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.
Did you miss the previous Food for Agile Thought’s issue #315?
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🏆 The Tip of the Week
: 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
(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.’
: The Five Worst Ideas In Management
David Burkus lists five stupid yet still popular management practices, from stack ranking to open offices.
(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.
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🎯 Product
: 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.
: 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.
(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.
(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
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📺 Join 3,000-plus Agile Peers on Youtube
Now available on the Age-of-Product Youtube channel:
- 🆕 Agile Camp Berlin 2021: Adapt How You Lead for Agile Success with Johanna Rothman.
- 🆕 Agile Camp Berlin 2021: Linking Strategy to Everyday Work with John Cutler.
- Agile Camp Berlin 2021: Sustainable Agility at the Enterprise Level with Jorgen Hesselberg.
- Agile Camp Berlin 2021: How to Win with Agile Resistant Teams - A Case Study with Scott Weiner.
- Agile Camp Berlin 2021: Increasing the Velocity of Value with Dave West.
- Agile Camp Berlin 2021: Evidence-based Interventions with Viktor Cessan.
- Agile Camp Berlin 2021: Real Cross-functional Teams for Creating real and better Products with Jutta Eckstein and Maryse Meinen.
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