Food for Agile Thought #316: Fixed Scope & Date, Yet Agile? Taking a Wedge to the Market, Agile Hangover, Value Stream Mapping Best Practices

TL; DR: Fixed Scope, Yet Agile? Agile Hangover — Food for Agile Thought #316

Welcome to the 316th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 33,419 peers. This week, we ask: Fixed scope & date, yet there is agility? Moreover, we sum up some observations regarding agile transformations, from the beginning of the party to the probably ‘inevitable.’ We also list five stupid yet still popular management practices, from stack ranking to open offices, and we share seven principles and five steps to enhance your change leadership skills.

We then delve into a successful product strategy pattern that made Shopify, Tesla, or Airbnb successful: wedge yourself into the market, then expand, and ask: “What happens when your biggest strength and greatest asset as a product development organization becomes your biggest weakness?” Additionally, we elaborate on the Use Case Frequency Spectrum and how it applies to growing products that customers use once a year or less.

Lastly, we share a helpful infographic with the core elements of VSM to kickstart continuous improvement and a framework to improve user research, leading to better-informed decision-making.

Food for Agile Thought #316: Fixed Scope & Date, Yet Agile? Taking a Wedge to the Market, Agile Hangover, Value Stream Mapping Best Practices — Age-of-Product.com

Did you miss the previous Food for Agile Thought’s issue #315?

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🏆 The Tip of the Week

Mike Cohn: Constraints on Your Project Still Leave Room to Be Agile

Mike Cohn shares his take on a controversial topic: He believes there can be agility in fixed-everything—date, scope, budget—projects.

➿ Agile & Scrum

Dave West (via Scrum.org): The Agile Hangover

Dave West sums up some of his observations regarding agile transformations, from the beginning of the party to the probably ‘inevitable.’

David Burkus: The Five Worst Ideas In Management

David Burkus lists five stupid yet still popular management practices, from stack ranking to open offices.

Aric Wood (via XPLANE): Seven Principles and Five Steps to Confidently Lead Organizational Change

Aric Wood shares seven principles and five steps to enhance your change leadership skills.

(via InfoQ): Promoting Creativity in Software Development with the Kaizen Method

Sarma Manthravadi suggests using the Kaizen practice to improve your software development skills and details the necessary steps to get going.

🎓 🖥 💯 🇩🇪 Professional Scrum Product Owner Training w/ PSPO Certificate — Online: November 2-5, 2021

Discover Scrum’s four success principles in this guaranteed official Scrum.org Professional Scrum Product Owner training class, leading to and including the industry-recognized PSPO I certification. The class will be offered in German.

Enjoy the benefits of an immersive class of four sessions with like-minded agile peers in the morning hours from 09:00 – 13:00 o’clock CEST.

Professional Scrum Product Owner Training w/ PSPO Certificate — Online: November 2-5, 2021 – Berlin Product People GmbH

Learn more: 🖥 💯 🇩🇪 Professional Scrum Product Owner Training w/ PSPO Certificate — Online: November 2-5, 2021.

Customer review: “Excellent class, revealing more hands-on practices and strategies to find solutions in the role of PSPO than I expected.” (Link.)

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🎯 Product

Lenny Rachitsky: Picking a wedge

Lenny Rachitsky delves into a successful product strategy pattern that made Shopify, Tesla, or Airbnb successful: wedge yourself into the market, then expand.

Steven Sinofsky: Alleviating Bloatware, First Attempt

Steven Sinofsky asks a simple question: “What happens when your biggest strength and greatest asset […] becomes your biggest weakness?” Read on and learn more about Microsoft Office’s struggle with feature bloat.

Vivek Kumar (via Reforge): ICED Theory – Growing Infrequent Products

Vivek Kumar elaborates on the Use Case Frequency Spectrum and how it applies to growing products that customers use once a year or less.

📯 Overruling the Product Owner? — Making Your Scrum Work #21

There are plenty of failure possibilities with Scrum. Since Scrum is an intentionally incomplete framework with a reasonable yet short “manual,” this effect should not surprise anyone. For example, what if the stakeholders—who bring the budget that is funding your Scrum team—insist on calling the shots by overruling the Product Owner’s prerogative to define the composition and the ordering the Product Backlog? What if your stakeholders suffer from the “my budget, my feature” syndrome?

Join me and delve into the effects of overruling the Product Owner in less than 140 seconds.

Learn more: Overruling the Product Owner? — Making Your Scrum Work #21.

🛠 Tools & Measuring

(via KaiNexus): Value Stream Mapping Best Practices

KaiNexus shares a helpful infographic with the core elements of VSM to kickstart continuous improvement.

Roberta Dombrowski (via User Interviews): A Framework for Decision Driven Research

Roberta Dombrowski shares a framework to improve user research, leading to better-informed decision-making.

📅 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.

Professional Scrum Trainer Stefan Wolpers

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 3,000-plus Agile Peers on Youtube

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✋ Do Not Miss Out and Learn more about How to Deal w/ Fixed Scope & Date — Join the 10,000-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.

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🗞️ Last Week’s Food for Agile Thought Edition

Read more: Food for Agile Thought #315: Fulfilling Working Experiences, Sustainable Disruption, Toxic Company Culture, Jira: Razor Blades?.

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