TL; DR: The Double Diamond Problem — Food for Agile Thought #393

Welcome to the 393rd edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 46,731 peers. This week, Jason Godesky takes a deep dive into the well-established design process, pointing to the Double Diamond problem. Also, we reflect on the hype the agile coaching industry is experiencing, causing the market entry of less qualified players, and we listen to Dave Farley interviewing Kent Beck on a classic topic of the agile community: Is Waterfall experiencing a comeback? Moreover, we offer a primer to creating ChatGPT prompts for Scrum practitioners to get you started running.

Then, John Cutler states that the (product) world does not need yet another prioritization framework. Instead, he suggests prioritizing a focus area. We share insights and examples on dealing with PMF’s evolving, fluctuating, and changing nature, and Lenny Rachitsky interviews Ayo Omojola on the aspects of creating outstanding products. Also, we point to the importance of inspecting and adapting OKRs regularly and provide a guide on how to do this.

Finally, we appreciate Mark Graban interviewing Joshua Kerievsky, discussing how ‘agility’ doesn’t strictly mean ‘Agile’ in software, and Gergely Orosz shares an “interview with the four researchers behind a new developer productivity framework: The three dimensions of DevEx.” Lastly, we close this week’s edition with a simple question: Should we be polite to chatbots?

TL; DR: The Origin of Ideas and Innovation — Food for Agile Thought #392

Welcome to the 392nd edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 46,619 peers. This week, we delve into the origin of ideas, sharing the results of seven research studies and revealing the people, incentives, and environments that create innovation. Also, we address misconceptions leaders harbor about agility; we examine the habits of high-performing teams and offer some guidance for adopting these habits on your team, and we share a primer on facilitation, answering a vital question: “What is a facilitator?” (The guide pairs well with this week’s blog post on: Agile Negotiations — Life Is a Negotiation; Why Would Scrum Be Different?)

Then, we share Jason Godesky’s belief that design and development are the two sides of the same medal when he explores a contested area: agility. Moreover, Alex Osterwalder dives into the art of testing and developing hypotheses, from desirability over feasibility to leveraging AI to testing in corporate or B2B environments, and Daniel Stillman points to the crucial role of conversations in product management: types, designing techniques, empathy’s significance, and facilitation’s role.

Finally, we introduce Kim Scott’s Get Stuff Done (GSD) wheel, where she clarifies that you must first establish the groundwork for collaboration through a listening culture for GSD to succeed. Additionally, we address statistics on change fatigue: In 2022, employees faced ten enterprise changes on average, up from two in 2016. However, support for change dropped to 43% due to change fatigue. Lastly, we ponder whether AI is comparable to a management-consulting firm like McKinsey. The parallels between the pervasive use of consulting firms and AI are apparent.

TL; DR: Your Creative Second Brain — Food for Agile Thought #391

Welcome to the 391st edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 46,445 peers. This week, Tiago Forte shares the essence of his massively popular book on productivity, supporting your second brain. Also, we address proven techniques that will ‘help you to effectively communicate your vision and get buy-in from your team for your change,’ and we examine three approaches that exceptional teams use to accept failure at individual, group, and organization-wide levels, allowing them to learn, develop, and enhance their performance.

Then, we point to a video game practice that is highly effective for products, too: Games help users become more skilled throughout their journey, as onboarding is a continuous process. John Cutler answers, ‘What are you working on right now, and why is it the most important thing you could be working on?’ in all the wrong ways, and we explain different approaches to learning whether a customer might buy from the worst way to one that actually works. Moreover, Stripe’s CTO David Singleton describes how to build a product-minded engineering team that excels at planning and prioritizing at scale.

Finally, Charles Lambdin applies some ideas from the past to create products today, from Lenin’s concepts of commandism and tailism to Marx’s notions of struggle and contradiction. (Think of it as a kind of intellectual stretching.) We also talk about vanity metrics and share that it is primarily our lack of courage that leads us to seek refuge in estimates instead of facing the undeniable truth that software development inherently involves risks.

The most popular discussion on LinkedIn last week was: 🤬 Rant: Scrum Masters are no Project Managers!