Food for Agile Thought #294: The Spotify Model Fallacy, Pirates & Leadership, Building Stuff to Close Deals, Scheduling Innovation?

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.)

Food for Agile Thought #294: The Spotify Model Fallacy, Pirates & Leadership, Building Stuff to Close Deals, Scheduling Innovation? — Age-of-Product.com

Did you miss the previous Food for Agile Thought’s issue #293?

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Hands-on Agile #32: How to Win with Agile Resistant Teams—Scott Weiner

Join more us on July 6, 2021, for the Hands-on Agile #32: How to Win with Agile Resistant Teams—Scott Weiner.

🏆 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

Francesca Gino: What Pirates Have to Teach Us About Leadership

Francesca Gino points at the forward-thinking approach of pirates regarding governance and self-management.

Joost Minnaar (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.

Derk-Jan de Grood (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.

🖥 🇩🇪 Professional Scrum Master Training w/ PSM I Certificate — Live Virtual Class: June 15-18, 2021 — Berlin Product People GmbH

Learn more: 🖥 🇩🇪 Professional Scrum Master Training w/ PSM I Certificate — Live Virtual Class: June 15-18, 2021.

Kundenstimmen: “The class with Stefan was very well structured, delivering a helpful hands-on approach to all the Scrum basics. He managed to cover participants with different levels of expertise and from various fields easily and delivered knew knowledge and value to all of them from my point of view. The culture during these four days was excellent, so that everyone felt capable to speak up. Very much worth the invested time and money!” (Link.)

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🎯 Product

John Cutler: 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.

Itamar Gilad: Think Learning, Not Experiments

Itamar Gilad shares core principles that come with experimentation and what it takes to drive the change.

Rich Mironov: 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.

Scrum Failure Culture: A Requirement — Making Your Scrum Work #11 — Age-of-Product.com

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.

📅 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
🖥 💯 🇬🇧 April 2-30, 2024 GUARANTEED: Product Backlog Management Cohort Class (English; Live Virtual Class) Live Virtual Class €499 incl. 19% VAT
🖥 💯 🇬🇧 April 9, 2024 GUARANTEED: Hands-on Agile #60: A Q&A on Dynamic Reteaming with Heidi Helfand (English) Live Virtual Meetup FREE
🖥 💯 🇩🇪 April 10-11, 2024 GUARANTEED: Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German; Live Virtual Class) Live Virtual Class €1,299 incl. 19% VAT
🖥 💯 🇬🇧 April 23-24, 2024 GUARANTEED: Professional Scrum Master (Advanced) Training (PSM II; English; Live Virtual Class) Live Virtual Class €1,299 incl. 19% VAT
🖥 💯 🇬🇧 May 7, 2024 GUARANTEED: Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills Training (PSFS; English; Live Virtual Class) Live Virtual Class €749 incl. 19% VAT
🖥 💯 🇬🇧 May 7, 2024 GUARANTEED: Hands-on Agile #61: Toyota Kata Coaching for Agile Teams & Transformations with Fortune Buchholtz (English) Live Virtual Meetup FREE
🖥 🇩🇪 May 14-15, 2024 Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German; Live Virtual Class) Live Virtual Class €1,299 incl. 19% VAT
🖥 🇬🇧 May 28-29, 2024 Professional Scrum Master (Advanced) Training (PSM II; English; Live Virtual Class) Live Virtual Class €1,189 incl. 19% VAT
🖥 💯 🇬🇧 June 6, 2024 GUARANTEED: Hands-on Agile #62: From Backlog Manager to Product Manager: From Outputs to Outcomes w/ David Pereira (English) Live Virtual Meetup FREE
🖥 🇩🇪 June 25-26, 2024 Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German; Live Virtual Class) Live Virtual Class €1,299 incl. 19% VAT

See all upcoming classes here.

Professional Scrum Training by PST Stefan Wolpers, Berlin  Product People

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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✋ Do Not Miss Out and Learn more about the Spotify Model Fallacy — Join the 10,000-plus Strong ‘Hands-on Agile’ Slack Community

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🗞️ Last Week’s Food for Agile Thought Edition

Read more: Food for Agile Thought #293: Success Metrics, Maker-User-Gap, Strategy and Outcomes, Stakeholder Map Templates.

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