TL; DR: The Decline of the Agile Brand — Food for Agile Thought #384
Welcome to the 384th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 45,437 (1) peers. This week, we listen to Brett Maytom and Michael Küsters on the decline of the Agile brand. Moreover, we explore whether Scrum is not only applied empiricism but also “some sort of natural pattern” before Seth Godin suggests tried and tested practices to help you maneuver complex projects, from “budgets are a tool, not a weapon” to “heroism is more fun but less reliable than good planning.” Moreover, we describe four effectiveness-impacting biases, from the urgency effect to the planning fallacy.
Then, we sketch a developer-friendly role model of a product manager, from demonstrating evident expertise to helping with the dirty work, which pairs well with Marty Cagan’s concept of roles of an empowered product team. Next, Teresa Torres and Hope Gurion discuss the responsibility of empowered product teams for their outcomes, while Lenny Rachitsky interviews Stanford University professor and author Christina Wodtke on how OKRs can help your team achieve better results.
Finally, we share a bunch of primers on user story mapping, planning poker and story points, and practical user research. Lastly, we ask: Can wisdom from the past still be relevant to today’s VUCA-determined world? Is there something like a Stoic Scrum Master?
(1) It is time to consolidate subscriptions: In addition to the email-based edition, there is also the LinkedIn-based newsletter edition with 8,000-plus subscribers.
📈 Please join the anonymous survey: What Anti-Patterns have you observed that make Jira unbearable?
Did you miss the previous Food for Agile Thought’s issue 383?
🗞 Shall I notify you about articles like this one? Awesome! You can sign up here for the ‘Food for Agile Thought’ newsletter and join 37,000-plus subscribers.
🎓 Join Stefan in one of his upcoming Professional Scrum training classes!
📖 Get notified when the Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide book is available!
Join your peers on April 5, 2023: Hands-on Agile #50: The Product Community of Practice w/ Petra Wille.
🏆 The Tip of the Week: The Decline of the Agile Brand
and : #0075 - Brett Maytom and Michael Kusters - The agile brand has been destroyed by con men and clowns
🎙 In this podcast, Brett Maytom and Michael Küsters delve into their perspective on the state of the agile industry.
🍋 The Lemon of the Week
(via Medium): Why Scrum Never Works
Instinctively, The Cynical Manager chose anonymity to publish this article, claiming Scrum was invented “impose impossible goals on their unsuspecting workforce,” only to stray into failure patterns on the organizations’ side to support Scrum properly.
➿ Agile & Scrum
(via Medium): Scrum is a natural pattern
Francis Laleman believes that Scrum is not only applied empiricism but also “some sort of natural pattern.”
(via TechTello): 4 Cognitive Biases That Impacts Productivity
Vinita Bansal describes four effectiveness-impacting biases, from the urgency effect to the planning fallacy.
: Simple techniques for complex projects
Seth Godin suggests tried and tested practices to help you maneuver complex projects, from “budgets are a tool, not a weapon” to “heroism is more fun but less reliable than good planning.”
🎓 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Advanced Professional Scrum Master Online Training w/ PSM II Certificate — March 28-29, 2023
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 an immersive class of two compact sessions with like-minded agile peers from 09:00 – 17:30 o’clock CEST:
Learn more: 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Advanced Professional Scrum Master Online Training w/ PSM II Certificate — March 28-29, 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
: How to Be a [Product Manager] That Engineers Don’t Hate
Stay Saasy sketches a developer-friendly role model of a product manager, from demonstrating obvious expertise to helping with the dirty work.
(via Silicon Valley Product Group): Product Core Competencies
Marty Cagan sketches the roles of an empowered product team.
and : 📺 Building a Culture of Accountability for Empowered Product Teams
Does autonomy without accountability equal anarchy? In this video, Teresa Torres and Hope Gurion discuss the responsibility of empowered product teams for their outcomes.
📯 The Stoic Scrum Master — Making Your Scrum Work (30)
Can wisdom from the past still be relevant to today’s VUCA-determined world? I started reading Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations some time ago and found it intriguing; maybe it applies to “Agile?” In other words: is there something like a Stoic Scrum Master?
If I understand Stoicism correctly, it is about living a life of virtue, which comprises wisdom, justice, courage, and moderation. (All of those can be further subdivided, see Stoic Ethics.) For whatever reason, I felt reminded of Scrum Values and thought: could it be that the first principles of “agile” haven’t been defined by the Agile Manifesto but by “Zeno of Citium in Athens in the early 3rd century BCE?”
So, I embarked on a fun exercise of asking our beloved LLM to create an essay that applies Stoicism to Scrum, notably the Stoic Scrum Master.
👉 Learn more: The Stoic Scrum Master — Making Your Scrum Work (30)
🛠 Concepts, Tools & Measuring
and : 🎙 The ultimate guide to OKRs
Lenny Rachitsky interviews Stanford University professor and author Christina Wodtke on how OKRs can help your team achieve better results.
: How to Create a Story Map When Writing User Stories
Mike Cohn created a simple-to-understand primer for user story mapping.
(via Parabol Focus): Story Points: The Complete Guide & FAQ
Parabol created a primer on planning poker and story points.
🎶 Encore
(via Smashing Magazine): A Pragmatist’s Guide To Lean User Research
Paul Boag points to some practical approaches to user research.
📅 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 avoiding building products without value :
- 🆕 Hands-on Agile 47: How much Product Discovery Is enough? The Confidence Meter Explained with Itamar Gilad.
- 🆕 Hands-on Agile 46: The Agile Fluency Model ® with Diana Larsen.
- 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 the Decline of the Agile Brand — 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 the decline of the Agile brand by pointing them to the free Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide: