TL; DR: Custom GPTs — Food for Agile Thought #431
Welcome to the 431st edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 42,216 peers. This week, Lenny Rachitsky explores how custom GPTs revolutionize workplace productivity with 20 innovative applications. The Agile Uprising Podcast with Chris Murman, Jay Hrcsko, and Andrew Leff tackles the theme of gluttony within Agile, stressing the importance of balance and self-awareness. Jorn van der Schaaf shares insights into Ivy Global’s growth without traditional managerial roles, advocating for self-organization and collective decision-making, and Bryan Finster focuses on engineering solutions to enhance software delivery and job satisfaction. Additionally, the Scrum Master Salary Report 2024 offers valuable data from 1,114 participants globally, revealing an average salary of $87,800.
Then, Janna Bastow analyzes strategies for transforming potential users into devoted customers, and Leah Tharin guides on evolving product and growth team structures for enhanced agility. Moreover, Teresa Torres advises leveraging customer feedback for product evolution. At the same time, Ant Murphy explores adaptive pricing models in product-led growth, challenging conventional wisdom and encouraging innovative strategies for monetization and user acquisition.
Lastly, Noah Cantor advises tech teams on achieving flow and quality by focusing on essentials, removing dependencies, and breaking down silos for smoother operations. Also, Todd Lankford challenges the productivity myth of deadlines, revealing their demotivating impact and proposing a healthier, deadline-free approach to product development. Finally, Cheryl Strauss Einhorn explores handling professional disagreements gracefully, offering a tool for making and executing decisions with empathy to enhance team dynamics and resilience.
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The most popular discussion on LinkedIn last week was: Mature Scrum Teams Do Not Need a Full-time Scrum Master.
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🏆 The Tip of the Week: Custom GPTs
: You should be playing with GPTs at work
Lenny Rachitsky explores the transformative potential of custom GPTs in enhancing workplace productivity, highlighting 20 creative applications across tasks, from refining product copy to optimizing sales strategies, demonstrating AI’s impact on efficiency and innovation.
🍋 Lemon of the Week
(via Medium): Why designers fail to integrate into Agile teams
Ah, the tale of Jorge Valencia—a designer’s dive into the Scrum abyss, where creativity meets two-week sprint shackles. Spoiler: Merging Design Thinking with Agile is the secret sauce to outsmart Scrum’s rigidity—a sarcastic nod to flexibility saving the day in a world where practices clash.
➿ Agile & Scrum
: 🎙 Achieving Balance by Exploring Gluttony in Agile
In an Agile Uprising Podcast, Chris Murman, Jay Hrcsko, and Andrew Leff discuss exploring gluttony within Agile, highlighting its nuanced impact on balance in work, relationships, and agile mindsets, advocating for self-awareness and healthy boundaries.
(via Corporate Rebels): Ivy Global's Workplace Revolution: Navigating Growth Without Managers
Jorn van der Schaaf details Ivy Global’s unique approach to growth without traditional managerial roles, emphasizing self-organization and collective decision-making to foster a dynamic and adaptive workplace, setting a precedent for modern organizational structures.
(via InfoQ): 📺 Agile Rehab: Engineering for Improved Delivery
Bryan Finster emphasizes focusing on engineering solutions to improve software delivery and reduce work dissatisfaction, advocating for continuous delivery and feedback to tackle the actual problems in the agile process.
🎓 🖥 🇬🇧 Advanced Professional Scrum Master Training w/ PSM II Certificate — March 26-27, 2024
Discover Scrum’s four success principles in this official Scrum.org class for Advanced Scrum Masters, including the industry-acknowledged PSM II certification. This PSFS training class is in English.
Enjoy the benefits of a live-virtual immersive class with like-minded agile peers from 09:00 – 17:30 o’clock CET.
Learn more: 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Advanced Professional Scrum Master Training w/ PSM II Certificate — March 26-27, 2024.
Customer Voice: “Since about 12 people have already asked me these last 2 days: Yes, taking one of Stefan Wolpers classes is a mind-blowing experience. He’s actually the most adroit facilitator I’ve met after Guy Kawasaki & Roland Busch. It all flows like a silk ribbon in a soft spring breeze but with a strong authenticity that prevents the thing from feeling all Del Monte Canned Corporate Facilitation(tm). It may be due to his seemingly effortless mastery of the Liberating Structures. He doesn’t “teach to the test,” yet when you take the open practice assessments, you somehow score 95+ the first time. I dunno, it’s magic or Mozart, you pick.” (Source.)
👉 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
(via ProdPad): Product Adoption Strategy: How to Get Your Users Craving More
Janna Bastow emphasizes creating a product adoption strategy that transforms potential users into loyal fans by understanding their needs, experimenting with solutions, and continuously engaging with feedback for a truly integrated user experience.
: Leah's Product & Growth team Guide
Leah Tharin outlines a comprehensive guide for structuring dynamic and efficient product and growth teams, emphasizing the shift from traditional roles to a more integrated, cross-functional approach that aligns with modern market demands and fosters flexibility, focus, and urgency in product development.
: 5 Different PLG Pricing and Monetization Strategies
Ant Murphy explores various product-led growth (PLG) pricing and monetization strategies, emphasizing the importance of adapting pricing models to fit product constraints and user behaviors. Through a dialogue with a founder, Ant challenges limiting beliefs about pricing, suggesting innovative approaches like usage caps and feature-based pricing.
: The Interview Snapshot: How to Synthesize and Share What You Learned from a Single Customer Interview
Teresa Torres highlights the importance of synthesizing customer interviews into snapshots, experience maps, and opportunity solution trees to drive actionable insights and product improvements.
📯 The Scrum Master Salary Report 2024
The Scrum Master Salary Report 2024 is the fifth edition of the industry survey after 2017, 2019, 2022, and 2023. This free report is based on the answers of 1,114 participants globally. If you are considering a career decision this year, maybe whether you should join the industry as a junior Scrum Master, move to a new organization, or go independent, you will find the report's information beneficial.
By the way, the average salary of the participants in the survey is $87,800, with a standard deviation of about $46,400. In the complete report, you will find more detailed information; see for yourself by downloading your copy of the Scrum Master Salary Report 2024 below.
📺 Read more: Download the Scrum Master Salary Report 2024.
🛠 Concepts, Tools & Measuring
(via InfoQ): 4 Steps to Achieving Operational Flow and Improving Quality in Tech Teams
Noah Cantor advises tech teams to achieve flow and quality by focusing on less, removing dependencies, prioritizing work over busyness, and dismantling silos for smoother operations and better customer value.
(via Medium): The Inescapable Deadline: 5 Reasons Managers of Product Teams Keep Setting Them
Todd Lankford dismantles the myth that deadlines enhance productivity, illustrating how they actually sap motivation and foster a toxic work environment while offering strategies for a more effective, deadline-free approach to product development.
🎶 Encore
(via Harvard Business Review): How to Make Peace with a Company Decision You Don’t Like
Cheryl Strauss Einhorn explores navigating professional disagreements with grace, detailing a tool that aids in mindfully executing decisions one disagrees with via reflection and empathy to foster resilience and positive team dynamics.
📅 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 Custom GPTs:
- Hands-on Agile 58: Dysfunction Mapping with Michael Lloyd.
- Hands-on Agile 57: Humble Planning with Maarten Dalmijn.
- Hands-on Agile 54: Overcoming Common Product Backlog Management Traps with David Pereira.
- Hands-on Agile 53: An Agile Coaches Guide to Storytelling with Bob Galen.
- Hands-on Agile EXTRA: How Elon Musk Would Run YOUR Business with Joe Justice.
- 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 Custom GPTs — Join the 19,000-plus Strong ‘Hands-on Agile’ Slack Community
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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 Custom GPTs by pointing them to the free Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide: