TL; DR: Spotify Model Fallacy, Pirates & Leadership—Food for Agile Thought #294
Welcome to the 294th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 31,412 peers. This week, we dissect the Spotify model fallacy. (By the way, Spotify is no longer using product squads.) We also point at the forward-thinking approach of pirates regarding governance and self-management and why some people have difficulties embracing the idea of autonomous action by self-directed individuals.
We then learn the two only ways of pushing back requests to build features to close deals. Moreover, we list core principles that come with experimentation and what it takes to drive the change; finally, we analyze the popular leadership fallacy to mandate creating ‘innovative feature,’ probably, with a timeline, incentivized by OKRs.
Lastly, we delve into the origins of feature creep, adding on top of the usual suspects—such as gold-plating—the difficulties that distributed teams face. (See also Gold-Plating Beyond Done — Making Your Scrum Work #7.)
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🏆 The Tip of the Week: Spotify Model Fallacy
(via Chameleon): Why Spotify Squads Are a Popular Failure for Product Teams
Ray Slater Berry, Nasko Terziev, and Ben Paton dissect the original ‘Spotify model.’ By the way, Spotify is no longer using product squads.
➿ Agile & Scrum
: What Pirates Have to Teach Us About Leadership
Francesca Gino points at the forward-thinking approach of pirates regarding governance and self-management.
(via Corporate Rebels): Some Can Handle Self-Management. Some Can't. Here's Why.
Joost Minnaar shares further insights originating from his Ph.D. thesis and why some people have difficulties embracing the idea of autonomous action by self-directed individuals.
(via Agile Alliance): The Changing Role of the Agile Coach
Derk-Jan de Grood shares a success story of guiding an organization to becoming agile and what the path meant for the role of the agile coach.
🎓 🖥 🇩🇪 Professional Scrum Master Training w/ PSM I Certificate — Live Virtual Class: June 15-18, 2021
Discover Scrum’s four success principles in this official Scrum.org Professional Scrum Master training class, leading to and including the industry-recognized PSM I certification. The training is designed as a live virtual class of four sessions from 9:00 am to 1:00 pm CEST and will be offered in German.
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🎯 Product
: Building Stuff to Close Deals
John Cutler points at the two only ways of pushing back to these requests: have a) a compelling product strategy and b) a track record of noticeable impact.
: Think Learning, Not Experiments
Itamar Gilad shares core principles that come with experimentation and what it takes to drive the change.
: We Can’t Schedule Innovation, But We Can Schedule Discovery
Rich Mironov analyzes the popular leadership fallacy to mandate creating ‘innovative feature,’ probably, with a timeline, incentivized by OKRs.
(via Stack Overflow): How to prevent scope creep when managing a project from home
In this article, Owen Jones delves into the origins of feature creep, adding on top of the usual suspects—such as gold-plating—the difficulties that distributed teams face.
📯 Why Scrum Requires a Failure Culture — Making Your Scrum Work #10
There are plenty of failure possibilities with Scrum. Given that Scrum is a framework with a reasonable yet short “manual,” this effect should not surprise anyone. To make things worse, a crucial success factor of every Scrum team is not even mentioned in the Scrum Guide: Any organization that wants to employ Scrum to learn faster than its competitors needs to have a solid failure culture.
📺 Join me and explore the consequences of not living a failure culture in less than three minutes.
Learn more: Why Scrum Requires a Failure Culture — Making Your Scrum Work #10.
📺 Also: The Frustrated Scrum Master — When all the Effort Leads Nowhere.
🛠 Tools & Measuring
I am afraid, this week, there is nothing to list here.
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- 🆕 Hands-on Agile #30: Making Your Scrum Work—The Product Backlog Forensic Analysis.
- 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.
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