TL; DR: Scaling Agility, Product Team Health—Food for Agile Thought #298
Welcome to the 298th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 31,941 peers. This week, we advise how to create a system of interdependent agile teams also know as scaling agility. In addition, we advocate for a budgeting approach that will not impede your organization’s agile transformation, and we enjoy a moment of serendipity: Don’t use a big-name consultancy to support agile transformations and beware of their playbooks.
We then provide actionable advice on dealing with a CEO’s worldview that is impeding your product team; we delve into validation, de-risking, and when to use what, and we reflect on the short shelf life many solutions in today’s volatile environment have and how you may counter that effect.
Lastly, we appreciate a set of signals that hint at your product team’s progress in becoming more effective.
Did you miss the previous Food for Agile Thought’s issue #297?
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🏆 The Tip of the Week: Rebels Spark Ideas
Scaling Agility
:James Shore advises on how to create a system of interdependent agile teams or large-scale Agile.
➿ Agile & Scrum
Agile Alliance): Overcoming One-Size-Fits-All Budgeting
and (viaJutta Eckstein, Hendrik Esser, and Eric Abelen advocate for a budgeting approach that will not impede your organization’s agile transformation.
(via InfoQ): Leveraging Small Teams to Scale Agility - a Red Hat Case Study
Dominika Bula shares the success story of Red Hat’s platform engineering organization becoming agile.
(via Cutter Consortium): Ingredients for Enterprise Agility, Part V: Coaching Transformational Change
Jon Ward will make your day: Don’t use a big-name consultancy and beware of playbooks.
🎓 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Professional Scrum Master Online Training w/ PSM I Certificate: July 13-16, 2021
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🎯 Product
Difficult Product Discussions with CEOs
:Rich Mironov provides actionable advice on dealing with a CEO’s worldview that is impeding your product team.
Why ‘validate your idea’ is bad advice
:Linda Zhang delves into validation, de-risking, and when to use what.
Smashing Magazine): The Rise Of Design Thinking As A Problem Solving Strategy
(viaJosh Singer reflects on the short shelf life many solutions in today’s volatile environment have and how you may counter that effect.
📯 Scrum Master Skills: Visualizing the Cost of Team Building with the Tuckman Model
"A picture is worth a thousand words." Probably, we have all heard that piece of wisdom before. In my experience, having some — even rudimentary — sketching or drawing capabilities is an essential Scrum Master skill. Visualizing a tricky issue while explaining the background to a stakeholder, someone from the management or a teammate helps to pave the way to have a meaningful discussion.
Let me introduce you to an example sketch based on the Tuckman model of group dynamics I use in my Professional Scrum Master training classes to make the effort and cost of creating a Scrum team easier understandable.
Learn more: Scrum Master Skills: Visualizing the Cost of Team Building with the Tuckman Model.
🛠 Tools & Measuring
Product Team Health (and Performance) ‘Signals’
:John Cutler shares a set of signals that hint at your product team’s progress in becoming more effective.
UX Collective): Product Metrics That Matter. The power of metrics entered Product…
(viaCláudia Delgado wrote a summary on the rise of product metrics and how they revolutionized feedback loops and accelerated learning.
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Now available on the Age-of-Product Youtube channel:
- 🆕 Agile Camp Berlin 2021: Increasing the Velocity of Value with Dave West.
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- 🆕 Agile Camp Berlin 2021: Real Cross-functional Teams for Creating real and better Products with Jutta Eckstein and Maryse Meinen.
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