TL; DR: Team Topologies, CEOs and Product Leaders — Food for Agile Thought #352
Welcome to the 352nd edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 35,602 peers. This week, we revisit Team Topologies, Conway’s Law, and how you might influence an organization’s structure as a lone product manager. We also explore the essence of behavioral change and apply lessons from Tim Hartford’s Cautionary Tale “The South Pole Race: David and Goliath on Ice” to your failed agile transformation. Moreover, we try to understand what ‘dream teams’ or ‘tiger teams’ supposedly are.
Then, we delve into the delicate relationship between the CEO and the product leader of an organization, stressing the importance of building candor, trust, and communicating well. Also, we listen to Casey Winters sharing career advice for aspiring product managers, from communicating upward to de-risking meetings. Finally, John Cutler continues his quest to understand product strategy; this time is all about why it changes, from recency bias to sporadic research.
Finally, we follow Jake Burghardt delving into the usefulness of research repositories as internal learning tools, including practical suggestions on how to employ them, and we enjoy a new game to ‘illustrate essential aspects for collaboration and workflow improvements.’ Lastly, HBR points to a critical element of why ‘organizational transformations are prone to failure.’
Did you miss the previous Food for Agile Thought’s issue 351?
🗞 Shall I notify you about articles like this one? Awesome! You can sign up here for the ‘Food for Agile Thought’ newsletter and join 35,000-plus subscribers.
🎓 Join Stefan in one of his upcoming Professional Scrum training classes!
🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Advanced Professional Scrum Master Online Training w/ PSM II Certificate — September 6-9, 2022.
📈 🔬 Join 430-plus peers and contribute to the anonymous poll for the upcoming Free ‘Product Owner and Product Manager Salary Report 2022!’
🏆 The Tip of the Week: Team Topologies
: How teams are organized will influences your product more than you might realize
Shaw Li revisits Team Topologies, Conway’s Law, and how you might influence an organization’s structure as a lone product manager.
➿ Agile & Scrum
(via Reforge): How to Build More Effective Teams
Tom Willerer and Kevin Bechtel share lessons learned on ‘dream teams’ or ‘tiger teams.’
and (via Farnam Street): 🎙 The Essentials Of Leadership
Shane Parrish interviews Marshall Goldsmith, one of the world’s leading executive coaches, on the essence of behavioral change.
: 3 Amazing Reasons Your Agile Transformation May Go South
Karl Scotland applies lessons from Tim Hartford’s Cautionary Tale “The South Pole Race: David and Goliath on Ice” to your agile transformation.
🎓 🖥 🇬🇧 Advanced Professional Scrum Master Online Training w/ PSM II Certificate — September 6-9, 2022
Discover Scrum’s four success principles in this 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 and will be offered in English.
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.
Learn more: 🖥 💯 🇩🇪 Advanced Professional Scrum Master Online Training w/ PSM II Certificate — September 6-9, 2022.
“Very hands-on class with lots of concrete takeaways to help in real world scenarios. Reinforced practices and highlighted things that helped in passing the PSM II exam but that was merely a bonus as the content of the class is so useful – certifications or not. Stefan Wolpers is an excellent trainer with broad practical and theoretical knowledge on the subject and his classes seem to have very good working atmosphere (this was a second class by him that I have taken).”(Link.)
👉 From time to time, we can offer last-minute seats for training classes at cost to individuals who do not have access to a corporate training budget. If you like to be notified about these opportunities, please register here.
🎯 Product
: CEOs and Product Leaders
Ken Norton delves into the delicate relationship between the CEO and the product leader of an organization, stressing the importance of building candor, trust, and communicating well.
and : 🎙 How to sell your ideas and rise within your company
Casey Winters shares career advice for aspiring product managers, from communicating upward to de-risking meetings.
: Why Does Our Strategy Keep Changing?
John Cutler continues his quest to understand product strategy. Moreover, this time is all about why it changes, from recency bias to sporadic research.
📯 Stakeholder Trust — Scrum Master Survival Guide
Trust is the beginning of everything. I am hesitant to recycle an old slogan of a banking institute. However, in the context of becoming a learning organization and embracing business agility, it condenses the main challenge perfectly: How shall we convince the incumbents with vested interests in the status quo to give the new way of working the benefit of the doubt? Join me and delve into how distrust manifests and what we can do to earn stakeholder trust.
Learn more: Stakeholder Trust.
🛠 Concepts, Tools & Measuring
(via Team ReOps): Activating insights to overcome common barriers to product impact
Jake Burghardt delves into the usefulness of research repositories as internal learning tools, including practical suggestions on how to employ them.
: The WIP Drinking Game
Paulo Caroli presents a new game to ‘illustrate essential aspects for collaboration and workflow improvements.’
✂️ Cutting Room Floor
(via Harvard Business Review): Organizational Transformation Is an Emotional Journey
Andrew White, Michael Smets, and Adam Canwell point to a critical element of why ‘organizational transformations are prone to failure.’
📅 Scrum Training & Event Schedule
You can secure your seat for Scrum training classes, workshops, and meetups directly by following the corresponding link in the table below:
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.
📺 Join 4,000-plus Agile Peers on Youtube
Now available on the Age-of-Product Youtube channel to improve learning:
- 🆕 Hands-on Agile 42: Lean Roadmapping and OKRs with Janna Bastow.
- 🆕 Hands-on Agile 40: The Best Team Ever with David Burkus.
- Hands-on Agile 38: The Product Owner with Roman Pichler.
- Agile Camp Berlin 2021: The Power and Pains of Autonomy with Jimmy Janlén.
- Hands-on Agile 31: The Zones of Value Framework with Valerio Zanini & Zeina Zeitouni.
- 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.
✋ Do Not Miss Out and Learn more about Team Topologies — Join the 12,000-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.
If you like to join all you have to do now is provide your credentials via this Google form, and I will sign you up. By the way, it’s free.