TL; DR: Agility: Scaling Innovation, #NoBacklogs — Food for Agile Thought #358
Welcome to the 358th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 35,833 peers. This week, Steven Sinofsky analyzes the challenges of scaling innovation, delving into concepts, tools, culture, and change. Also, Allan “Nuke the backlog” Kelly delves into the current discussion regarding the Product Backlog’s usefulness. Furthermore, we analyze research papers on cross-functionality from Google Scholar and point to the moment when deteriorating software quality insects with a higher demand for new features.
Then, Wes Kao and Lenny Rachitsky cover how to engage your audience and improve your communication for product success. Moreover, we dissect aspects of product leadership, from strategic thinkers to the get-it-done thinkers, and we explain the negative consequences of employing SAFe® for product management, for example, its obsession with process.
Finally, we share Brad Dunn’s new approach to product management: replace the product manager role with a value manager and a discovery engineer. Additionally, we provide a concept of gathering health indicators to support better product decisions, plus a canvas to help you “avoid creating the right solution to the wrong problem.”
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🏆 The Tip of the Week: Scaling Innovation
: Innovation in the Context of Success
In this essay, Steven Sinofsky analyzes the challenges of scaling innovation, delving into concepts, tools, culture, and change.
➿ Agile & Scrum
: Backlogs, #NoBacklog(s) and comfort blankets
Allan “Nuke the backlog” Kelly delves into the current discussion regarding the Product Backlog’s usefulness as a prelude to his talk on September 5 at the 44th Hands-on Agile meetup.
(via Terem Technologies): Cross-Functional Teams: A Summary of 20 Popular Studies
Scott Middleton aggregated research papers on cross-functionality from Google Scholar with at least 115 and up to 1,265 citations.
(via Lithespeed): It's Time to Reframe How We Think about Technical Debt
LitheSpeed opposes the idea that technical debt is always something negative. Instead, we should consider it a way to “convey the costs associated with deferred maintenance or investment in technology.”
(via Medium): The False Trade-off Between Quality and Speed
Mario Caropreso analyzes the tipping point when deteriorating software quality insects with a higher demand for new features.
🎓 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Professional Scrum Master Training w/ PSM I Certificate — Live Virtual Class: October 4-5, 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 I certification. The training will be offered in English.
Learn more: 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Professional Scrum Master Training w/ PSM I Certificate — Live Virtual Class: October 4-5, 2022.
“Great class. Probably the best training I ever attended. Extremely driven and productive class, with interactive exercises that challenge you to think in Agile manner. Keeps the focus on the point regardless of the remote session. Stefan for sure goes above and beyond to teach you how to be a real Scum master.”
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🎯 Product
and : 🎙 Persuasive communication and managing up
In this podcast, Wes Kao and Lenny Rachitsky cover how to engage your audience and improve your communication for product success.
: Navigating the Product Leadership Fog
John Cutler dissects aspects of product leadership, from strategic thinkers wondering whether there is a strategy in the first place to the get-it-done thinkers, convinced that the “leadership just keeps changing priorities.”
: Why training in SAFe or scaling agile is wrong for PMs early in their careers
Shaw Li explains the negative consequences of employing SAFe® for product management, for example, its obsession with process.
📯 Product Backlog Refinement: 14 First Principles
The Product Backlog refinement is a continuous process to create actionable Product Backlogs, enabling a Scrum Team to run Sprint Plannings at a moment’s notice. Consequently, refinement is about creating alignment among all team members about the Why, the What, the How, and probably even the Who regarding the upcoming work for the Scrum team’s Product Goal. As a result, Product Backlog refinement is a critical success factor as it drastically increases the team’s capability to deliver valuable Increments regularly.
The following 14 first principles describe in broad strokes the foundation of a successful approach to refinement.
Learn more: Product Backlog Refinement: 14 First Principles.
🛠 Concepts, Tools & Measuring
(via Medium): Bi-Directional Product Management
Brad Dunn shares his new approach to product management: replace the product manager role with a value manager and a discovery engineer.
(via Department of Product): How to Conduct a Product Health Check
Richard Holmes shares his concept of gathering health indicators to support better product decisions.
(via Medium): Data Product Canvas — A practical framework for building high-performance data products
Leandro Carvalho created a canvas to help you “avoid creating the right solution to the wrong problem.”
🎶 Encore
(via XKCD Comic): Universe Price Tiers
Everything has its price, even the big picture.
📅 Scrum Training & Event Schedule
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📺 Join 4,000-plus Agile Peers on Youtube
Now available on the Age-of-Product Youtube channel to improve learning, for example, about Agility:
- 🆕 Hands-on Agile 43: Outcome-Based Product Planning with Jeff Gothelf.
- 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.
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