TL; DR: Calm Innovation, Delivery Dates — Food for Agile Thought #370
Welcome to the 370th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 36,317 peers. This week, Shane Parrish interviews Tobi Lütke of Shopify about calm innovation, fighting bureaucracy, and scaling Shopify. Also, we reflect on facilitation and decision-making, including the opportunity costs of premature convergence, and learn more about the “Technology, Organization, and Product (TOP)” approach to agility. Moreover, we dissect the background of bad bosses.
Also, we learn from Ian McAllister about essential PM skills, broadening your horizon, and the importance of diversifying your skills as you move up the ladder. Speaking of which, we also share ten real-life examples of mistakes with long-term career-limiting effects for product managers, and we analyze three, unfortunately, prominent ways to trigger waste and frustration in product management.
Finally, we play our favorite broken record again: hands-off the deliberately abstract concept of story points. Moreover, we detail why teams underestimate work—learn more about hubris, dominant voices, and lacking the big picture—and advocate reducing cycle time to improve throughput and predictability. Lastly, Ken Norton shares his approach to what to do “when it’s time for some tough talk.”
Did you miss the previous Food for Agile Thought’s issue 369?
🗞 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!
🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Advanced Professional Scrum Master Online Training w/ PSM II Certificate — December 12-13, 2022.
📈 Let Us Create Transparency—join 925-plus peers: Join the Anonymous Scrum Master Salary Report 2023.
🏆 The Tip of the Week: Calm Innovation
and (via Farnam Street): 🎙 Calm Progress
Shane Parrish interviews Tobi Lütke of Shopify about innovation in large organizations, fighting bureaucracy, and scaling Shopify.
The best thing founders can do is subtraction. It’s much, much, much easier to add things than it is to remove things. Adding things is a lot more expensive than removing things. However, it requires some measure of bravery and risk-taking. If you say no to a thing, you say no to one thing. If you say yes to a thing, you actually say no to every other thing you could have done during this period of time.
➿ Agile & Scrum
: Meetings Are Design Products
Charles Lambdin reflects on facilitation and decision-making, including the opportunity costs of premature convergence.
: The TOP Structure – how it all started
Michael Küsters explains his “Technology, Organization, and Product (TOP)” approach to agility.
(via Get Lighthouse): 6 Suprising Reasons Why Good People become Bad Bosses
Jason Evanish dissects the background of bad bosses, from a lack of training to a lack of support to a lack of self-awareness.
🎓 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Advanced Professional Scrum Master Online Training w/ PSM II Certificate — December 12-13, 2022
Discover Scrum’s four success principles in this guaranteed 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 a compact immersive class with like-minded agile peers from 09:00 – 17:30 o’clock CET.
Learn more: 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Advanced Professional Scrum Master Online Training w/ PSM II Certificate — December 12-13, 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
and : 🎙 What it takes to become a top 1% PM
Lenny Rachitsky interviews Ian McAllister on essential PM skills, broadening your horizon, and diversifying skills as you move up the ladder.
: Ten Mistakes to Avoid in Executive Reviews
Deb Liu shares real-life examples of mistakes with long-term career-limiting effects for product managers.
: 3 Common PM Role Antipatterns
Itamar Gilad analyzes three, unfortunately, prominent ways to trigger waste and frustration in product management.
📯 Shift Left: Value Creation in Scrum
As a tactical framework, Scrum is good at delivering Increments into customers’ hands. As we work in iterations, we probably do that several times per month, mitigating risk by closing feedback loops. Nevertheless, there is a potentially hazardous void in the framework that successful Scrum teams start plugging early: how to figure out what is worth building—product discovery—in the first place. As a result, value creation in Scrum is not as straightforward as you might have thought.
Learn more: Shift Left: Value Creation in Scrum.
🛠 Concepts, Tools & Measuring
: Don’t Equate Story Points to Hours
Mike Cohn plays our favorite broken record again: hands-off a deliberately abstract concept.
: Underestimation
Bob Galen replies to a previous Mike Cohn post and details why teams underestimate work. Learn more about hubris, dominant voices, and lacking the big picture.
: Preparing to Have a Difficult Conversation
Ken Norton shares his approach to what to do “when it’s time for some tough talk.”
🎶 Encore
: Delivery Dates
Joshua J. Arnold advocates reducing cycle time to improve throughput and predictability.
📅 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:
| Date | Class and Language | City | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| 💯 🇩🇪 May 19-20, 2026 | Guaranteed: Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German; Live Virtual Class) | Live Virtual Class | €1,299 incl. 19% VAT (If applicable.) |
| 💯 🇬🇧 May 28 to June 25, 2026 | Guaranteed: AI4Agile BootCamp #7 (English; Live Virtual Cohort) | Live Virtual Cohort | €499 incl. 19% VAT (If applicable.) |
| 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 June 8, 2026 | GUARANTEED: Claude Cowork: Stop Prompting. Start Delegating. (English; Self-paced Online Course) | Self-Paced Online Course | $129 incl. 19% VAT (If applicable.) |
| 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 June 9, 2026 | GUARANTEED: HoA 74: "CLAUDE.md" — The One File That Makes AI Remember How You Work. (English) | Meetup | FREE |
| 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 June 10-July 2, 2026 | GUARANTEED: Claude Cowork BootCamp #2 (English; Live Virtual Cohort) | Live Virtual Cohort | $249 incl. 19% VAT (If applicable.) |
| 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 June 11, 2026 | GUARANTEED: HoA 75: Token Economics. (English) | Meetup | FREE |
| 🇩🇪 June 30-July 1, 2026 | Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German; Live Virtual Class) | Live Virtual Class | €1,299 incl. 19% VAT (If applicable.) |
| 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 July 1, 2026 | GUARANTEED: AI 4 Agile Course v3 — Master AI for Agile Practitioners (English; Self-paced Online Course) | Self-Paced Online Course | $149 incl. 19% VAT (If applicable.) |
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 calm innovation:
- 🆕 Hands-on Agile 46: The Agile Fluency Model ® with Diana Larsen.
- 🆕 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 Calm Innovation — 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.
Help your team with calm innovation by pointing them to the free Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide:
