TL; DR: Product Discovery Guide — Food for Agile Thought #466
Welcome to the 466th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 42,928 peers. This week’s issue features Afonso Franco in a masterclass with Teresa Torres and Petra Wille, sharing a great product discovery guide, while James Morgan dissects Agile’s limitations, promoting critical thinking over rigidity. John Cutler and Tom Kerwin satirically tackle extreme leadership in “Ultra Founder Mode,” and Lisa Gill highlights self-managing teams’ struggles with autonomy. Also, Wes Kao delves into understanding bureaucrats’ mindsets to foster better collaboration.
Next, David Pereira advocates using AI as a co-pilot to elevate PM effectiveness, while Aatir Abdul Rauf offers a detailed guide to competitive research for B2B SaaS. In an interview with Aakash Gupta, George Harter shares his approach to understanding users, and Melissa Perri provides strategies for achieving clarity amid ambiguous company visions.
Lastly, Itamar Gilad shares practical techniques for fostering a strong decision-making culture using clear roles and evidence-based approaches. Moreover, Ant Murphy shares his observations about John Cutler’s prioritization course, which is focused on urgency. Gregor Ojstersek discusses the importance of metrics like DORA and SPACE, and Evan Armstrong emphasizes storytelling and psychology in influencing leadership. Finally, Cedric Chin explores how business frameworks intersect with human nature through lessons from Sam Zemurray’s banana trade success.
🎓 January 27, 2025: The Advanced Product Backlog Management Course for Just $99!
👉 Please note:
- The course includes membership in my former professional students’ brand-new Hands-on Agile community.
- The course will only be available for sign-up until February 3, 2025!
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🏆 The Tip of the Week: Product Discovery Guide
, and : 📺 Product Discovery Guide
Afonso Franco delivers a 2-hour masterclass on product discovery with industry legends Teresa Torres and Petra Wille, diving deep into topics like framing outcomes, closing the strategy-discovery loop, and avoiding key pitfalls.
🍋 Lemon of the Week
(via Medium): dVx: The Metric Scrum Teams Need to Succeed
The author’s dVx metric tries to measure “external stories” in Scrum, turning agility into a numbers game instead of focusing on delivering real value. This is classic nonsense in action.
➿ Agile & Leadership
and : Ultra Founder Mode
John Cutler and Tom Kerwin explore “Ultra Founder Mode,” a satirical take on extreme leadership, emphasizing relentless accountability, radical ownership, and full immersion in every challenge without excuses or dilution of responsibility.
(via Corporate Rebels): Overcoming the Top Challenges of Self-Managing Teams
Lisa Gill shares critical challenges self-managing teams often face, emphasizing the need to shift away from ingrained command-and-control habits and develop new mindsets that empower genuine team autonomy and accountability.
(via Lean Enterprise Institute): From Agile Fatigue to Experimentation: Finding a Better Way in Development
James Morgan explores Agile’s limitations, emphasizing critical thinking and experimentation to adapt methodologies like Lean and Agile for specific contexts, advocating for thoughtful application over rigid adherence to frameworks.
: “What will I tell my boss?”: Why founders should understand the worldview of bureaucrats
Wes Kao explains why founders need to understand bureaucrats’ risk-averse mindset, suggesting strategies like using social proof, minimizing perceived risk, and empathizing with their cautious decision-making approach to drive successful collaboration.
🖥 🇬🇧 Advanced Professional Scrum Master Training w/ PSM II Certificate — November 18-19, 2024
Discover Scrum’s four success principles in this 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 — November 18-19, 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.)
🎯 Product
: How PMs Can Benefit from Generative AI Instead of Being Replaced by It
David Pereira emphasizes using AI as a co-pilot to amplify PMs’ potential, covering critical areas like creating prototypes, synthesizing insights, framing problems, and leveraging empathy to achieve success.
: The Practical Guide to Competitive Research for Product & GTM Teams
Aatir Abdul Rauf offers a comprehensive guide to competitive research, emphasizing its importance for PMs and PMMs in B2B SaaS. The guide covers competitor analysis techniques, tools, and actionable insights to inform strategy and go-to-market practices.
and : 📺 The Ultimate Guide to Knowing Your Users as a PM
In an interview with Aakash Gupta, George Harter shares his two-part strategy for PMs actually to know their users. The approach focuses on listening tours and user surveys while exploring leadership challenges, AI, and the evolving role of PMs.
: How to Get Clarity When Your Company's Strategy is… ’Fuzzy’
Melissa Perri shares strategies for gaining clarity when a company’s vision is vague, offering practical questions to align initiatives with value drivers, and confidently navigating ambiguous priorities.
📯 Ditch the Unfinished Action Items: How to Make Retrospectives Lead to Real Change
If your team consistently creates action items during Retrospectives but rarely completes them, you’re not alone. Unfinished action items are a major productivity killer and lead to stalled progress. This article highlights five actionable practices to ensure Retrospective tasks get done, including limiting action items in progress, assigning clear ownership, and adding a review of the progress in every Retrospective.
The key to real improvement isn’t in creating long lists—it’s in following through. By treating Retrospective action items with the same importance as other Sprint tasks, your team can finally break the cycle of unfinished improvements and see real, beneficial change, individually and at the team level.
Learn more: Ditch the Unfinished Action Items: How to Make Retrospectives Lead to Real Change.
📅 Hands-on Agile 2025 Is Here — Join 400-plus Peers: From Concept-Based to Context-Based Agility
I am thrilled to announce that Hands-on Agile 2025 is officially on the horizon and will be free to attend from February 4-6, 2025. This time, we will focus on how Agile needs to evolve from concept-based agility to context-based agility.
But before we discuss what that means, let’s take a step back and consider why Hands-on Agile 2025 is going to be a can’t-miss event for everyone in the agile community.
For those unfamiliar, Hands-on Agile isn’t just another conference. It’s an event built around the Barcamp model, meaning it’s a self-organized, community-driven gathering with one goal: Sharing knowledge and experiences.
From February 4 to 6, 2025, we will spend three energizing days engaging in sessions, practicing agile games, sharing war stories, and learning directly from each other. Hands-on Agile is all about creating a space for practitioners, coaches, leaders, and newcomers to connect in a truly hands-on way.
Save Your Seat Now!
There are no tickets; Hands-on Agile 2025 is free.
However, you will need to register nevertheless. Otherwise, you would not receive, for example, the invitation to the HoA2025 community or have access to individual session access credentials:
Please note:
- For technical reasons, your sign-up confirmation will be sent from stefan [at] age-of-product.com.
- Your registration to Hands-on Agile 2025 will also subscribe you to Stefan’s Food for Agile newsletter, one of the largest independent newsletters on agile practices worldwide.
- Your invitation to join the Hands-on Agile 2025 community will be limited to February 28, 2025.
🛠 Concepts, Tools & Measuring
: A Culture of Good Decision-Making (Part 2)
Itamar Gilad shares practical techniques for fostering a good decision-making culture, emphasizing clear decision roles (ACID model), “disagree and commit” practices, avoiding outcome bias, and incorporating evidence-based approaches to reduce risk.
: Prioritization & Urgency: Key lessons from John Culter’s Prioritization Course
Ant Murphy shares key lessons from John Cutler’s course on prioritization, which emphasizes urgency as a critical factor. He introduces John’s collaborative prioritization activity, which is designed to surface the right conversations and make better decisions.
: How to use engineering metrics for the success of engineers and teams
Gregor Ojstersek emphasizes using the right engineering metrics like DORA, SPACE, and DevEx to drive team success, prioritizing transparency and learning over blame while aligning software development with business outcomes.
(via Every): How to Win Arguments and Manipulate Managers
Evan Armstrong shares his journey from frustrated analyst to effective persuader by using narratives, understanding decision-makers' psychology, and preparing for objections to influence leadership and shape company strategy.
🎶 Encore
(via Commonplace): Business Reality Without Frameworks
Cedric Chin explores how business, despite modern frameworks, is rooted in human psychology and economic realities, drawing lessons from Sam Zemurray’s journey to scale in the early banana trade.
📅 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 6,000-plus Agile Peers on Youtube
Now available on the Age-of-Product Youtube channel to improve learning, for example, about the Reverse Product Roadmap:
- 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 the Product Discovery Guide — 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 Bringing Problems to Leaders by pointing them to the free Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide:
