TL; DR: Beware of Becoming a Scrum Mom (or Scrum Pop)
Trying to be supportive and do good, is most of the time an honorable thing. This is particularly true in your capacity as a Scrum master. However, doing too much good can quickly have the opposite effect. It’s a known Scrum anti-pattern, often referred to as the Scrum mom syndrome.
Read on to learn more about its manifestations, and the damage to your team caused by being overly protective.
Disclaimer: Of course, this post is in no way intended to be gender-specific. In my experience, there is no difference between the Scrum pop and the Scrum mom. This post is all about the emerging trend of Scrum helicopter parenting.
Age of Product’s Food for Thought of May 29th, 2016 provides insights into essential agile metrics, and what questions to ask at the beginning of an agile transition. We deal with agile self-righteous know-it-alls and lift the secret of Hubspot’s product management practice: customer-centricity.
We also explore, what makes us buy things, and why traction is the first of all agile metrics. We also dive into lessons learned from Mr. Lean Startup, Eric Ries, and read about SocialWire’s successful pivot.
Last, but least, we learn why enterprise culture is a double-edged sword, what artificial intelligence and automation will mean for the future of work, and how technology hijacks our psychological vulnerabilities.
Age of Product’s Food for Thought of May 22nd, 2016 provides 20 helpful questions from new Scrum master to product owner, covers success factors, when working with remote agile teams and agile coaches, features an introduction to team psychology and the “cognitive bias” problem and explains the so important moment of engineers engaging with customers.
We also explore, how agile principles can be applied to creating a business strategy, how to identify the most promising product managers, and why disruption is usually a long, slow, and complex journey.
Last, but least, we learn how to effectively and efficiently communicate a product roadmap to stakeholders, the four flavors of innovation failure, the dark side of blockchain, and why coding might have already peaked.
Age of Product’s Food for Thought of May 15th, 2016 covers the Kodak moment, failing to innovate and its tragic consequences, how great teams build great products, why empathy is essential for product success, how to employ JTBD in the right manner, and encourages to download a free UX research methodology guide.
We also explore how to get the right candidates for user tests, whether scaling agile with SAFe is an evil thing, that radical transparency is key to agile success, what agile KPIs need to be tracked, and what communication skills make you a good leader.
Last, but least, we learn about 12 innovation imperatives, why blockchain unbundles trust, and that less probably is not always more.
TL;DR: Lean User Tests – How to Find the Right Candidates
This part of the Lean User Tests series focuses on acquiring the right candidates for the interviews, answering questions like:
How many applicants are required to fill an interview slot?
How to reach out to prospective candidates among your user base?
How to set up the application form?
There are differences in approaching candidates in the B2B versus the B2C space. However, the following general principles apply to all user interviews.
Age of Product’s Food for Thought of May 8th, 2016 covers Scrum’s Achilles heel — technical debt —, why whole organizations need to become agile and just isles within, the KPIs of culture, and that Scrum mums are overprotective and don’t scale.
We also explore the dark art of software estimation, the 10 success factors of great product teams and their metrics, and how to engage engineers in the design process.
Last, but least, we learn about the best practices of creating products at The Guardian, the biology of leadership, and the last decade’s most memorable IT disasters and what we can learn from them.
