TL; DR: Copy-Paste Agile — Food for Agile Thought #460
Welcome to the 460th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 42,798 peers. This week, Maarten Dalmijn argues that the era of one-size-fits-all Agile is over, advocating for agnostic approaches tailored to organizational contexts over mere Copy-Paste Agile, and Gustavo Razzetti challenges rigid psychological safety truisms, urging leaders to promote ownership and courage instead. Willem-Jan Ageling highlights common Scrum practices that frustrate developers, while Joost Minnaar shares insights from over 50 self-managing organizations exemplifying the RenDanHeYi model. Also, Pierre Pureur and Kurt Bittner discuss how embracing technical debt through Minimum Viable Architecture can accelerate learning.
Next, James Gunaca explores the evolving product management job market, emphasizing competition and shifting hiring practices. Aakash Gupta shares retention strategies from his 15-year experience in product, while Stephen Shapiro offers unconventional innovation prompts that foster long-term value and differentiation. Moreover, David Pereira outlines five tactics for B2B product managers to avoid the “feature factory” trap, focusing on balancing customer wants with user needs, iterating quickly, and leveraging qualitative data.
Lastly, Mark Somerfield critiques The Lean Startup, emphasizing the importance of strong relationships over data-driven processes. Johanna Rothman advocates for using Cost of Delay (CoD) to align teams with business goals, while Bandan Jot Singh offers a practical guide to prioritizing features using the Kano model. Productside provides a comprehensive overview of U.S. Product Management salaries in 2024, and David Pinsof presents 30 concepts exploring manipulation, self-deception, and the role of status in human behavior.
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🏆 The Tip of the Week: Copy-Paste Agile
: The Era of Copy-Paste Agile Is Over
Maarten Dalmijn argues that the era of one-size-fits-all Agile is over, urging a shift toward agnostic approaches tailored to unique organizational contexts rather than mindlessly following frameworks or relying on certifications alone.
🍋 Lemon of the Week
➿ Agile & Leadership
: 9 Practices that Haunt Developers Working with Scrum
Willem-Jan Ageling explores why Scrum often gets a bad reputation, highlighting nine common practices that frustrate developers, such as misused story points, constant crunch time, and external dependencies.
: 5 Myths About Psychological Safety That Hinder Your Team's Growth
Gustavo Razzetti challenges five popular truisms about psychological safety, encouraging leaders to rethink rigid approaches and foster environments where courage, ownership, and meaningful participation drive team growth.
(via Corporate Rebels): 50+ Case Studies of Self-Managing Organizations
Joost Minnaar shares insights into over 50 self-managing organizations, each exemplifying the principles of RenDanHeYi, focusing on autonomy, customer-centricity, and shared rewards to revolutionize traditional corporate structures.
and (via InfoQ): How to Make Technical Debt Your Friend
Pierre Pureur and Kurt Bittner argue that technical debt (TD) can be essential to learning, enabling faster feedback, and reducing over-investment in uncertain solutions. They propose using a Minimum Viable Architecture (MVA) to ensure teams only address critical TD that impacts an MVP’s success.
🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Advanced Professional Scrum Master Training w/ PSM II Certificate — October 15-16, 2024
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 a live virtual immersive class with like-minded agile peers from 09:00 – 17:30 CEST.
Learn more: 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Advanced Professional Scrum Master Training w/ PSM II Certificate — October 15-16, 2024.
Customer Voice: “Dear Stefan, Thanks a lot for two intense and mindblowing days. Your way of teaching suites me perfectly. I must admit that all the positive feedback you have gotten is spot on! I would any time a day recommand your class to a Scrum Master who wants to add a whole new level to his/her scrum game. To all of you reading this. You have to experience Stefans class to understand how good it is.” (Source.)
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🎯 Product
(via Mind The Product): Everything wrong with the product management job market. And how to fix it
James Gunaca explores the challenges facing the current product management job market, highlighting increased competition, evolving hiring practices, and the impact of tech layoffs, offering insights for both candidates and employers.
: How to Improve Retention: The Ultimate Guide for Product Managers and Leaders
Aakash Gupta shares hard-earned lessons from over 15 years in product, offering actionable strategies to boost retention, from measuring cohorts correctly to leveraging gamification and proactive churn prevention tactics.
: A Life Beyond Features for B2B PMs
David Pereira outlines five strategies for B2B product managers to escape the “feature factory” trap: balancing customer wants with user needs, iterating quickly, measuring outcomes, and effectively leveraging qualitative data.
: 10 Unconventional Questions to Stimulate Innovation
Stephen Shapiro encourages leaders to rethink conventional innovation questions, offering ten alternative prompts focusing on long-term value, differentiation, and deeper customer relationships to drive meaningful innovation.
📯 The Pre-Mortem: Preventing Product Failure Before It Strikes
Do you want to build products that avoid costly mistakes, meet customer needs, and drastically enhance your career prospects? Then, the pre-mortem is your secret weapon!
By imagining how a project might fail before it even begins, teams can identify and mitigate hidden risks early, ensuring a more resilient, successful outcome. This article explains why pre-mortems are a brilliant tool for risk mitigation, improving your team’s decision process, and how they can transform your product development process. Learn how to apply this proactive strategy and create bulletproof products.
Learn more: The Pre-Mortem: Preventing Product Failure Before It Strikes.
🛠 Concepts, Tools & Measuring
(via Medium): The Lean Startup Is a Con. Successful Businesses Are Built on Relationships, Not Methodologies
Mark Somerfield critiques The Lean Startup methodology, arguing that building successful businesses depends more on strong relationships with customers, staff, and investors than on lean, data-driven processes.
: Positive Effects of Using the Cost of Delay to Rank All the Work
Johanna Rothman highlights the positive effects of using Cost of Delay (CoD) to rank work, emphasizing its focus on value, better decision-making, and improved flow metrics to align teams with business goals.
: Your Guide to Kano Model for feature prioritization
Bandan Jot Singh provides a practical guide to applying the Kano model for feature prioritization, helping product teams categorize and rank features by customer satisfaction to optimize resource allocation and development.
(via Productside): US Product Manager Salaries 2024
Producctside provides an overview of U.S. Product Management salaries in 2024, highlighting compensation ranges across roles from Associate Product Manager to Chief Product Officer based on experience and market trends.
🎶 Encore
: 30 Useful Concepts about Bullshit
David Pinsof presents 30 thought-provoking concepts on how “bullshit” operates in social, political, and personal contexts, dissecting manipulation, self-deception, status games, and the underlying incentives that drive human behavior.
📅 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.
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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 avoiding Copy-Paste Agile:
- 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.
✋ Do Not Miss Out and Learn About Avoiding Copy-Paste Agile — Join the 20,000-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 learn about avoiding Copy-Paste Agile by pointing them to the free Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide:
