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Food for Agile Thought #383: Building Products without Value, Developers Talking to Customers, Marty Cagan’s Product Model, Roadmap Questionnaire

TL; DR: Building Products without Value — Food for Agile Thought #383

Welcome to the 383rd edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 37,076 peers. This week, Jeff Patton attempts to explain why organizations “irrationally and addictively” build products without value. In addition, we address a controversial topic that might help alleviate the “no real value” problem: writing good code requires more technical skills; Developers also need to talk to their customers. Also, improving Product Backlog management in Scrum might support avoiding becoming focused on merely shipping stuff.

Then, we present a “set of principles, practices, and competencies” that together represent the best tech-powered companies’ way of working, bolstered by a “list of potentially helpful questions (and multiple-choice answers) to help you explore the ideas, strategies, opportunities, problems, bets, initiatives, and projects on your roadmap.” Moreover, should you consider turning your service business into a product, you don’t want to miss a podcast with “Productize” author Eisha Armstrong.

Finally, we share experts’ insight into Spotify’s approach to learning about a Squad’s health. Speaking of team health, we also reflect on why answering Scrum’s obsolete three Daily Scrum questions negatively influences your team and share a framework to “meet conversational stuckness and tensions at the appropriate level.” Lastly, we dive into an interesting question: Is it still form follows function in the digital space?

Did you miss the previous Food for Agile Thought’s issue 382?

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Join your peers on April 5, 2023: Hands-on Agile #50: The Product Community of Practice w/ Petra Wille.

🏆 The Tip of the Week: Building Products without Value

Jeff Patton: Underpants gnomes, Outcomes, and Intermittent Reinforcement – Help Your Organization Focus on Successful Outcomes

Jeff Patton attempts to explain why organizations “irrationally and addictively build and release products that often have no real value.”

🍋 The Lemon of the Week

We are lemon-free this week!

➿ Agile & Scrum

Liz Keogh: A Really Common Problem

Liz Keogh delves into Product Backlog management in Scrum and how to avoid becoming focused on merely shipping stuff.

Jeff Gothelf: Talking to customers is not a waste of a developer's time

Jeff Gothelf addresses a controversial topic and claims that writing good code requires more technical skills: you also need to talk to your customers.

(via Spotify Engineering): Getting More from Your Team Health Checks

Justin Kotzé and Fiona Siseman explain Spotify’s approach to learning about a Squad’s health.

🎓 🖥 🇬🇧 Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills Class — March 23, 2023

The Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills (PSFS) training by Berlin Product People is a one-day official Scrum.org class for advanced Scrum practitioners and agile coaches, including the industry-acknowledged PSFS certification. This PSFS training class is in English.

Enjoy the benefits of an live-virtual immersive class with like-minded agile peers from 09:00 – 17:30 o’clock CET.

Learn more: 🖥 🇬🇧 Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills Class — March 23, 2023.

👉 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

Marty Cagan (via Silicon Valley Product Group): The Product Model

Marty Cagan presents a “set of principles, practices, and competencies” that together represent the best tech-powered companies’ way of working.

John Cutler: (Roadmap Item) Questions

John Cutler created a “list of potentially helpful questions (and multiple-choice answers) to help you explore the ideas, strategies, opportunities, problems, bets, initiatives, and projects on your roadmap.”

Jason Knight and Eisha Armstrong: 🎙 The Seven Deadly Mistakes of Productization

Jason Knight interviews Eisha Armstrong on what to avoid when turning your service business into a product.

📯 The Three Daily Scrum Questions Won’t Die — Making Your Scrum Work (29)

The Daily Scrum serves a single purpose: inspecting the progress toward the Sprint Goal by reflecting on yesterday’s learning. Then, if the need should arise, the Developers adapt their plan to accomplish the Sprint Goal. While the theory may be generally accepted, applying the idea to the practice is more challenging. One of the recurring issues is the continued popularity of the “three Daily Scrum questions” from the Scrum Guide 2017.

Let’s reflect on why answering these obsolete Daily Scrum questions negatively influences the Scrum team.

👉 Learn more: The Three Daily Scrum Questions Won’t Die — Making Your Scrum Work (29)

🛠 Concepts, Tools & Measuring

Allison Schultz (via RebootHQ): I-We-It: A Framework To Have One Conversation at a Time

Allison Schultz shares a framework to “meet conversational stuckness and tensions at the appropriate level.”

Janna Bastow (via ProdPad): Product Designer vs Product Manager: What's the Difference?

Janna Bastow dives into an interesting question: Is it still form follows function in the digital space?

John Cutler: 📺 WIP, Multi-Tasking, Context Switching (Video)

John Cutler shares an 8-minute practice session on improving flow and productivity.

🎶 Encore

Dror Poleg: Productivity and Bullshit

Dror Poleg claims that “technology creates more work. More work creates technology. But the way it does so is increasingly unclear.”

📅 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
🖥 💯 🇬🇧 April 2-30, 2024 GUARANTEED: Product Backlog Management Cohort Class (English; Live Virtual Class) Live Virtual Class €499 incl. 19% VAT
🖥 💯 🇬🇧 April 9, 2024 GUARANTEED: Hands-on Agile #60: A Q&A on Dynamic Reteaming with Heidi Helfand (English) Live Virtual Meetup FREE
🖥 💯 🇩🇪 April 10-11, 2024 GUARANTEED: Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German; Live Virtual Class) Live Virtual Class €1,299 incl. 19% VAT
🖥 💯 🇬🇧 April 23-24, 2024 GUARANTEED: Professional Scrum Master (Advanced) Training (PSM II; English; Live Virtual Class) Live Virtual Class €1,299 incl. 19% VAT
🖥 💯 🇬🇧 May 7, 2024 GUARANTEED: Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills Training (PSFS; English; Live Virtual Class) Live Virtual Class €749 incl. 19% VAT
🖥 💯 🇬🇧 May 7, 2024 GUARANTEED: Hands-on Agile #61: Toyota Kata Coaching for Agile Teams & Transformations with Fortune Buchholtz (English) Live Virtual Meetup FREE
🖥 🇩🇪 May 14-15, 2024 Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German; Live Virtual Class) Live Virtual Class €1,299 incl. 19% VAT
🖥 🇬🇧 May 28-29, 2024 Professional Scrum Master (Advanced) Training (PSM II; English; Live Virtual Class) Live Virtual Class €1,189 incl. 19% VAT
🖥 💯 🇬🇧 June 6, 2024 GUARANTEED: Hands-on Agile #62: From Backlog Manager to Product Manager: From Outputs to Outcomes w/ David Pereira (English) Live Virtual Meetup FREE
🖥 🇩🇪 June 25-26, 2024 Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German; Live Virtual Class) Live Virtual Class €1,299 incl. 19% VAT

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 avoiding building products without value :

✋ Do Not Miss Out and Learn more about Building Products without Value — 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 to learn about avoiding building products without value by pointing them to the free Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide:

🗞️ Last Week’s Food for Agile Thought Edition

Read more: Food for Agile Thought #382: Avoiding Product Waste; Meaningful Product Metrics, Prompt Engineering Guide; Club Scrum?

Categories: News
Stefan Wolpers: Stefan—based in Berlin, Germany—has been working for 17-plus years as an agile coach, Scrum Master, and Product Owner. He is a Professional Scrum Trainer (PST) with Scrum.org and the author of Pearson’s upcoming “Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide.” He has developed B2C as well as B2B software, for startups as well as corporations, including a former Google subsidiary. Stefan curates the ‘Food for Agile Thought’ newsletter and organizes the Agile Camp Berlin, a Barcamp for coaches and other agile practitioners.
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