TL; DR: Your Creative Second Brain — Food for Agile Thought #391
Welcome to the 391st edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 46,445 peers. This week, Tiago Forte shares the essence of his massively popular book on productivity, supporting your second brain. Also, we address proven techniques that will ‘help you to effectively communicate your vision and get buy-in from your team for your change,’ and we examine three approaches that exceptional teams use to accept failure at individual, group, and organization-wide levels, allowing them to learn, develop, and enhance their performance.
Then, we point to a video game practice that is highly effective for products, too: Games help users become more skilled throughout their journey, as onboarding is a continuous process. John Cutler answers, ‘What are you working on right now, and why is it the most important thing you could be working on?’ in all the wrong ways, and we explain different approaches to learning whether a customer might buy from the worst way to one that actually works. Moreover, Stripe’s CTO David Singleton describes how to build a product-minded engineering team that excels at planning and prioritizing at scale.
Finally, Charles Lambdin applies some ideas from the past to create products today, from Lenin’s concepts of commandism and tailism to Marx’s notions of struggle and contradiction. (Think of it as a kind of intellectual stretching.) We also talk about vanity metrics and share that it is primarily our lack of courage that leads us to seek refuge in estimates instead of facing the undeniable truth that software development inherently involves risks.
The most popular discussion on LinkedIn last week was: 🤬 Rant: Scrum Masters are no Project Managers!
Did you miss the previous Food for Agile Thought’s issue 390?
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🏆 The Tip of the Week: Your Second Brain
: Building a Second Brain: The Definitive Introductory Guide
Tiago Forte shares the essence of his massively popular book on productivity, unlocking your creative potential.
🍋 The Lemon of the Week
(via Medium): Keep Your Agile off My Lawn, Please
Friedrich C.F. Meertaube argues that using Agile for projects that have a “well-defined roadmap” in a corporate setting can be harmful.
➿ Agile & Scrum
(via Get Lighthouse): How to Get your Team Buy in: Proven Leadership Methods
Jason Evanish shares proven techniques that will ‘help you to effectively communicate your vision and show you how to get buy-in from your team for your change.’
: Why Great Teams Embrace Failure (and How To Do It)
David Burkus examines three approaches that exceptional teams use to accept failure at individual, group, and organization-wide levels, allowing them to learn, develop, and enhance their performance.
: Applying Marxist Thought to…Product Work?
Charles Lambdin applies some ideas from the past to create products today, from Lenin’s concepts of commandism and tailism to Marx’s notions of struggle and contradiction.
🎓 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Advanced Professional Scrum Master Online Training w/ PSM II Certificate — May 30-31, 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 live-virtual immersive class 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 — May 30-31, 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
: What games taught me about customer onboarding
Jock Busuttil points to a video game practice that is highly effective for products, too: Games help users become more skilled throughout their journey as onboarding is a continuous process.
: Why Are You Doing This? (Wrong Answers Only)
John Cutler answers, ‘What are you working on right now, and why is it the most important thing you could be working on?’
: Ask Teresa: How Can You Test a Customer’s Willingness to Pay?
Teresa Torres explains different approaches to learning whether a customer might buy, from the worst way to one that actually works.
📯 Agile Leadership: 10 Hidden Gems to 10X Your Leadership Game
Agile leadership is tricky, covering a lot of ground, from team building, decision-making, servant leadership, and self-management to including everyone and giving everyone a voice—to name a few of the challenges.
In the past, I found the following books beneficial to better understand the problem and solution space agile leadership. Moreover, you can significantly improve your leadership game as Scrum Master, agile coach, or manager for less than $ 200—an excellent investment from a professional perspective.
Learn more: Agile Leadership: 10 Hidden Gems to 10X Your Leadership Game.
🛠 Concepts, Tools & Measuring
(via First Round Capital): I’m Sorry, But Those Are Vanity Metrics
Lloyd Tabb shares “how to abide by metrics that generate direction—not pats on backs—so that your company can act on what’s essential to a business.”
(via Medium): All Software Estimates are Lies
Jason Godesky asserts that it is primarily our lack of courage that leads us to seek refuge in estimates instead of facing the undeniable truth that software development inherently involves risks.
(via Agile Alliance): The Galactic Empire was defeated by WIP
Kenny Henbest takes some inspiration from a faraway galaxy to help you better understand the importance of flow for successful teams.
🎶 Encore
and : 🎙 Building a culture of excellence
Lenny Rachitsky interviews Stripe’s CTO David Singleton on how to build a product-minded engineering team that excels at planning and prioritizing at scale.
(via Medium): What I Learned about “Product Roadmap” from Stanford Product Management Accelerated
Jean Huang shares a lesson on deriving a product roadmap from company-level and product strategies.
📅 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 5,000-plus Agile Peers on Youtube
Now available on the Age-of-Product Youtube channel to improve learning, for example, about your second brain:
- Hands-on Agile 50: The Product Community of Practice with Petra Wille.
- 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 Your Second Brain — 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 engage their second brain by pointing them to the free Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide: