Food for Agile Thought #395: Micromanagement Is Good, Cracking Product Strategy, FAST Agile Beats Scrum, Tracking User Insights

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.

Food for Agile Thought #395: Micromanagement Is Good, Cracking Product Strategy, FAST Agile Beats Scrum, Tracking User Insights — Age-of-Product.com

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🏆 The Tip of the Week: Micromanagement Is Good

Jim Highsmith: 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

Per Beining (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.

Jason Godesky (via Medium): Embracing Change with System-Driven Design

Jason Godesky claims that a prerequisite for change is to make it simple and cheap.

John Cutler: 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

Entdecken Sie die vier Erfolgsprinzipien von Scrum mit dieser garantierten offiziellen Scrum.org Professional Scrum Product Owner-Schulung, die zur branchenweit anerkannten PSPO I-Zertifizierung führt und diese beinhaltet. Die Unterrichtssprache ist Deutsch.

Genießen Sie die Vorteile eines intensiven virtuellen Live-Kurses über vier Sessions mit gleichgesinnten agilen Peers in den Morgenstunden von 09:00 – 13:00 Uhr.

Professional Scrum Product Owner Schulung mit PSPO I-Zertifikat — 13. bis 16. Juni 2023

Erfahren Sie mehr: 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Professional Scrum Product Owner Schulung mit PSPO I-Zertifikat — 13. bis 16. Juni 2023.

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🎯 Product

Peter Yang and Jackie Bavaro: 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.

Lenny Rachitsky: 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.’

Aniket Deosthali (via Reforge): How to Build AI Products People Want

Aniket Deosthali details a proven approach to creating AI products.

Clement Kao (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.

How Elon Musk Would Run YOUR Business mit Joe Justice — Hands-on Agile EXTRA — Age-of-Product.com

📺 Watch the video now: How Elon Musk Would Run YOUR Business mit Joe Justice — Hands-on Agile EXTRA.

🛠 Concepts, Tools & Measuring

Jason Yip (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.

David Heinemeier Hansson: 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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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.

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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 why micromanagement is good:

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✋ Do Not Miss Out and Learn more about Why Micromanagement Is Good — Join the 12,000-plus Strong ‘Hands-on Agile’ Slack Community

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Help your team to explore why micromanagement is good by pointing them to the free Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide:

Download the free Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide by PST Stefan Wolpers — 160 ways to improve as a Scrum Team — Age-of-Product.com

🗞️ Last Week’s Food for Agile Thought Edition

Read more: Food for Agile Thought #394: Amazon Product Management Framework, Ethics of Agile Coaching, Product-led Transformations, The Dunning-Kruger Effect.

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