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Food for Agile Thought #306: Selling Product’s Success, Method and Framework Prison, Better NPS Surveys, Five Hacks for Your Time

TL; DR: Selling Product’s Success, Method and Framework Prison — Food for Agile Thought #306

Welcome to the 306th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 32,841 peers. This week, we delve into selling Product’s success. Also, we apply David Marguest’s ‘thinking time’ and ‘doing time’ concepts to Scrum events, and we learn what we can do to escape the craziness of methods and frameworks.

We then describe how Intercom changed its NPS strategy to provide helpful customer insights across the company; we share Dovetail’s success story of turning a massive set of qualitative data into an actionable roadmap, and we discuss ethical principles to guide your user research.

Lastly, we share a list of tips and tricks to get more out of your working day without putting in more hours, and we point to the importance of understanding the information cascade and its effect on popular estimation techniques.

Did you miss the previous Food for Agile Thought’s issue #305?

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🎓 Join Stefan in one of his upcoming Professional Scrum training classes!

📅 Join us on September 7, 2021: Hands-on Agile #34: Core Protocols for Psychological Safety with Richard Kasperowski.

🏆 The Tip of the Week: Selling Product’s Success

Rich Mironov: Merchandizing Product Management

Rich Mironov advocates communicating the successes of the PM folks within organizations to gain the respect and the support of stakeholders.

➿ Agile & Scrum

Takeshi Yoshida (via Medium): Separating Thinking & Doing Time: Learnings from David Marquet’s ‘Blue & Red Work’

Takeshi Yoshida applies David Marguest’s ‘thinking time’ and ‘doing time’ concepts to Scrum events.

Ivar Jacobson (via InfoQ): 🎙 The Craziness of Methods and Frameworks, and What to Do Instead

In this podcast, Shane Hastie interviews Ivar Jacobson on what we can do to escape the method prison, which he believes is hurting the software profession.

Kjell Tore Guttormsen (via Management 3.0): What is Servant Leadership?

Kjell Tore Guttormsen delves into ‘Servant Leadership’ and what it practically means to become a servant leader.

🎓 🖥 🇬🇧 Advanced Professional Scrum Master Online Training w/ PSM II Certificate — August 24-27, 2021

Discover Scrum’s four success principles in this guaranteed official Scrum.org Advanced Scrum Master training class including the industry-recognized PSM II certification. The PSM II training class is designed as a live virtual class of four sessions from 9 am to 1 pm CEST and will be offered in English.

Learn more: 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Advanced Professional Scrum Master Online Training w/ PSM II Certificate — August 24-27, 2021.

Customer voices: “Fantastic course with Stefan – I specifically chose to join the class that he was facilitating as I was familiar with him from the Age of Product and have enjoyed and learned from lots of his articles. He didn’t disappoint. Hugely knowledgeable and the delivery of the various elements of learning via Mural & Liberating Structures was inspiring and shall be plagiarised! A thoroughly enjoyable and thought-provoking learning experience for which I must thank him and the other attendees.” (Link.)

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🎯 Product

Kate Sugrue (via Intercom): From vanity to value: How Intercom conducts NPS surveys

Kate Sugrue describes how Intercom changed its NPS strategy to provide useful customer insights across the company.

(via User Interviews): From Generative Interviews to a Strategic Roadmap with Atomic UX Research

User Interviews shares Dovetail’s success story of turning a massive set of qualitative data into an actionable roadmap.

Devin Harold (via Smashing Magazine): How To Build An Ethical User Research Practice At Any Organization

Devin Harold discusses ethical principles to guide your user research.

📯 UnSMART Improvements at Retrospectives — Making Your Scrum Work #18

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. One area that typically flies under the radar is improvements. While the Scrum Guide encourages addressing the most impactful ones as soon as possible, it is up to the Scrum team to figure out how to improve. One manifestation of this core team task we often encounter is picking unsmart improvements, though.

Join me and delve into the consequences of picking unsmart improvements as a Scrum Team in less than 90 seconds.

Learn more: UnSMART Improvements at Retrospectives — Making Your Scrum Work #18.

🛠 Tools & Measuring

Ron Quartel (via Medium): Why Agile Estimation Methods are Flawed — and what to do about it

Ron Quartel points to the importance of understanding the information cascade and its effect on popular estimation techniques.

Ant Murphy (via Product Coalition): Five Time Management Hacks to Get on Top of Your Day

Ant Murphy shares a list of tips and tricks to get more out of your working day without putting in more hours.

📅 Scrum Training Classes, Workshops, and Events

Date Class and Language City Price
🖥 💯 🇩🇪 April 20-21, 2022 GUARANTEED: Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German; Live Virtual Class) Live Virtual Class €1.189 incl. 19% VAT
🖥 💯 🇩🇪 April 25-26, 2022 GUARANTEED: Professional Agile Leadership Essentials Training (PAL I; German; Live Virtual Class) Live Virtual Class €1.189 incl. 19% VAT
🖥 💯 🇬🇧 May 9-10, 2022 Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; English; Live Virtual Class) Live Virtual Class €1.189 incl. 19% VAT
🖥 💯 🇩🇪 May 17-20, 2022 Advanced Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO-A; German; Live Virtual Class) Live Virtual Class €1.399 incl. 19% VAT
🖥 💯 🇬🇧 May 30, 2022 GUARANTEED: Hands-on Agile 42: The Skinny on Lean Roadmapping and OKRs with Janna Bastow (English; Live Virtual Meetup) Live Virtual Meetup FREE
🖥 🇬🇧 May 31-June 1, 2022 Advanced Professional Scrum Master Online Training (PSM II; English; Live Virtual Class) Live Virtual Class €1.189 incl. 19% VAT
🖥 🇩🇪 June 7-10, 2022 Professional Scrum Master Training (PSM I; German; Live Virtual Class) Live Virtual Class €1.189 incl. 19% VAT
🖥 🇬🇧 June 20-23, 2022 Professional Scrum Master Training (PSM I; English; Live Virtual Class) Live Virtual Class €1.189 incl. 19% VAT
🖥 🇩🇪 June 28-July 1, 2022 Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German; Live Virtual Class) Live Virtual Class €1.189 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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🗞️ Last Week’s Food for Agile Thought Edition

Read more: Food for Agile Thought #305: Coaching Executive Mindsets, Accountability vs. Responsibility, Why Finding Insights Is So Painful, Big Project Syndrome.

Categories: News
Stefan Wolpers: Stefan, based in Berlin, 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 Agile Camp Berlin, a Barcamp for coaches and other agile practitioners.
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