Food for Agile Thought #180: Micromanagement Perils, Scaling Agile Teams, Impact vs. Output, MVP Viability

Food for Agile Thought’s issue #180—shared with 21,092 peers—focuses on micromanagement perils and the magic that happens once you leave the industrial paradigm behind you. We also learn about four different approaches on how to scale agile teams, and we revisit the velocity as well as the minimum viable product discussions.

Being dedicated storytellers ourselves, we borrow from Pixar’s rule book on storytelling, and we embrace eight ways how we can focus our product teams on outcome/impact, not output/features.

Lastly, we applaud Mike Cohn for busting more product development myths!

Did you miss last week’s Food for Agile Thought’s issue #179?

Food for Agile Thought #180: Micromanagement Perils, Scaling Agile Teams, Impact vs. Output, MVP Viability

🏆 The Essential Read: Micromanagement Perils

Chieh Huang (via TED Talks): 📺 Confessions of a recovering micromanager

Chieh Huang shares the magic that happened once Boxed decided to reject the micromanagement madness and started fostering self-organization instead.


Advertisement

Join the Software Product Management Summit—The Hands-on Experience for Product People

For another year, the SPM Summit is taking place in the heart of Europe with a mission to bring together software product managers from a variety of industries for a lively and informal 2-day gathering. During the event, we’ll be sharing thoughts with leaders from business and academia, engaging in hands-on sessions, and expanding our network of professional contacts.

Software Product Management Summit 2019

Learn more and register today with the promo code AGE-OF-PRODUCT at Software Product Management Summit.


Agile & Scrum

Viktor Cessan: The Often Missed Team Building Activity – An Organizational Growth Strategy

Viktor Cessan sketches four principal ways of scaling the number of agile teams.

Mike Cohn: Six Agile Product Development Myths: Busted

Mike Cohn busts six myths about agile product development, from #NoPlanning to #NoManagers.

Ilia Pavlichenko (via Scrum.org): Why Focus on Velocity Inhibits Agility

Ilia Pavlichenko points at the dangerous dynamic of focusing on a Development Team’s velocity.


Advertisement

Engineering Manager (m/f/d) Agile at Flaconi

At Flaconi, agile is at the very centre of what we do and how we work. We have successfully grown engineering@Flaconi from 1 to 5 cross-functional teams in 2018 by redefining how we work together to deliver outstanding service to our customers and to the rest of the organisation.

In 2019 we’re looking to grow even further and we’re looking for an outstanding engineering manager to help take us to the next level. Our cross-functional teams are aligned vertically, directly to the customer flow, whereas our engineering managers and architects are horizontally aligned across the teams. Interested in being part of true agile transformation?

Engineering Manager (m/f/d) Agile at Flaconi

Learn more: Engineering Manager (m/f/d) Agile at Flaconi.


Product & Lean

John Cutler (via Medium): Do This Now: 8 Ways to Focus your Product Team on Impact, Not Features

John Cutler lists eight ways on how organizations can focus on impact instead of merely delivering features.

Shahed Khalili (via Medium): Pixar’s Rules of Storytelling Applied to Product Managers & UX Designers

Shahed Khalili claims that product managers and user experience designers need to be storytellers.

Patrick Thornton (via uxdesign.cc): A Minimal Viable Product needs to actually be viable

According to Patrick Thornton, you can’t iterate to viability. Learn more about what this means for the MVP.

📺 Join 1,175-plus Agile Peers on Youtube

Now available on the Age-of-Product Youtube channel:

✋ Do Not Miss Out and Learn about Micromanagement Perils: Join the 4,825-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.

Large scale agile: Join the Hands-on Agile Slack Group

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.

Scrum Master Interview Question: free download of the most popular ebook on Scrum Master job interviews — by Age-of-Product

🗞️ Last Week’s Food for Agile Thought Edition

Read more: Food for Agile Thought #179: Agile Dogmas, Innovative Culture Paradoxes, Overcoming Inertia, and Risk-Aversion

Find this content useful? Share it with your friends!

Leave a reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.