TL; DR: Culture & Methods Trends 2023 — Food for Agile Thought #387
Welcome to the 387th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 45,893 peers. This week, Shane Hastie introduces the Culture & Methods Trends 2023 report, from culture handbooks to LLM-supported development to scaling frameworks entering the Late Majority. Moreover, we learn from an interview with Brendan Marsh about Spotify and its way of working, the obvious question being: Is there a ‘Spotify Model?’ Also, we list three critical issues leading to less effective Retrospectives, from inconsistency to a lack of contributions to failure to follow up on action items, and point out that SAFe may not be ideal, but applying it may lead to a higher level of business agility, depending on the environment and context.
Then, Maret Kruve remembers her challenges when starting as a product manager, being an introvert, and how she coped with them. Also, we learn suggestions for encouraging engineers to involve themselves more effectively in the ideation process. In a shocking revelation, Michalina Bidzinska explains why “listening to users is less important than observing their actions,” as they all lie to us.
Finally, we reflect on issues and challenges when using NPS beyond its intended purpose as a consumer research tool and ask ChatGPT to help us with OKR design. Speaking of metrics, Tendayi Viki dissects the idea of return on investment for innovation, distinguishing two realms: the “innovation team lives in Explore, whereas the executive board lives in Exploit.” Lastly, we explore how Chinese companies “prioritize autonomy at scale, internal digital platforms, and a clear project focus.”
