Trust is the beginning of everything. I am hesitant to recycle an old slogan of a banking institute. However, in the context of becoming a learning organization and embracing business agility, it condenses the main challenge perfectly: How shall we convince the incumbents with vested interests in the status quo to give the new way of working the benefit of the doubt? Join me and delve into how distrust manifests and what we can do to earn stakeholder trust.
Welcome to the 351st edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 35,559 peers. This week, we delve into Agile and deadlines, debunking the myth of many managers that being agile only works in environments without them. Moreover, James Shore and Aino Vonge Corry dissect a core event to help teams reflect and improve. Also, we learn how Safesite went from two-week sprints to an approach that helped them understand ‘our customers better and [validate] what should be built next.’
Then, we reflect on disincentives to thinking strategically, starting with system design, and we describe Paypal’s innovation system that involves a ‘blockchain-based token system that lets employees place wagers on ideas.’ Also, we list suggestions to free yourself from administrative tasks for the benefit of figuring out what is worth building.
Finally, we analyze why most managers are good at managing but lack a critical skill of the 21st century, and we define lean metrics based on insights from the leading organization in everything ‘Lean’—Toyota. Lastly, we delve into the lessons learned from mastering mobbing together in a live stream.
There are plenty of failure possibilities with Scrum. Given that Scrum is a framework with a reasonable yet short “manual,” this effect should not surprise anyone. What if, for example, not all of your Scrum team’s members feel enthusiastic about the Sprint Retrospective, the critical event when the Scrum team inspects itself? How can you help them become dedicated supporters instead? Join me and delve into how to avoid teammates feeling like prisoners of Retrospectives in less than two minutes.
Welcome to the 350th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 35,507 peers. This week, we introduce the ‘Confidence Meter,’ a product discovery tool. Plus, we ask a seemingly simple question: how do we define team longevity, and is it indeed a helpful approach? Moreover, we enjoy an introductory guide to understanding and using Product Goals to your team’s advantage and point at waste at all levels in our software shops.
Then, we share ‘empirical evidence for the [usefulness of the] Double-Diamond model’ and applaud Jason Yip, who sketched use cases of user stories, from 😞 to 🤔 to 😀 practices. And in case you plan your next career step: Roman Pichler sheds light on the responsibilities of a head of product. Moreover, Janna Bastow talks about being lean while creating and maintaining your roadmap and how objectives and key results (OKR) may help meet that challenge.
Finally, we share John Cutler’s ultimate guide to fighting vanity metrics, from understanding their appeal to identifying and overcoming them. And while we are at it: Agile Uprising provides a guide to helpful metrics in various environments, from flow efficiency to work item age to time to market.
In this energizing 42nd Hands-on Agile session on Lean Roadmapping, Janna Bastow, the go-to-authority on product roadmaps, talked about being lean while creating and maintaining your roadmap and how objectives and key results (OKR) may help meet that challenge.
📺 Watch the video now: Janna Bastow: Lean Roadmapping and OKRs — Hands-on-Agile #42.
Welcome to the 349th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 35,462 peers. This week, we share the impact of a 2014 change in engineering culture at Uber by ‘creating cross-functional program teams and introducing platform teams.’ Moreover, we reflect on why your little, happy Scrum island isn’t enough to achieve business agility, and we combine two powerful coaching tools for agile practitioners to learn from each other. Also, Adam Grant interviews Jenny Chatman on the effects of toxicity, mediocracy, bureaucracy, and anarchy.
Then, we detail how to address the leadership’s need for more predictability by ‘right-sizing’ work items to one- or two-day stories; we delve into the details of product-centric companies, and we listen to Lenny Rachitsky interviewing Teresa Torres on ‘automating continuous discovery, the opportunity solution tree framework, making a case for user research, [and] common interviewing mistakes.’
Finally, we refer to the many advantages of using our own products internally, pointing to examples from Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft. Also, we explain how the ‘5 Whys’ practice works and its benefits, and we enjoy a hearty laugh when Yuri Malishenko applies the IKEA metaphor to Scrum.
