TL; DR: Micromanagement Is Good — Food for Agile Thought #395
Welcome to the 395th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 47,112 peers. This week, Jim Highsmith advocates that the agile community’s “don’t micromanage” tenet is entirely wrong; in other words: Micromanagement is good in some places. We then share a success story of replacing Scrum with FAST Agile, highlighting the differences between the two approaches, while claiming that a prerequisite for change is to make it simple and cheap. Also, we list reasons someone might not speak up when encountering issues, even in relatively psychologically safe environments.
Then, Peter Yang interviews Jackie Bavaro regarding practical tips on defining a product strategy and getting buy-in across your organization. Moreover, we learn about Notion’s ‘evolving internal processes, product reviews, planning cadences, and increasing shift to synchronous communication.’ Are you considering how to integrate generative AI into your current product best? Look no further: Aniket Deosthali details a proven approach to creating AI products. Also, we delve into how to ‘create a library of user insights to keep track of research findings.’
Finally, we learn how Agile works at Tesla; we list four team assessment categories, from checklists of key practices to quantitative assessments of desired outcomes. Moreover, according to David Heinemeier Hansson, running a flat organization requires substituting the traditional managerial approach with an asynchronous, self-managing paradigm. Lastly, Sketchplanations visualized Richard Feynman’s approach to understanding something deeply.
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🏆 The Tip of the Week: Micromanagement Is Good
: Micromanaging the Right Way
Jim Highsmith advocates that the agile community’s “don’t micromanage” tenet is entirely wrong.
🍋 The Lemon of the Week: Percentage Complete Is Back
(via Medium): Being Agile, Doing Scrum: Adding Accountability To Your Scrum Team In Three Steps
Stephen Fells elaborates on how to make the Daily Scrum more efficient, suggesting, for example, brief status updates including metrics like ‘percentage complete: US123 John. 50% done. Est. complete EOD today. NB.’
➿ Agile & Scrum
(via Agile Alliance): Going FAST – When Scrum is slowing you down [M]
Per Beining shares a success story of replacing Scrum with FAST Agile, highlighting the differences between the two approaches.
(via Medium): Embracing Change with System-Driven Design
Jason Godesky claims that a prerequisite for change is to make it simple and cheap.
: Why Aren't They Saying Anything?
John Cutler lists reasons someone might not speak up when encountering issues, even in relatively psychologically safe environments.
🎓 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Professional Scrum Product Owner Schulung mit PSPO I-Zertifikat — 13. bis 16. Juni 2023
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🎯 Product
and : How to Crack Your Product Strategy
Peter Yang interviews Jackie Bavaro regarding practical tips on defining a product strategy and getting buy-in across your organization.
: How Notion builds product
Lenny Rachitsky shares an interview with Michael Manapat on Notion’s ‘evolving internal processes, product reviews, planning cadences, and increasing shift to synchronous communication.’
(via Reforge): How to Build AI Products People Want
Aniket Deosthali details a proven approach to creating AI products.
(via Amplitude): Opportunity Solution Tree: A Visual Tool for Product Discovery
Clement Kao shares a good primer on how to use Teresa Torres’ to create products customers want.
📯 How Elon Musk Would Run YOUR Business mit Joe Justice — Hands-on Agile EXTRA
Joe Justice worked for Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk.
In this Hands-on Agile meetup, Joe shared DX, or Digital Transformation, the agile operating system for TeslaSpeed—a term coined by the EU Commission to talk about how fast Tesla moves and how fast they need to move now.
📺 Watch the video now: How Elon Musk Would Run YOUR Business mit Joe Justice — Hands-on Agile EXTRA.
🛠 Concepts, Tools & Measuring
(via Medium): Four categories of Agile team assessments
Jason Yip lists four team assessment categories, from checklists of key practices to quantitative assessments of desired outcomes.
: Manage process before people: “Get the processes right and the rest will follow.”
According to David Heinemeier Hansson, running a flat organization requires substituting the traditional managerial approach with an asynchronous, self-managing paradigm.
(via UX Collective): Creating a User Insights Knowledge Base to keep track of research findings
Eva Katharina Wolf delves into how to ‘create a library of user insights to keep track of research findings.’
🎶 Encore
(via Sketchplanations): The Feynman Learning Technique
Sketchplanations visualized Richard Feynman’s approach to understanding something deeply.
📅 Scrum Training & Event Schedule
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📺 Join 5,000-plus Agile Peers on Youtube
Now available on the Age-of-Product Youtube channel to improve learning, for example, about why micromanagement is good:
- Hands-on Agile EXTRA: How Elon Musk Would Run YOUR Business with Joe Justice.
- 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 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 Why Micromanagement Is Good — 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 explore why micromanagement is good by pointing them to the free Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide:
