Food for Agile Thought #162: Organizational Agility, Enterprise Slowness, Product Strategy, State of DevOps Report 2018

Food for Agile Thought’s issue #162—shared with 19,373 peers—focuses on the problem of imposing agile practices top-down to achieve organizational agility, why enterprise organizations are so nerve-wreckingly slow, and why commitment cultures seem to produce better outcomes.

We then dive deep into product strategy. From how to be more strategic, to establishing an effective process, to running bets from a portfolio of innovation options.

Lastly, we applaud Puppet for providing the community with the 2018 edition of the State of DevOps report, now including a maturity model.

Have a great week!

Food for Agile Thought #162: Organizational Agility, Enterprise Slowness, Product Strategy, State of DevOps Report 2018

🏆 The Essential Read

Jonathan Smart (via Medium): Organisational Agility: Give People a VOICE

Jonathan Smart advocates against prescriptive practices, the one-size-fits-all-approach of top-down ‘Agile Transformations.’

Organizational Agility & Scrum

Ian Miell: Why Are Enterprises So Slow?

Ian Miell shares his insights into the particularities of enterprise software delivery and why it may be testing your patience.

Damian Hughes (via Mind The Product): Why Commitment Culture Wins

Damian Hughes proposes creating ‘commitment cultures,’ as those win more often than other forms of culture.

(via Puppet): 2018 State of DevOps Report

The 2018 edition of the State of DevOps Report introduces a maturity model for introducing DevOps practices.

Survey: How Do You Solve Impediments?

No matter if you are a Scrum Master or an agile coach, sooner or later, you will run into a problem that’s outside of the team’s sphere of control. The question is: How do you solve impediments of this kind? What approach has worked best for you in the past?

Barry Overeem, Christiaan Verwijs and I teamed up to provide some transparency in this matter and share your best techniques and approach with the agile community. All it takes to contribute is five minutes of your time to participate in the anonymous ‘how to solve impediments’ survey. (We expect results to be available in November.)

Survey: How to Solve Impediments outside the Team’s Control — Age of Product

Participate in the ‘how to solve impediments’ survey now!

Product & Lean

Julie Zhuo (via Medium): How to be Strategic

Julie Zhuo shares her secret sauce of how to be more strategic.

Roman Pichler: Establishing an Effective Product Strategy Process

Roman Pichler points at making the right strategic product decision—an essential ingredient to developing a successful product.

Barry O'Reilly: Value Engineering for Outcome-based Bets

Barry O'Reilly stresses the importance of having a portfolio of innovation options. Learn, how this works.

📺 Join 750-plus Agile Peers on Youtube

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✋ Do Not Miss Out: Join the 4,000-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.

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

If you like to join now 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 #161: Toyota Scrum, Lean vs. Agile vs. Design Thinking, XP Revisited, Sunk Cost Fallacy..

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