TL; DR: Agility: Timeless, Team Dynamics — Food for Agile Thought #357
Welcome to the 357th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 35,789 peers. This week, we celebrate the Agile 2022 keynote of Joshua Kerievsky, where he reflects on why “Agility isn’t a formula, a framework, nor a set of roles and rituals to follow” but a timeless way of thinking. Also, Linda Rising, Diana Larsen, and James Shore delve into the dynamics that make and break Agile teams, from the importance of trust to the Tuckman model. Moreover, we suggest six ways of encouraging feedback from team members, from creating psychological safety to leading by example, and we close with a rant about mission statements.
Then, we listen to Mary Cagan, sharing his learnings after more than 20 years at the forefront of product management, from Steve Jobs to building product teams to which trends to ignore. Additionally, we analyze the four most significant threats to building great products and how to deal with them, from difficult developers to executive bullies, and we tackle product roadmaps from a pragmatic angle.
Finally, we share a new game to “find a golden path to delivering maximum business value by benefiting from collaboration vs. getting stuck in dependencies” and a “primer on what you need to know to leverage VSM to chart your lean journey.” Lastly, inspired by Kurt Vonnegut’s lecture on “the simple shapes of stories,” Ash Maurya shows that JTBD’s customer stories also have archetypical shapes.
