Food for Agile Thought’s issue #198—shared with 22,473 peers—learns about the silent meeting manifesto, we appreciate a visualization of why a linear process is ill-suited to progress agile transitions, and we pick up some tricks on how to handle support issues during a Sprint without compromising the Sprint Goal.
We also broaden our understanding of the nature of the MVP, we understand the different challenges product leaders are facing, and we enjoy a new lean experiment template.
Lastly, we reflect on many managers’ bias for action even though self-organizing teams will likely solve most issues on their own.
I recently started aggregating my notes, links, and references related to agile leadership to understand better what it — in the context of an agile transition — may look like. In the end, becoming agile is not the goal of a transition; surviving as an organization is. Hence I appreciate whatever appeals to business leaders and their motivation to delve into agile ideas, frameworks, or practices.
Let’s examine some favorite ideas and concepts around agile leadership. (Please bear with me that the following text is rather bullet-point heavy to concentrate its information.)
Scrum Master Interview: Demand Creates Supply and the Job Market for Agile Practitioners is No Exception
Scrum has proven time and again to be the most popular framework for software development. Given that software is eating the world, a seasoned Scrum Master is nowadays in high demand. And that demand causes the market-entry of new professionals from other project management branches, probably believing that reading one or two Scrum books will be sufficient. Which makes any Scrum Master interview a challenging task.
If you are looking to fill a position for a Scrum Master (or agile coach) in your organization, you may find the following 38+9 interview questions useful to identify the right candidate. They are derived from my thirteen years of practical experience with XP as well as Scrum, serving both as product owner and Scrum Master as well as interviewing dozens of Scrum Master candidates on behalf of my clients.
So far, this Scrum Master interview guide has been downloaded more than 15,000 times.
Food for Agile Thought’s issue #197—shared with 22,468 peers—delves into agile decision making when there is no apparent right answer; we are inspired by a saboteur’s manual to check our projects for similar indications and we go back to a classic on agility from 1972. (Yes, there is life before the Manifesto.)
We also learn about the opportunities that a recent pre-packaged management fad bears for UX folks; we check a flowchart on product prioritization, and we get a better understanding on what companies believe product managers do all day.
Lastly, we applaud Marty Cagan on yet another encouraging video on the challenges product menschen face every.
Food for Agile Thought’s issue #196—shared with 22,452 peers—discovers seven agile coach types; we learn about the difference between ‘Agile Transformation’ and ‘agile transformation’ by following Avanza’s success story. Moreover, we warm up to the idea that there might be an alternative to stable teams in the age of self-selection.
We also learn about the confluence of lean, agile, and Design Thinking; we get our hands on a checklist for the state of agility of the product roadmap, and we are tempted to follow the idea that nobody owns anything in a product made by a team. Or not?
Lastly, we applaud Mary Meeker for releasing another edition of her epic Internet Trends report. For free.
TL;DR: Scrum Master Problem Dealing — The Survey Results
Scrum Master Problem Dealing: We all know it; changing the way we work is extremely difficult. It requires us to find novel solutions to wicked challenges, to deal with cultural baggage (‘the way we do things here’) and to bring along the people needed to make a change successful. And yet, this difficult challenge is a core responsibility of Scrum Masters: How can your organization work effectively with Scrum if it is not considering the entire system?
But how do Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches go about this? What strategies do they use to change the system? Who are their most important allies? And what else can we learn from them?
We teamed up with The Liberators to identify what works in the field. We gathered both quantitative as well as qualitative data from a survey completed by over 200 participants.
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