TL; DR: Effective Product Teams — Food for Agile Thought #473
Welcome to the 473rd edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 42,878 peers. This week, Santiago Comella-Dorda and co-authors share data-driven strategies for effective product teams, while Jurgen Appelo critiques Agile’s commodification, advocating fresh paradigms. Simon Powers reflects on Agile’s relevance amidst leadership fatigue and AI’s rise, and Donna Spencer and Murray Robinson discuss organizational politics with John Cutler. Also, Martin Lohmann and Jorgen Krabbe’s case study on Alm Brand highlights lessons from descaling 25 Scrum teams, emphasizing role clarity, iterative change, and balancing simplicity with structure.
Next, Lenny Rachitsky interviews Seth Godin on crafting remarkable products, building trust through branding, and leveraging viral strategies. Aakash Gupta hosts Melissa Perri to explore strategic leadership, continuous discovery, and balancing user and business goals, and Eira Hayward analyzes 2024 product manager salaries, highlighting regional and industry trends amidst a challenging market. Moreover, Alexander Hipp underscores the value of aligning work with company goals to turn busywork into impactful progress.
Lastly, Dennis Hambeukers critiques the Double Diamond design model, emphasizing the need for adaptability in managing resistance. Teresa Torres provides strategies for tackling inherited backlogs, balancing historical value with forward-looking priorities, while Nilam Ganenthiran reflects on solving startup challenges through “code-yellow” crises, promoting focus and urgency over perfection. Finally, Gaurav Vohra introduces the Unfair Advantages Framework, helping startups craft marketing strategies by leveraging unique strengths and customer insights for unbeatable momentum.
🎓 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: Effective Product Teams
(via McKinsey & Company): What makes product teams effective?
Santiago Comella-Dorda and co-authors analyzed data from 1,700-plus product teams, revealing how capabilities like agile funding, product management, and automation empower teams to boost effectiveness, engagement, and value delivery.
🍋 Lemon of the Week
(via Medium): How to use Burn-Up Chats and a Burn-Up Chart Analysis to Predict Delivery Dates
The author’s burn-up chart analysis hilariously attempts to predict delivery in complex environments, ignoring its futility. Monte Carlo simulations meet reality: complexity doesn’t care about your cute graphs or optimistic probabilities.
➿ Agile & Leadership
: Agile Is Undead… A Synthesis
Jurgen Appelo reflects on Agile’s evolution, critiquing its commodification while highlighting the need for fresh paradigms to address contemporary challenges, urging agility without clinging to the Agile brand.
: The Decline of Agile Change Programs
Simon Powers explores the decline of Agile change programs, linking it to overwhelming macroeconomic events, leadership fatigue, and AI’s rise, urging Agile professionals to adapt for continued relevance.
and : Surviving organisational politics with John Cutler
Donna Spencer and Murray Robinson host John Cutler on the No Nonsense Agile Podcast. The episode delves into navigating organizational politics, focusing on survival strategies like alliance-building, narrative creation, and adapting to today’s complex, trust-deficient tech environments.
(via Agile Alliance): Lessons from descaling 25 Scrum teams
Martin Lohmann and Jorgen Krabbe’s case study on Alm Brand’s Agile descaling journey reveals insights from restructuring 25 Scrum teams. Key lessons include prioritizing role clarity, fostering alignment, iterating changes, and balancing simplicity with structure.
🖥 🇬🇧 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, which includes the industry-recognized PSM II certification. The PSM II training class is designed as a live virtual class and will be in English.
Enjoy the benefits of a live virtual immersive class with like-minded agile peers from 09:00 – 17:30 CET.
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
and : Seth Godin's tactics for building remarkable products, strategies, brands and more
Lenny Rachitsky interviews Seth Godin, discussing how to craft remarkable products, build trust through branding, leverage viral strategies, and make critical strategic choices for lasting impact and excellence.
and : Mastering Product Strategy With Melissa Perri, Author of Escaping the Build Trap
Aakash Gupta interviews Melissa Perri, exploring product strategy, continuous discovery, balancing user and business goals, and evolving as a strategic product leader for impactful outcomes.
(via Mind The Product): How much are product managers getting paid in 2024?
Eira Hayward’s analysis outlines 2024 product manager salaries amidst a challenging job market. Regional variations, industry-specific trends, resilience, and tailored applications are key for navigating recruitment hurdles.
: Why strategic visibility matters
Alexander Hipp highlights the importance of strategic visibility in product management, emphasizing how mapping work to company goals and solving real user problems transforms busywork into meaningful progress.
📺 Hands-on Agile #65: The Lean Tech Manifesto with Fabrice Bernhard
Join Fabrice Bernhard on how the “Lean Tech Manifesto” solves the challenge of scaling Agile for large organizations and enhances innovation and team autonomy. (The recording is in English.)
📺 Watch the video now: The Lean Tech Manifesto with Fabrice Bernhard — Hands-on Agile #65.
📅 Hands-on Agile 2025 Is Here — Join 500-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
(via Medium): The real Double Diamond process of design
Dennis Hambeukers critiques the idealized Double Diamond design model, highlighting the role of resistance—denial, excuses, and delays—in real-world processes, emphasizing adaptability and change management for successful design implementation.
: What Do You Do When You Inherit a Giant Product Backlog?
Teresa Torres highlights strategies for handling inherited product backlogs, balancing their historical value with relevance for future priorities, emphasizing customer feedback, outcome alignment, and tools like generative AI for analysis.
: Time for a Code-Yellow?: A Blunt Instrument That Works
Nilam Ganenthiran reflects on leveraging “code-yellow” crises to solve challenging startup problems, emphasizing sweating problems through focus, parallel solutions, discomfort, and prioritizing urgency over perfection in problem-solving.
🎶 Encore
: The Unfair Advantages framework
Gaurav Vohra explains the Unfair Advantages Framework for startups to craft marketing strategies by identifying customer hangouts and leveraging unique strengths, creating unbeatable momentum through aligned channels and amplification.
📅 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 PM Tools:
- 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 Effective Product Teams — 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 Effective Product Teams by pointing them to the free Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide:
