TL; DR: A Forensic Product Backlog Analysis (Part 1)
Garbage in, garbage out: No matter whether your team chose Scrum for the right purpose—solving complex, adaptive problems. No matter whether your Scrum Team’s product quality is top-notch or whether your teammates embrace self-management to the fullest. If your Product Backlog is not up to the job, all of these accomplishments will account for little, as your team will provide less value to its customers than possible. Here is where the forensic Product Backlog analysis steps in, a light-weight, simple practice to help Product Owners and Scrum Masters unearth anti-patterns that led to your low-value Product Backlog.
Learn more on how a piece of paper and a pencil can turn around the perception of your Scrum Team among stakeholders and customers.
TL; DR: Ethical Agile Coaching, Best Practice Cult—Food for Agile Thought #278
Welcome to the 278th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 30,189 peers. This week, we delve into ethical agile coaching; we investigate whether being agile is necessary but not sufficient for being lean, and we learn why best practices can be harmful and why we, nevertheless, like following them.
We then reveal a shocking truth: most great product teams follow a system that resembles Waterfall to launch new innovative features. We also look at how agile practices have influenced and changed product management since the publication of the Agile Manifesto, and we point at the answer to the question of what makes for a healthy product culture.
Lastly, we appreciate Dave Snowden’s reflection on the nature and challenges of organizational change, employing a mapping metaphor.
Like a job ad for a Scrum Master position, the equivalent for the Product Owner position also reveals excellent insight into an organization’s progress on becoming agile. Yesterday, I analyzed 60-plus randomly selected job ads from the UK, the US, and Germany for that purpose. Learn more about what makes job ads such a treasure trove with the following 23 Product Owner anti-patterns.
TL; DR: Scrum Product Goal, Psychological Safety—Food for Agile Thought #277
Welcome to the 277th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 30,112 peers. This week, we delve into the Scrum Product Goal, and we address what happens to psychological safety when the leadership opens the pressure valve like in the case of Boeing. Also, we enjoy an interview on how to build super-cohesive teams.
We then apply lessons learned from FBI hostage negotiator Chris Voss to stakeholder management, and we are crossing the chasm with Geoffrey Moore: How do you drive innovation? Moreover, we explore defining objectives and key results for your product team.
Lastly, we appreciate a list of 76 prioritization frameworks, and we analyze the reasons for the fall of Kodak and what it means for product management.
TL; DR: Scrum Master Job — 4 Steps to Identify Suitable Employers or Clients
Are you considering a new Scrum Master job? However, you are not sure that it is the right organization? Don’t worry; there are four steps of proactive research to identify suitable employers or clients for Scrum Masters and avoid disappointment later.
I have used those four steps for years to identify organizations I would like to work with, and they never failed me. Read on and learn how to employ search-engines, LinkedIn’s people search, reaching out to peers in the agile community, and analyzing the event markets in the quest for your next Scrum Master job.
TL; DR: Agile at Tesla, Roadmap Bankruptcy—Food for Agile Thought #276
Welcome to the 276th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 30,023 peers. This week, we delve into Agile at Tesla; we learn how Retrospectives work in the most unlikely places, and we embrace a new approach of risk-mitigating by utilizing the Product Backlog.
We then analyze what product managers can do to deliver more value with existing processes; we detail three cases that indicate that your product roadmap is not up to the job but in desperate need of a restart, and we point at three common mistakes when calculating customer lifetime value.
Lastly, we explore a simple visualization tool to help teams turn learnings into a better way of working, and we ask: Is SAFe® safe?
