TL; DR: Tracking Learnings, Impact Mapping for Fun & Profit — Food for Agile Thought #363
Welcome to the 363rd edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 36,042 peers. This week, we delve into tracking learnings and what to do with all the “stuff” that continuous product discovery produces. Also, we analyze the utility of agile games as change-supporting tools and share a decision-making approach to scaling, from “don’t scale” to “managing dependencies between work to be done.” Finally, we consider the fact that “simple” covers a vast ground and has the potential to cause confusion and misinterpretation. (You may want to reconsider your KISS approach.)
Then, we advocate getting comfortable with impact mapping when you have a “vague goal but haven’t yet done a good exploration of how to get there.” Again, we also stress the importance of product discovery, given that we all love “our ideas” when building new businesses, before we point out five practices that will enable your team to take full advantage of the Product Backlog as a tactical tool.
Finally, we appreciate Paulo Caroli’s curated list of popular practices for organizing meetings; he also provides a downloadable PDF and a Mural template. On top of that, Andrea Saez shares the “Customer Value Explorer,” a canvas to map customer value against business objectives. Lastly, Google Cloud published the “2022 Accelerate State of DevOps Report,” focusing on security.
Did you miss the previous Food for Agile Thought’s issue 362?
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🏆 The Tip of the Week: Tracking Learnings
: Discovery Is Messy: How Do We Keep Track of All That We Are Learning?
Teresa Torres reflects on what to do with all the “stuff” that continuous product discovery produces, from doing to communicating to archiving.
The biggest mistake I see teams make is they create completely different artifacts for each of these three purposes. For example, they might create 1) user stories to help their scrum team align around what they need to build this sprint, 2) a slide deck that tells marketing and sales what’s coming out in the next two sprints, and 3) release notes to document what actually happened.
➿ Agile & Scrum
(via InfoQ): Accessing Agile Games as a Tool in Transformation and Change
Anne Hoffmann analyzes the utility of agile games as change-supporting tools, including four steps to creating business impact with agile games.
(via Medium): The Five Orders of Scaling Agile Teams
Carl J Rogers shares a decision-making approach to scaling, from “don’t scale” to “managing dependencies between work to be done.”
: Simplicity Is a Tactic, Not a Goal
John Cutler reflects on the fact that “simple” covers a vast ground and has the potential to cause confusion and misinterpretation.
🎓 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Professional Scrum Product Owner Training w/ PSPO Certificate — Online: October 31 – November 3, 2022
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 training will be offered in English.
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🎯 Product
: Want to Get the Most Bang for Your Buck? Try Impact Mapping
Mark Levison advocates getting comfortable with impact mapping when you have a “vague goal but haven’t yet done a good exploration of how to get there.”
Impact Mapping is a tool to help you figure out where you will likely get the most bang for your buck. You map out some options to achieve a goal. Once you’ve got a rough idea, you stop mapping and execute.
: Problem Discovery for Calm SaaS Businesses
Arvid Kahl stresses the importance of product discovery, given that we all love “our ideas” when building new businesses.
: 5 Tips for Stocking the Product Backlog
Roman Pichler points out five practices that will enable your team to take full advantage of the Product Backlog as a tactical tool, from choosing a Product Goal to stocking it as a collaborative effort.
📺 Allan Kelly: Honey, I Shrunk the Backlog — Hands-on Agile 44
In this energizing 44th Hands-on Agile session on product backlog management, Allan Kelly clarified one thing: The backlog was a great idea until it wasn't. Many successful teams deliver backlog items daily, but their backlogs aren't getting smaller. The never-ending backlog overshadows delivery success. Product discovery, dual-track agile, OKRs, etc., make it worse by accelerating backlog growth without taking any of the rotting items away.
Learn more about Allan’s remedy for oversized product backlogs in less than an hour.
📺 Watch the video now: Allan Kelly: Honey, I Shrunk the Backlog — Hands-on Agile 44.
🛠 Concepts, Tools & Measuring
: Facilitation techniques
Paulo Caroli curated popular practices to organize meetings, including providing a downloadable PDF and a Mural template.
(via UX Collective): How to define customer value when building products
Andrea Saez shares the “Customer Value Explorer™,” a canvas to map customer value against business objectives.
🎶 Encore
(via Google Cloud Blog): 📈 📖 DORA 2022 Accelerate State of DevOps Report now out
Google Cloud published the “2022 Accelerate State of DevOps Report,” focusing on security.
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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 38: The Product Owner with Roman Pichler.
- 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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