TL; DR: Agile Military — Food for Agile Thought #362
Welcome to the 362nd edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 36,013 peers. This week, we delve into lessons learned on leadership in the agile military. We also read a curated collection of articles, “facts, evidence, and opinions from relevant sources without vested interests” on the usefulness of SAFe® and analyze common reasons why organizations do not reap the expected benefits of becoming Agile. Moreover, we ask: Do we need a CUO, a Chief Unblocking Officer?
Then, we dissect strategy anti-patterns, from committing too early to prospective customers to dodging controversial calls while delving into product leadership, team objectives, and the importance of context and clarity. Also, Jon Moore and Marty Cagan continued their article series, detailing why consequential transformations to product-led organizations require different decision processes, and Kate Kaplan created an overview of the human side of DesignOps: who is doing what and talking to whom?
Finally, we sketch various mental models, concepts, and “laws” helpful to Scrum Masters and agile coaches and delve into the relationship between hypothesis-driven development, validation, and the minimum viable product. Lastly, we learn that just because your Sprint board has columns and cards does not mean it is a Kanban board.
Did you miss the previous Food for Agile Thought’s issue 361?
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🏆 The Tip of the Week: Agile Military
(via Medium): From agile coach to the military officer: breaking stereotypes about leadership in the army
Dmytro Yarmak shares lessons from his journey from agile coach to officer in the Ukrainian army and how the Cynefin framework, empathy, and empowerment helped him lead in chaos.
So, providing clarity for making decisions, creating a psychologically safe environment for making mistakes, and raising competence help people to be ready for taking responsibility. And it means that you can delegate some of the tasks to Squad and Platoon leads, and to soldiers as well.
➿ Agile & Scrum
: Information for decision-makers considering the SAFe framework
Multiple, primarily unknown, authors curated a collection of articles, “facts, evidence, and opinions from relevant sources without vested interests” on the usefulness of SAFe®.
(via Leading Agile): 📺 Why Do Agile Transformations Fail?
In this video, Mike Cottmeyer analyzes common reasons why organizations do not reap the expected benefits of becoming Agile.
(via Medium): Do you need a Chief Unblocking Officer?
Chris Combe reflects on the nature of dependencies, impediments, obstacles, and blockers in a systemic context.
🎓 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 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
(via First Round Capital): How Product Strategy Stalls in the Real World — 6 Common Failure Modes
Nate Stewart, CPO of CockroachDB, dissects strategy anti-patterns, from committing too early to prospective customers to dodging controversial calls.
: Fluffy & Ambiguous
John Cutler delves into product leadership, team objectives, and the importance of context and clarity.
(via Silicon Valley Product Group): Changing How You Decide Which Problems To Solve
Jon Moore and Marty Cagan detail why consequential transformations to product-led organizations require different decision processes.
👉 📈 Join the Anonymus Scrum Master (and Agile Coach) Salary Report 2023
The purpose of this anonymous Scrum Master salary report 2023 is to create a clear, data-backed benchmark that allows everyone in the agile community to understand whether their compensation is adequate. (And yes, the report will cover Scrum Masters as well as Agile Coaches, both employed and freelancing.)
The goal is to have a sufficient number of replies – that would be at least 1,000 – by the end of November 2022 to create the report in time for January 2023. Of course, the report will be available for free.
👉 📈 Join the Anonymous Poll for the Upcoming Free Scrum Master Salary Report 2023 Now!
🛠 Concepts, Tools & Measuring
(via Medium): 21 concepts that have helped me as an Agile Coach
Austin Mackesy-Buckley sketches various mental models, concepts, and “laws” helpful to Scrum Masters and agile coaches.
(via Nielsen Norman Group): Who Does DesignOps? Common DesignOps Roles and Partnerships
Kate Kaplan created an overview of the human side of DesignOps: who is doing what and talking to whom?
: MVP philosophy and the Justified True Belief
Paulo Caroli delves into the relationship between hypothesis-driven development, validation, and the minimum viable product.
🎶 Encore
(via Kanbanize Blog): A Task Board is Not a Kanban Board! What's the Difference?
Michaela Toneva claims that just because your Sprint board has columns and cards does not mean it is a Kanban board.
📅 Scrum Training & Event Schedule
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See all upcoming classes here.
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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 UX & Engineering:
- 🆕 Hands-on Agile 44: Honey, I Shrunk the Backlog — Hands-on Agile 44 with Allan Kelly.
- 🆕 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 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 the Agile Military — Join the 12,000-plus Strong ‘Hands-on Agile’ Slack Community
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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.