TL; DR: Product Velocity — Food for Agile Thought #468
Welcome to the 468th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 42,965 peers. This week, Ned O’Leary advocates streamlined, minimalist product processes to improve product velocity, while John Cutler addresses organizational inertia through adaptive structures. Also, Max Levchin shares Affirm’s integrity-driven productivity approach, Maarten Dalmijn analyzes Waternet’s failed SAFe transformation, and Shubham Sharma advocates lean, continuous feedback over traditional Retrospectives.
Next, Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden reveal updated Lean Product and Strategy Canvases for holistic product alignment, Aakash Gupta interviews Maria Cuasay on accelerating growth through focused culture and processes, and Paweł Huryn identifies ten productivity drains in product management. Moreover, Alex Debecker highlights scope bloat’s pitfalls.
Lastly, Adam Ard contrasts collaboration styles, stressing individual ownership vs. team-driven consistency to boost productivity. Kyle Crawford advocates for embracing ambiguity in overcoming barriers to social impact, and Manu Kapur emphasizes “productive failure” as a structured growth tool. Finally, Sheril Mathews reinforces that blending psychological safety with high standards creates an optimal “Learning Zone” for high performance.
🎓 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 Velocity
(via SSOReady): Methodology Is Bullshit: Principles for Product Velocity
Ned O’Leary argues that rapid product development is best achieved by minimizing processes and focusing on essentials. He advocates for “idiot mode” simplicity, skipping elaborate planning, limiting scope, strategically ignoring non-critical details, and keeping teams small to maximize speed and product velocity.
🍋 Lemon of the Week
(via Medium): What Is SAFeBut? And How To Avoid It
The author presents SAFeBut, a twist on ScrumBut, claiming you can maximize SAFe’s impact by clinging to its “Ten Critical Success Factors.” I wonder: if you’re rigidly following a set list of rules in a complex environment, aren’t you missing the entire agile point?
➿ Agile & Leadership
: Surfing Inertia and Pendulum Swings
John Cutler discusses the challenge of organizational inertia and its pendulum-like swings. He suggests adopting structures, aligning incentives, and fostering continual sensemaking can help organizations balance independence and coordination, allowing them to respond more nimbly to market shifts and avoid disruptive overhauls.
: To Build a Meritocracy
Max Levchin explains Affirm’s “High-Performance Culture” OKR, emphasizing a meritocracy based on integrity, calculated risk-taking, and constructive dissent. His guidelines focus on humility, collaboration, and results-oriented productivity.
: How a Digital Transformation Can Bankrupt Your Company
Maarten Dalmijn examines Waternet’s failed transformation, arguing that relying on SAFe, costly rebuilds, and ignoring underlying dysfunctions led to bankruptcy, underscoring that frameworks alone don’t fix foundational organizational issues.
(via Medium): Why Traditional Retrospectives Are Redundant
Shubham Sharma argues traditional Retrospectives are outdated, proposing lean, continuous feedback loops as a more practical alternative for modern, distributed teams. His approach prioritizes real-time reflection over rigid, scheduled meetings to enhance team agility.
🖥 🇬🇧 Advanced Professional Scrum Master Training w/ PSM II Certificate — December 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 — December 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
: The Lean Product Canvas
Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden introduce an updated Lean Product Canvas and a new Lean Strategy Canvas, expanding beyond UX to support entire product teams. These tools encourage cross-functional alignment, integrating OKRs, job-to-be-done language, and strategic clarity, helping teams achieve shared goals and streamline product discovery and delivery.
: 🎙 How to Build Things Faster as a Product Team | Maria Cuasay, Director of Product Growth @ Ancestry
Aakash Gupta interviews Maria Cuasay about accelerating product growth. They discuss essentials like speed-focused culture, streamlined processes, unique Growth PM skills, and frameworks like Opportunity Solution Trees for customer-focused solutions.
: 10 Sources of Waste in Product Management
Paweł Huryn outlines ten critical sources of waste in product management, including team topology issues, rigid processes, excessive documentation, meeting overload, and analysis paralysis, while offering actionable strategies to tackle these productivity pitfalls and keep teams motivated.
: 7 signs of scope bloat I no longer ignore
Alex Debecker shares seven warning signs of scope bloat in product management, from overloading requirements to cool-but-needless features, and emphasizes the importance of ruthless prioritization and iterative scoping.
📺 Mastering Work Intake w/ Jeremy Willets and Tom Cagley
How do you deal with prioritization of the flood of new requirements, requests, and ideas? Let's talk about the challenges of mastering work intake to achieve sustainable productivity and flow. Expect new ideas from authors Jeremy Willets and Tom Cagley on a classic challenge for every team in this fantastic recording of the 64th Hands-on Agile Meetup. (The video was recorded in English.)
Watch the video now: Mastering Work Intake w/ Jeremy Willets and Tom Cagley — Hands-on Agile #64.
📅 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
: Programmer Collaboration Styles
Adam Ard contrasts two collaboration styles: individual stewardship, which fosters deep expertise through ownership and shared stewardship, which promotes teamwork and consistency. Choosing the right approach enhances productivity and engagement based on team needs.
(via Stanford Social Innovation): The Strategic Art of Ambiguity (SSIR)
Kyle Crawford argues that embracing ambiguity, rather than rigid strategies, empowers change-makers to overcome entrenched power structures, adapt dynamically, and discover unconventional pathways, ultimately advancing social impact efforts despite challenging odds.
(via Harvard Business Review): To Help Your Team Learn, Set Them Up for Productive Failure
Manu Kapur advocates for “productive failure,” where managers design tasks with built-in challenges to foster employee growth. By balancing performance and learning goals, employees explore, fail, and gain insights within a structured, safe environment, ultimately enhancing innovation and resilience.
🎶 Encore
: Psychological Safety vs. High Standards: A Misunderstood Dynamic
Sheril Mathews argues that psychological safety and high standards are complementary, not contradictory, in creating high-performance environments. Psychological safety fosters risk-taking, accountability, and learning, while high standards drive excellence, creating a “Learning Zone” that balances challenge and support.
📅 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 Product Velocity:
- Hands-on Agile 64: Mastering Work Intake: The Key to Sustainability and Flow with Jeremy Willets and Tom Cagley.
- 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 EXTRA: How Elon Musk Would Run YOUR Business with Joe Justice.
✋ Do Not Miss Out and Learn About Product Velocity — 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:
🗞️ Last Week’s Food for Agile Thought Edition
Read more: Food for Agile Thought #467: Messy Product Management, Agile Goldrush, PM’s Untimely Death, Toyota Kata A-Z.
