TL; DR: Fortress Agile, The Technical PM — Food for Agile Thought #323
Welcome to the 323rd edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 33,816 peers. This week, we share practical tips for the Fortress Agile on caring for the humans in your team when the organization is less agile than we would need it to be. Additionally, we share Charlie Munger’s magnum opus on why we behave the way we do, and we point to an observation that failure cultures focus on delivering things instead of value.
We then provide five highly actionable tips on becoming a more technical product manager. Moreover, we share successful product-led development patterns, and we ask: Do You Have a Product Mindset?
Lastly, we appreciate the first of a series of articles on becoming good at influence mapping, and we point at the elephant in the room: What if — despite all efforts — customer behavior isn’t moving in the right direction?
PS: 🎄 Happy Holiday Season!
PPS: 🗞 Food for Agile Thought will be back on January 9, 2022, with issue 324. Stay tuned!
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🏆 The Tip of the Week
and (via Agile Alliance): 📺 Fortress Agile: Nurturing and Growing Healthy Practices in a Hostile Environment
In this video from the Agile MiniCon, Cheryl Hammond and Heidi Musser share practical tips on caring for the humans in your team when the organization is less agile than we would need it to be.
➿ Agile & Scrum
(via Farnam Street): Psychology of Human Misjudgment (Transcript) by Charlie Munger
Farnam Street shares Charlie Munger’s magnum opus on why we behave the way we do.
(via Industrial Logic): The Simplest Thing That Could Possibly Work
Jon Fazzaro provides food for thought on agility.
: Failureship Deliver Things instead of Value
Chris Matts points to an observation that failure cultures focus on delivering things instead of value.
🎓 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Advanced Professional Scrum Master Online Training w/ PSM II Certificate — January 25-28, 2022
Discover Scrum’s four success principles in this guaranteed official Scrum.org Professional Scrum Master training class, leading to and including the industry-recognized PSM II certification. The training is designed as a live virtual class and will be offered in English.
Enjoy the benefits of an immersive class of four sessions with like-minded agile peers from 09:00 – 13:00 o’clock CET. I also host pre- and post-class sessions to maximize your learning experience and prepare for the PSM II certification.
Learn more: 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Advanced Professional Scrum Master Online Training w/ PSM II Certificate — January 25-28, 2022.
Customer voice: “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
: The Top 5 Things PMs Should Know about Engineering
Justin Gage shares highly actionable tips on becoming a more technical product manager in this guest post.
and (via Agile Alliance): 📺 Product-led Agility: Moving beyond Feature Delivery to Define Success
In this video from the Agile MiniCon, Martin Alaimo and Kevin Stevens share successful product-led development patterns.
: Do You Have a Product Mindset?
Marc Abraham shares four critical elements of a product mindset, from customer (centricity) to creativity.
📯 Survey 2022: Would you recommend SAFe®?
SAFe® has always been a controversial topic within the agile community. Therefore, back in 2017, I ran a survey on the Net Promoter Score® of the Scaled Agile Framework SAFe®. The result back then was -52. Four and a half years later, I believe it is time to rerun the poll: SAFe® has been through several iterations, and many more agile practitioners have experienced working with it. Moreover, the question still is: Would you recommend SAFe ®?
If you can spare five minutes of your time, please join the community effort and participate in the 2022 SAFe® survey.
Join 300-plus peers and participate in the poll: Survey 2022: Would you recommend SAFe®?
🛠 Tools & Measuring
: Influence Mapping (Part 1)
Charles Lambdin published the first of a series of articles on becoming good at influence mapping.
: What if Your OKRs Are Wrong?
Jeff Gothelf points at the elephant in the room: What if — despite all efforts — customer behavior isn’t moving in the right direction?
✂️ Cutting Room Floor
(via nature): Conference Demographics and Footprint Changed by Virtual Platforms
Nature shares study results pointing at the advantages of virtual scientific and engineering conferences regarding improving diversity, equity, and inclusion.
📅 Scrum Training Classes, Workshops, and Events
See all upcoming classes here.
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📺 Join 3,000-plus Agile Peers on Youtube
Now available on the Age-of-Product Youtube channel:
- 🆕 Hands-on Agile #35: Designing Powerful Questions to help you Coach & Create with Daniel Stillman.
- 🆕 Hands-on Agile #34: Core Protocols for Psychological Safety with Richard Kasperowski.
- 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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Trademark Notices for the 2022 ‘Would you recommend SAFe ®?’ Survey
Please note that both SAFe®, as well as the Net Promoter Score®, are registered trademarks of their respective holders:
- “SAFe® is registered marks of Scaled Agile, Inc.” For further information click here.
- “Net Promoter, Net Promoter System, Net Promoter Score, NPS and the NPS-related emoticons are registered trademarks of Bain & Company, Inc., Fred Reichheld and Satmetrix Systems, Inc.” For further information click here.