is not a new concept—see phase 5—without even mentioning the term: an article by Larry E. Greiner from 1972, republished in 1998 as a ‘classic.’

📅 Scrum Training & Event Schedule

You can secure your seat for Scrum training classes, workshops, and meetups directly by following the corresponding link in the table below:

Date Class and Language City Price
🖥 💯 🇬🇧 November 21, 2024 GUARANTEED: Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills Class (PSFS; English; Live Virtual Class) Live Virtual Class €749 incl. 19% VAT
🖥 💯 🇩🇪 December 10-11, 2024 GUARANTEED: Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German; Live Virtual Class) Live Virtual Class €1,299 incl. 19% VAT
🖥 💯 🇩🇪 December 12, 2024 GUARANTEED: Professional Product Discovery and Validation Class (PPDV; German; Live Virtual Class) Live Virtual Class €749 incl. 19% VAT
🖥 💯 🇬🇧 December 18-19, 2024 GUARANTEED: Professional Scrum Master Advanced Training (PSM II; English; Live Virtual Class) Live Virtual Class €1,299 incl. 19% VAT
🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Feburary 4-6, 2025 GUARANTEED: Hands-on Agile 2025: From Concept-Based to Context-Based Agility (English) Live Virtual Conference FREE
🖥 🇩🇪 January 28-31, 2025 Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German; Live Virtual Class) Live Virtual Class €1,299 incl. 19% VAT
🖥 🇬🇧 February 12-13, 2025 Professional Scrum Master Advanced Training (PSM II; English; Live Virtual Class) Live Virtual Class €1,299 incl. 19% VAT

You can book your seat for the training directly by following the corresponding links to the ticket shop. If the procurement process of your organization requires a different purchasing process, please contact Berlin Product People GmbH directly.


Product & Lean

Jared Spool (via Medium): Customer Centricity — The Management Fad We Can Hop On

Jared Spool believes that customer centricity opens the door for UX leaders to promote and spread critical UX strategies.

Christine Itwaru (via ProductCraft): Flowchart: Should We Build This Feature?

Christine Itwaru created a decision support model to help with answering the old question: shall we build it?

Hiten Shah (via Product Habits): How 51 leading tech teams define the Product Manager role

Product Habits analyzed 51 job postings from tech companies in Silicon Valley for what tasks companies are hiring product managers.

📺 Join 1,450-plus Agile Peers on Youtube

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

✋ Do Not Miss Out and Learn about Agile Decision Making: Join the 5,550-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 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 #196: Internet Trends 2019, Agile Coach Types, Alignment & Shared Understanding, Roadmap Agility Checklist.

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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