After covering the anti-patterns of the Scrum Master, the Product Owner, and the stakeholders, this article addresses Scrum Developer anti-patterns, covering all Scrum Events and the Product Backlog artifact. Continue reading and learn more about what to look out for if you want to support your teammates who build the Increment.
Welcome to the 346th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 35,394 peers. This week, we point to the benefits of frameworks, helping us learn, collaborate, and reduce cognitive load. Also, we explore the idea of starting an agile transformation by splitting off a part of an organization and helping that part become agile first; consequently, we take the stoic perspective on transformations.
Then, we follow Marty Cagan, who adds excellence in the form of a strong product leader to the success recipe of the individual empowered product teams tasked with solving customer problems. Moreover, we address the ‘create customer value’ obsession: Ian Miell claims that ‘many peoples’ work generates value by focussing on things that appear to have no measurable or apparently justifiable customer benefit.’ And we remind ourselves of Goodhart’s Law. (In other words: Why you do not want to become data-driven as a product mensch.)
Finally, we list typical mistakes when measuring success, from vanity metrics to worshipping data. We describe five models to better understand a team’s performance, from Google’s Team Effectiveness Model to the T7 Model of Team Effectiveness, and we share an extensive guide on how to embrace the new hybrid work reality as a facilitator. Lastly, we thank Shane Hastie and Sandy Mamoli for authoring the 2022 edition of the InfoQ Culture & Methods Trends Report.
Learn how individual incentives and outdated organizational structures — fostering personal agendas and local optimization efforts — manifest themselves in Scrum stakeholder anti-patterns that easily impede any agile transformation to a product-led organization.
Welcome to the 345th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 35,369 peers. This week, we analyze dissonance causes — resulting in tension, loss, fear, or curiosity — from information to expectations to constraints. Chris Lennon believes that ‘Scrum has given us a lot, but it’s time for some conscious uncoupling.’ And we also share an approach to dealing with the management’s unreal desire to have reliability, predictability, and numbers in software development.
Then, we dissect the idea of ‘managing’ stakeholders instead of aligning all parties in the product game by including everyone and giving everyone a voice, and we have a look at how to create better user stories. Also, we reflect on ‘mastering the delicate relationship between the builders and sellers,’ and we define what a transformation to a product-led organization is about, from ‘changing how you build and deploy’ to ‘changing how you decide which problems to solve.’
Moreover, we analyze the challenges of pursuing an agile-traditional hybrid approach as an organization at the same time to achieve business agility. We also point to an HBR study, claiming that ‘employee productivity was 71% higher when meetings were reduced by 40%.’ Finally, we share the analysis of an Estonian company’s approach to becoming agile at scale.
In this energizing 40th Hands-on Agile ‘Best Test Ever’ session, David Burkus delved into the surprising science of high-performing teams.
📺 Watch the video now: David Burkus: Best Team Ever — Hands-on-Agile #40.
Welcome to the 344th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 35,342 peers. This week, we delve into the patterns of product waste resulting from an ‘organizational and conceptual gap’ between product and engineering teams on the one side and sales and marketing teams on the other side. Also, we outline how to support your teams emotionally in challenging times, and we visualize the mental model of developers as systems thinkers, from inner and outer loops to flow states to context switching. Moreover, we reflect on those who ‘dodge gatekeepers and dance around policies, doing whatever it takes to get the job done.’
Then, we provide insight into Stripe’s product strategy, resulting in a ‘microcosm of product-led, developer-centric growth.’ Moreover, we guide the reader from JTBD to user-centered design to the CCVC framework, and we listen to Chad McAllister interviewing Mike Mace on how to get customer insights quickly to counter demands from your resident HiPPO or a pushy sales team.
Also, we show how the application of Little’s Law can support your team’s forecast quality, and, finally, we address the widespread belief that Kanban is nothing more than some columns on a board and a handful of cards to push around, resulting in highly complex boards of little value.
