Age-of-Product.com - Page 79 of 172 - Tools and insights for agile software development, product management, and lean methodologies to help you invent for your customers.

How to Pass the Scrum Master Certification — PSM I, PSM II, and PSM III

by Stefan Wolpers | 2022-03-14 Agile and Scrum

TL; DR: How to Pass the Scrum Master Certification

The first article of this mini-series established that you do not need a certificate to become good at what you do, for example, working as a Scrum Master. However, getting certified may be a piece of sound investment advice, as documented by the Scrum Master Salary Report 2022: There is a statistical correlation between your remuneration and the certificates you hold. If you want to take advantage of this signaling power that Scrum certificates seem to have, the question is how to pass the Scrum Master certification?

How to Pass the Scrum Master Certification — PSM I, PSM II, and PSM III — Age-of-Product.com

Food for Agile Thought #333: Identifying New Ways of Working, Burnout in Product Teams, Management Fads such as Agile, Saying No as a PM

by Stefan Wolpers | 2022-03-11 News

TL; DR: Identifying New Ways of Working, Burnout in Product Teams — Food for Agile Thought #333

Welcome to the 333rd edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 34,749 peers. This week, we reflect on signs of failed self-management and explore how to improve the identification of new ways of working instead. Also, we share a comprehensive take on tech debt, from the term’s coining to cost to inherited debt to, finally, keep it under control. Moreover, we follow Joost Minnaar when he delves into his favorite management fads, turning into religions attracting missionaries and apostles, and we follow Ben Thompson’s analysis on the long-term impact of Putin’s war on Ukraine on the tech industry.

We then explore product management practices that can lead to burnout, and we dive into product strategy, the “connective tissue between what a product team is doing day-to-day and the company’s ambition.” Additionally, we share Joni Hoadley’s recipe for managing stakeholders and how to ‘say no’ without losing their support or trust, and we learn more about user stories as a concept from Bill Wake.

Lastly, we list seven common reasons why stakeholders ignore your team’s Sprint Review, from a lack of progress to ignored feedback to conflicting obligations. On top of that, we answer ten popular questions regarding the Monte Carlo method to help you better forecast your team’s throughput for a future period.

Food for Agile Thought #333: Identifying New Ways of Working, Burnout in Product Teams, Management Fads such as Agile, Saying No as a PM — Age-of-Product.com

Scrum Master Success: How Do You Identify a Successful Scrum Master?

by Stefan Wolpers | 2022-03-06 Agile and ScrumAgile Transition

TL; DR: Scrum Master Success — My Top-Nine Indicators

How would you know that your Scrum Master is competent? What are indicators for Scrum Master success? Is the regular use of the Confluence retrospective template one of the desired signals? Or is the quest to understand contributing factors futile, as success reasons are so diverse? Probably, there is no direct connection between a Scrum Master, not having authority anyway, and the overall Scrum team’s performance.

Read on and learn more about how Scrum Masters can contribute to the success of a self-managing team in nine simple lessons.

Food for Agile Thought #332: Talking to Customers, The Learning Repository, Team Dependencies, Resources for Product Owners

by Stefan Wolpers | 2022-03-04 News

TL; DR: Talking to Customers, Learning Repository — Food for Agile Thought #332

Welcome to the 332nd edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 34,681 peers. This week, we regret that most product managers seem to have stopped talking to customers nowadays. Also, we list nine reasons to become agile, from a bad ‘it’s the trendy thing to do’ to a good ‘we believe in the Agile values and principles.’ Moreover, we deal with fixing unnecessary dependencies, and we suggest utilizing seven classic team building models to ‘inspire, troubleshoot, and build alignment,’ from Tuckman to Katzenbach to Hackman.

We then argue that it is essential to create a learning repository to run experience-informed experiments, and we share an epic list of binge-worthy material on product ownership. In addition to that, Teresa Torres provides her approach to identifying candidates for both “beginner” and experienced product teams for user interviews.

Lastly, we share a simple visualization tool to foster rapid idea generation—quantity may have its own quality, and we follow Jeff Gothelf, who vigorously opposes the notion that goals do not need continuous review and adjustment. And there is one more thing: The Guardian reports on a damning new Netflix documentary, detailing the consequences when a once engineering- and quality-driven culture is forced by the new management to bow to Wall Street.

Food for Agile Thought #332: Talking to Customers, The Learning Repository, Team Dependencies, Resources for Product Owners — Age-of-Product.com

📺 The Power and Pains of Autonomy — Jimmy Janlén at the Agile Camp Berlin 2021

by Stefan Wolpers | 2022-02-28 Agile and ScrumAgile TransitionVideos

TL; DR: The Power and Pains of Autonomy at the ACB21

In this highly engaging talk at the Agile Camp Berlin 2021, Jimmy Janlén addresses the core element of “Agile,” it’s key to speed, innovation, and success: team autonomy. Learn more about its benefits, challenges, fears, and pains and what organizations can do to unleash it.

📺 The Power and Pains of Autonomy — Jimmy Janlén at the Agile Camp Berlin 2021 — Berlin Product People GmbH

Food for Agile Thought #331: Scaling Ideas From Experiments, #hackerlaws, Communication Stakeholder Read, Healthy Data-Informed Product Teams

by Stefan Wolpers | 2022-02-25 News

TL; DR: Scaling Ideas From Experiments, #hackerlaws — Food for Agile Thought #331

Welcome to the 331st edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 34,627 peers. This week, we listen to Stephen J. Dubner interviewing the economist John List on the trickiness of scaling ideas from successful experiments to actual products and services, quitting, and his book “The Voltage effect.” We also revisit the idea that transformations towards “becoming agile” primarily fail amid a disregard for the first value of the Agile Manifesto. Moreover, we applaud Dave Kerr for aggregating a comprehensive list of helpful mental models for engineering and product development, from Brooks’s Law to YAGNI to Hanlon’s Razor.

We then suggest the “bait the hook, feed the fish” approach for stakeholder communication by adopting the mindset of a newsletter creator. Next, we provide an epic list of essays, videos, and books on the most critical journey of every new product: product/market fit. Also, we delve into the many hats a product manager is wearing, from road mapping to running experiments to being the user advocate, and we follow Kim Witten, who declares the Net Promoter Score ® “unscientific and meaningless” and suggests alternatives.

Lastly, we suggest abandoning the classic code review being a time-sink and switching to mob programming instead, and we list fifteen common behaviors of teams that successfully utilize data in their daily work, from healthy skepticism to killing features and experiments to grappling with uncertainty.