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Food for Agile Thought #236: Back to Agile Roots, Zoom’s Bad Rep, Tech Mercenaries, Dealing w/ Uncertainty

TL; DR: Back to Agile Roots, Zoom’s Bad Rep—Food for Agile Thought #236

Welcome to the 236th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 26,031 peers. This week, we explore how the adoption of Agile outside the software industry may have cut the agile roots; we are pleased to learn that Zoom’s CEO got the memo, and we embrace Strategy Knotworking to inspect and adapt our plans in uncertain times.

We also reflect on how to best deal with difficult people; we oppose the idea that tech, design, and product are infighting factions, and we learn more about genuine innovation beyond mercenary engineers implementing stakeholder requirements.

Lastly, we applaud Shane Parrish for pointing at the obvious: that merely excelling at one thing might prove to be tricky in a VUCA world.

Did you miss last week’s Food for Agile Thought’s issue #235?

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🏆 The Tip of the Week: Future Remote Work

Dave Snowden (via Lean Agile Brighton): 📺 Doctrine, Domesticity and Delinquency; Returning Agile to the Wild

In this talk, Dave Snowden asks whether Agile is all lost or if we can get back the original inspiration of the Agile Manifesto.

Agile Roots & Scrum

Eric S. Yuan (via Zoom): A Message to Our Users

Zoom’s founder and CEO promises to deal with the privacy issues starting immediately.

Barry Overeem (via The Liberators): Moving Forward in a New and Uncertain World

Barry Overeem shares how The Liberators applied Liberating Structures’ Strategy Knotworking to inspect the present and adapt to the new circumstances.

Shane Parrish (via Farnam Street): Preserving Optionality: Preparing for the Unknown

Shane Parrish advocates that — as the future gets harder to predict — preserving optionality allows us to pivot when the road ahead crumbles.

📅 🖥 Book Your Seat for the Distributed Agile Masterclass: Practices, Tools & virtual Liberating Structures

The live virtual class on “Remote Agile” addresses tips, tricks, and tools for Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches, and Product Owners on how to facilitate agile events effectively. The training class is organized in three blocks of 2.5 hours each within two weeks. You can book your seat right here:

June 23, June 30, and July 7, 2020, 4:00 pm to 6:30 pm CEST:

Terms and conditions apply.

Learn more: 📅 Distributed Agile Training — A Live Virtual Masterclass.

Product & Lean

Marty Cagan: The Role of Technology

Marty Cagan delves into software is eating the world, mercenary engineers, roadmaps of stakeholder requirements, and genuine innovation.

Roman Pichler: Dealing with Difficult Emotions in Product Management

Roman Pichler reflects on how to learn dealing with difficult people constructively.

Ant Murphy (via Product Coalition): ‘Product vs Design vs Tech’: A Partnership, not a Battlefield

Anthony Murphy shares his take on what high performing product teams look like.

📯 Remote Agile (Part 3): Mastering Zoom

In this third post of the Remote Agile series, we address the tool at the heart of working with a distributed team as a Scrum Master, Agile Coach, or Product Owner: Zoom. While Zoom is an excellent video conference application—particularly for larger groups of twelve or more attendees—by all standards, its killer feature is breakout rooms. Turning a more or less passive audience into engaged collaborators where everyone is included and has a voice makes the difference between a successful facilitator and someone who fails to adapt to a new situation. Let’s have a look at what mastering Zoom is all about.

Read more: 📅 🖥 Remote Agile (Part 3): Mastering Zoom.

📅 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
🖥 🇩🇪 January 28-31, 2025 Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German; 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
🖥 🇬🇧 February 12-13, 2025 Professional Scrum Master Advanced Training (PSM II; English; Live Virtual Class) Live Virtual Class €1,299 incl. 19% VAT
🖥 💯 🇬🇧 February 27, 2025 GUARANTEED: Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills Class (PSFS; English; Live Virtual Class) Live Virtual Class €749 incl. 19% VAT
🖥 💯 🇬🇧 March 6-April3, 2025 GUARANTEED: Align, Discover, Deliver: The Product Backlog Management Cohort Class (English; Live Virtual Class) Live Virtual Cohort €499 incl. 19% VAT
🖥 🇩🇪 March 11-12, 2025 Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German; Live Virtual Class) Live Virtual Class €1,299 incl. 19% VAT
🖥 🇬🇧 March 26-27, 2025 Professional Scrum Master Advanced Training (PSM II; English; Live Virtual Class) Live Virtual Class €1,299 incl. 19% VAT
🖥 🇩🇪 April 10, 2025 Professional Product Discovery and Validation Class (PPDV; German; Live Virtual Class) Live Virtual Class €749 incl. 19% VAT

See all upcoming classes here.

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.


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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 #235: Future Remote Work, Cynefin 2020, Your Family Is not a Scrum Team, Escape from the Feature Factory.

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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