TL; DR: Fixing Toxic Cultures — Food for Agile Thought #365
Welcome to the 365th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 36,117 peers. This week, we dive into the research on toxicity in the workplace and point to three means of fixing toxic cultures, from leadership to social norms to work design. Also, we detail how to collaborate with challenging people you need to include in your work and argue that principally ruling out discussions on productivity leads in the wrong direction. Additionally, we reflect on critical techniques for any transformation: learning, unlearning, and changing the habits of participants and stakeholders.
Then, we appreciate Lenny Rachitsky’s visualization of the hierarchy of goals in product management, and we share tips & tricks to start or grow your Product CoP, from starting at a minimum viable level to formalizing the CoP to expanding the community management team. Moreover, Janna Bastow shares how the unsuitedness of timeline roadmaps—based on deadlines—helped her design her approach to outcome-based planning.
Finally, we check out a new tool to “help facilitate your thinking when taking new products or ideas to market.” Also, we share a free ebook on identifying what is worth building, from involving your team members to communicating your research results with stakeholders, and we point to six critical elements of successful user journey mapping, from the business goal to mapping a specific user’s experience.
Did you miss the previous Food for Agile Thought’s issue 364?
🗞 Shall I notify you about articles like this one? Awesome! You can sign up here for the ‘Food for Agile Thought’ newsletter and join 36,000-plus subscribers.
🎓 Join Stefan in one of his upcoming Professional Scrum training classes!
📅 💯 🇬🇧 November 3, 2022: Join 125-plus peers at the 47th Hands-on Agile Meetup: Evidence-guided Development Using the Confidence Meter with Itamar Gilad.
🏆 The Tip of the Week: Fixing Toxic Cultures
(via MIT Sloan Management Review): How to Fix a Toxic Culture
In this essay, Donald Sull and Charles Sull dive into the research on toxicity in the workplace and point to three means of fixing toxic cultures, from leadership to social norms to work design.
➿ Agile & Scrum
(via Medium): How to work with difficult stakeholders
Neil Turner details how to collaborate with challenging people you need to include in your work, from the power-interest matrix to RACI to sharing your work.
: Some reasons to work on productivity and velocity
Dan Luu argues that principally ruling out discussions on productivity leads in the wrong direction.
: Making Optional Product Practices Stick
John Cutler, inspired by the book ‘Design for How People Learn,’ reflects on critical techniques for any transformation: learning, unlearning, and changing habits of participants and stakeholders.
🎓 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 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.
Learn more: 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Professional Scrum Product Owner Training w/ PSPO Certificate — Online: October 31 – November 3, 2022.
“Stefan’s class was outstanding. Not only is Stefan an extremely knowledgable and experienced Scrum expert but also a very calm and nice instructor with very competent use of tools for remote learning. Additionally, we had a very focused and determined group of people attending this online course. If I ever consider doing another Scrum-related course, it will surely be with Stefan.”
(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
: Mission → Vision → Strategy → Goals → Roadmap → Task
Lenny Rachitsky visualizes his approach to the hierarchy of goals in product management.
(via ProdPad): Why I Invented the Now/Next/Later Roadmap
Janna Bastow shares how the unsuitedness of timeline roadmaps—based on deadlines—helped her design her approach to outcome-based planning.
: Want to Launch or Mature Your Product Community of Practice? Start Here!
Petra Wille shares tips & tricks to start or grow your Product CoP, from starting at a minimum viable level to formalizing the CoP to expanding the community management team.
📯 Scrum Master Interview Questions (6): The Sprint Planning
Scrum has proven time and again to be the most popular framework for software development. Given that software is eating the world, a seasoned Scrum Master is nowadays in high demand. And that demand causes the market entry of new professionals from other project management branches, probably believing that reading one or two Scrum books will be sufficient. Which makes any Scrum Master interview a challenging task.
Suppose you are looking to fill a position for a Scrum Master (or agile coach) in your organization. In that case, you may find the following 73 interview questions helpful in identifying the right candidate. They are derived from my sixteen years of practical experience with Scrum and XP, serving as Product Owner and Scrum Master. So far, I have interviewed dozens of Scrum Master candidates on behalf of my clients. This article covers a new set of questions on Sprint Planning.
So far, this Scrum Master interview guide has been downloaded more than 25,000 times.
Get your copy: Scrum Master Interview Questions (6): The Sprint Planning.
🛠 Concepts, Tools & Measuring
(via Product Coalition): 🛠 Product Go-to-Market (GTM) Canvas: Define How You Take New Ideas to Market
Anthony Murphy shares a new tool to “help facilitate your thinking when taking new products or ideas to market.”
: 📖 A Beginner’s Guide to Finding User Needs
Jan Dittrich shares a free ebook on identifying what is worth building, from involving your team members to communicating your research results with stakeholders.
(via UX Planet): 📺 User journey map: 6 things to remember when doing user journey mapping
Nick Babich points to six critical elements of successful user journey mapping, from the business goal to mapping a specific user's experience.
🎶 Encore
and : 📺 Hidden expectations in the words ‘We are agile’
In this video, Yves Hanoulle and Jutta Eckstein discuss various topics, from picking our battles to being independent of a framework.
📅 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, for example, about fixing toxic cultures:
- 🆕 Hands-on Agile 45: FAST: An Innovative Way to Scale with James Shore.
- 🆕 Hands-on Agile 44: Honey, I Shrunk the Backlog 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.
✋ Do Not Miss Out and Learn more about Fixing Toxic Cultures — 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.