TL; DR: Blaming Agile — Food for Agile Thought #457
Welcome to the 457th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 42,744 peers. This week, Rupert Goodwins critiques Moxie Marlinspike’s view of blaming Agile, emphasizing innovation’s evolution and the need for fresh thinking, while Jim Highsmith urges a shift from productivity metrics to value creation. Dave Rooney highlights simple defect management, using an analog tool, and Jeff Gothelf advocates for trust-based leadership. Following up, Ant Murphy stresses the importance of healthy team tension and collaboration over fear for creativity and the effectiveness of teams.
Next, John Cutler and Leah Tharin emphasize the need for a well-defined operating model in product organizations, focusing on team structure and accountability during growth. David Pereira stresses aligning strategy, discovery, and delivery for value creation in product management, and Melissa Suzuno highlights Ramsey Solutions’ engineer rotation in product trios for balanced skill development. Also, Richard Mironov explains how a company’s price point shapes its organizational behavior, especially in B2C versus B2B environments.
Lastly, Johanna Rothman discusses using the Cost of Delay to prioritize work, emphasizing determining if the work is still valuable first. Chris Stone introduces the Lean Experiment Canvas, a tool for teams to design and test hypotheses in Retrospectives. Then, Jenny Wanger provides a checklist for influencing product managers, focusing on understanding their challenges and simplifying changes, and Rolf Mistelbacher highlights how generative AI helps creators rapidly prototype by bridging skill gaps. Finally, Shane Gibson, Murray Robinson, and Gene Kim discuss the importance of organizational wiring, including leadership and communication, in fostering high-performing DevOps and agile teams.
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🏆 The Tip of the Week: Blaming Agile
(via The Register): Sorry, Moxie. Blaming Agile for software stagnation is wrong
Rupert Goodwins argues that Moxie Marlinspike’s critique of Agile as stifling innovation is misplaced, suggesting that innovation has evolved significantly and that fresh thinking and embracing new approaches are essential to staying relevant.
🍋 Lemon of the Week
➿ Agile & Scrum
: You won’t create 21st century enterprises measuring productivity!
Jim Highsmith argues that 21st-century enterprises should shift from measuring productivity to value creation, emphasizing customer-centric, collaborative, and adaptive management models over traditional productivity metrics.
: The Red File Folder: When an analog tool does a better job than a digital one!
Dave Rooney shares how his team effectively managed defects using a simple analog tool: a red file folder. He emphasizes the value of addressing issues immediately and keeping solutions straightforward over digital tools.
: How to build a high-performance culture without culling the herd
Jeff Gothelf argues that building a high-performance culture requires trust, proper incentives, and adaptive leadership rather than fostering fear and cutthroat competition, which only leads to mediocrity and employee burnout.
: Health and Unhealthy Tension
Ant Murphy explores the dynamics of healthy versus unhealthy tension within teams, emphasizing the importance of compromise, leadership, and fostering an environment that encourages collaboration without stifling progress.
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🎯 Product
and : 🎙 How to Structure a Product Organization
John Cutler and Leah Tharin discuss the importance of defining and documenting an operating model in product organizations, emphasizing team structure, shared accountability, and the challenges of cross-functional collaboration, especially during growth and change.
(via Userpilot): Anti-BS Product Management: Driving Value When Everyone Distracts You
David Pereira discusses the importance of focusing on value creation in product management by aligning strategy, discovery, and delivery while avoiding distractions and traps that hinder effective product development.
: Why Ramsey Solutions Rotates Engineers in Their Product Trios
Melissa Suzuno discusses how Ramsey Solutions rotates engineers in product trios to balance continuous discovery with technical skill development, fostering a culture of experimentation, shared learning, and strong team cohesion.
: Price Points Drive Organizational Behaviors
Richard Mironov explains how a company’s price point influences its organizational behavior, especially in B2C versus B2B environments. This influences everything from decision-making to C-level dynamics.
📯 Transformed Meets the Scrum Guide
Despite criticism from the product community regarding Scrum as a framework for effective product creation, namely Marty Cagan himself, I believe that it is worthwhile to compare the principles that help form successful product teams with those of Scrum. Let’s delve into an analysis of “Transformed” and how its principles align with Scrum’s.
Learn more: Transformed Meets the Scrum Guide.
🛠 Concepts, Tools & Measuring
: How to Calculate the Cost of Delay to Rank All the Work, Part 1
Johanna Rothman discusses prioritizing work using the Cost of Delay, starting with assessing whether the work is still valuable before calculating the various costs associated with delays.
: The Lean Experiment Canvas
Chris Stone introduces the Lean Experiment Canvas, a simple template that guides teams in Retrospectives to design experiments focused on solving problems, testing hypotheses, and achieving tangible improvements.
: Your go-to checklist for influencing product managers
Jenny Wanger outlines a checklist for influencing product managers, focusing on understanding their challenges, simplifying changes, and emphasizing benefits to drive value without overwhelming them.
(via Fresh van Root): Prototyping Products with Generative AI
Rolf Mistelbacher explains how generative AI empowers creators across all roles to quickly turn ideas into clickable prototypes by filling skill gaps and making prototyping more accessible and innovative.
🎶 Encore
, and : 🎙 Wiring the Winning Organisation with Gene Kim
Shane Gibson, Murray Robinson, and Gene Kim discuss how effective organizational wiring, encompassing leadership, architecture, and communication, is crucial for fostering high-performing teams, particularly in DevOps and agile practices.
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📺 Join 6,000-plus Agile Peers on Youtube
Now available on the Age-of-Product Youtube channel to improve learning, for example, about Strategy Creation:
- Hands-on Agile 62: From Backlog Manager to Product Manager with David Pereira.
- Hands-on Agile 61: Toyota Kata Coaching for Agile Teams & Transformations with Fortune Buchholtz.
- Hands-on Agile 59: Tackling Fake Agility with Johanna Rothman.
- Hands-on Agile 57: Humble Planning with Maarten Dalmijn.
- 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.
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Help your team to learn about avoiding Blaming Agile by pointing them to the free Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide:
