TL; DR: Scrum Police, Marty Cagan on Transformations — Food for Agile Thought #386
Welcome to the 386th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 45,734 peers. This week, we applaud Mike Cohn and his fantastic squad from the Scrum Police for battling the countless misadventures of wonky Scrum implementations. Also, Jurriaan Kamer explores six options to “revitalize your agile transformation” while we reflect on the “relationship between organization and self-organization,” as systems self-organize within constraints. Moreover, Shane Snow claims, “despite our natural propensity to trust, a lack of trust is the #1 underlying cause of dysfunction in teams,” and Jason Cohen dives into humanity’s repeated pattern of inability to predict the future and what techniques we have to navigate our volatile world.
Then, Marty Cagan shares his thoughts on common transformation pitfalls, from outsourcing the transformation to McBoston to the widespread desire for a process, and Tim Herbig suggests addressing the analysis-paralysis problem product teams face during product discovery. Additionally, Dave Gray shares several free innovation-related illustrations, from the corporate innovation ecosystem to measuring innovation to plugging into the startup ecosystem.
Finally, we appreciate that Corinna Baldauf turned all 144 Retromat exercises into a giant Miro template and enjoy Nick Brown’s excellent primer on the many problems, issues, and flaws of a favorite concept of many organizations: flow efficiency. Russ Roberts interviews Kevin Kelly about his book ‘Excellent Advice for Living,’ and why Kevin Kelly is not worried about AI, and we close with David Rotman’s belief that LLMs would inevitably cause a revolution by transforming many jobs. Whether that will be beneficial to society is up to us to decide.
📈 Please join the anonymous survey: What Anti-Patterns have you observed that make Jira unbearable?
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🏆 The Tip of the Week
: 📺 Scrum Police
Hats off to Mike Cohn and his fantastic squad for battling the countless misadventures of wonky Scrum implementations!
For years, the Scrum Police existed in the shadows, defending the purity of Scrum implementations. As crimes against Scrumanity have increased, we are going public with our efforts.
On our new, official site you can report crimes, view a log of recent convictions, and even confess your own crimes before you are turned in by your teammates.
🍋 The Lemon of the Week
(via Mind The Product): Trust? In product management?
Reid Manchester reflects on trust and risk in product management, claiming that building healthy, successful products requires product people to work in a state of low trust.
➿ Agile & Scrum
(via Medium): Don’t Get Stuck in Agile Bureaucracy
Jurriaan Kamer explores six options to “revitalize your agile transformation,” from examining beliefs about people in the workplace, reviewing your current framework and practices to using experimentation to evolve the organization continuously.
: Holding space for self-organization
Chris Corrigan reflects on the “relationship between organization and self-organization,” as systems self-organize within constraints.
(via Jason Cohen): Navigating the unpredictability of everything
Jason Cohen dives into humanity’s repeated pattern of inability to predict the future and what techniques we have to navigate our volatile world.
: The Counter-Intuitive Truth About Trust In Teamwork
Shane Snow claims, “despite our natural propensity to trust, a lack of trust is the #1 underlying cause of dysfunction in teams.”
🎓 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills Class — May 16, 2023
The Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills (PSFS) training by Berlin Product People is a guaranteed 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 — May 16, 2023.
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🎯 Product
(via Mind The Product): 📺 Common transformation pitfalls
In this extensive video, Marty Cagan shares his thoughts on common transformation pitfalls, from outsourcing the transformation to McBoston to the widespread desire for a process.
: From Information to Evidence: How Context Informs Product Discovery Decisions
Tim Herbig suggests addressing the analysis-paralysis problem product teams face during product discovery.
: Innovation illustrated
Dave Gray shares several free innovation-related illustrations, from the corporate innovation ecosystem to measuring innovation to plugging into the startup ecosystem.
📯 Creating a Personal Readme for Scrum Masters with ChatGPT
Providing a personal readme to your new teammates and stakeholders as a Scrum Master is a great way to build trust and rapport while managing expectations at the same time. I do so regularly and having a template for that purpose comes in handy.
Therefore, I thought it also might be an excellent exercise to test ChatGPT on more practical aspects of a Scrum Master’s work. So please follow the complete path to having ChatGPT create a decent personal readme template for Scrum Masters—which took me less than 20 minutes.
👉 Learn more: Creating a Personal Readme for Scrum Masters with ChatGPT
🛠 Concepts, Tools & Measuring
: Retromat Miroboard Mega Template – All About Retrospectives
Corinna Baldauf turned all 144 Retromat exercises into a giant Miro template.
(via Medium): The many flaws of flow efficiency
Nick Brown shares an excellent primer on the many problems, issues, and flaws of a favorite concept of many organizations.
🎶 Encore
and (via Econlib): 🎙 Kevin Kelly on Advice, AI, and Technology
Russ Roberts interviews Kevin Kelly about his book ‘Excellent Advice for Living,’ and why Kevin Kelly is not worried about AI.
(via MIT Technology Review): ChatGPT is about to revolutionize the economy. We need to decide what that looks like.
David Rotman believes that LLMs will inevitably cause a revolution by transforming many jobs. Whether that is beneficial to society is up to us to decide.
📅 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:
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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 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.
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