Food for Agile Thought #270: Productive Uncertainty, Conway’s Law and Org Design for Success, Agile’s Intangibles, WSJF Prioritization

TL; DR: Agile’s Intangibles, Productive Uncertainty — Food for Agile Thought #270

Welcome to the 270th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 28,431 peers. This week, we cover Agile’s intangibles; we delve into innovation, risk mitigation, and creating value, and we analyze prerequisites of successful agile transformations at an organizational level.

We then learn about a developer’s perspective on what it takes to build a successful product development team. Also, we explore a handy tool for ordering Product Backlogs beyond the usual suspects like Cost of Delay, Kano model, or RICE, and we ask: “What else about product [management] is as ‘simple as it sounds’ but needs to be learned? Why do we fall into these traps?”

📺 Lastly, the recording of the 28th Hands-on Agile meetup on the Scrum Guide 2020’s eight remarkable changes is available.

Did you miss last week’s Food for Agile Thought’s issue #269?

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🏆 The Tip of the Week

Jerry Neumann: Productive Uncertainty

Jerry Neumann delves into innovation, risk mitigation, creating value, and how uncertainty from novelty or systemic complexity may help along the way. Although the article is rather startup-focused, the author describes an exciting strategy to defend the original innovation once the uncertainty is mitigated, represented by four questions. This approach could be an opportunity to apply Liberating Structures’ Critical Uncertainties.

Source: Productive Uncertainty

Author: Jerry Neumann

Agile & Scrum

Mike Griffiths: Illuminating the Intangibles of Agile

Mike Griffiths elaborates on the two most important reasons for a failed agile transformation at an organizational level. Unfortunately, we know them both as we encounter them regularly.

Source: Illuminating the Intangibles of Agile

Author: Mike Griffiths

Erich Bühler (via Kanban Zone): Mental Agility and Business Agility: Everything You Need to Know To Create a Resilient Organization

Erich Bühler analyzes prerequisites of successful agile transformations at an organizational level.

Source: Kanban Zone: Mental Agility and Business Agility: Everything You Need to Know To Create a Resilient Organization

Author: Erich Bühler

Gene Kim, Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais: Conway’s Law: Critical for Efficient Team Design in Tech

In an excerpt from their book ‘Team Topologies,’ Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais share their view on how to mitigate the effects of Conway’s law by designing organizations to maximize for fast flow.

Source: Conway’s Law: Critical for Efficient Team Design in Tech

Authors: Gene Kim, Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais

📅 🖥 💯 🇩🇪 Professional Scrum Master Training PSM I — Online: December 15-18, 2020

This guaranteed Professional Scrum Master training is an official Scrum.org class that leads to and includes the industry-recognized PSM I certification. The training is designed as a live virtual class of 4 hours per day and will be offered in German.

Learn more: 📅 🖥 💯 🇩🇪 Professional Scrum Master Training PSM I — Online: December 15-18, 2020.

Product & Lean

(via Mind The Product): 📺 Building Successful Product Development Teams

Simon Colmer shares a developer’s perspective on what it takes to build a successful product development team.

Source: Mind The Product: 📺 Building Successful Product Development Teams

J.A. Becker (via Product Coalition): WSJF — Weighted Shortest Job First Prioritization Framework

J.A. Becker describes a handy tool for ordering Product Backlogs beyond the usual suspects like Cost of Delay, Kano model, or RICE.

Source: Product Coalition: WSJF — Weighted Shortest Job First Prioritization Framework

Author: J.A. Becker

John Cutler: Thinking Like a Designer/Product Manager

John Cutler uses the idea of maturity models to ask, ‘What else about product [management] is as ‘simple as it sounds’ but needs to be learned? Why do we fall into these traps?’

Source: Thinking Like a Designer/Product Manager

Author: John Cutler

📯 70 Scrum Master Theses

The following 70 Scrum Master theses describe the role of a holistic product creation perspective.

The theses cover the accountabilities of the Scrum Master from product discovery to product delivery in a hands-on practical manner. On the one side, they address typical Scrum events such as Sprint Planning, Sprint Review, and the Sprint Retrospective. On the other hand, the Scrum Master theses also cover, for example, the relationship with the Product Owner, they deal with agile metrics, and how to kick-off an agile transition, thus moving beyond the original framework of the Scrum Guide.

Learn more: 70 Scrum Master Theses

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.

📺 Join 2,500-plus Agile Peers on Youtube

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

• 🆕 Scrum Guide 2020: Eight Remarkable Changes — Hands-on Agile #28.
• Remote Agile (1) Replay: Practices and Tools for Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches, and Product Owners.
• Scrum Sprint Retrospective Anti-Patterns.

✋ Do Not Miss Out and Learn about Agile’s Intangibles: Join the 8,700-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 #269: Estimating Cost of Delay, Re-Teaming, Measuring Real Progress, Is Your C-Level Getting Scrum?.