Food for Agile Thought #389: Scrum’s Failure, Staying Scrappy for Innovation, Forecasting 2.0, ProductOps Handbook

TL; DR: Scrum’s Failure — Food for Agile Thought #389

Welcome to the 389th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 46,163 peers. This week, we delve into Scrum’s failure: Jason Godesky reminds us that few have ever worked in a true Scrum team, but many have in a Scrum cargo cult environment. Moreover, we delve into “bias and noise” and how they influence forecasting, and we learn how you can use Fluid Scrum Teams to manage multiple data products over various Sprints. Also, in shameless self-promotion, I want to point to the No Nonsense Agile Podcast that Murray Robinson, Shane Gibson, and I recorded recently. (Speaking of anti-patterns: There is also a new article on Jira and its perils if misused, see below.)

Then, we analyze the fundamental misalignment between the ‘business’ — focusing on one customer at a time — and ‘product/engineering,’ focusing on the overall impact for the installed base. Additionally, we point to the importance of embracing a learning mindset as the driver of innovation while process, vetos, institutional memory, and the vilification of failure work against it, and we share a practical and actionable list of recommendations to create a ProductOps handbook.

Finally, we suggest five experiments to help foster a safe working environment, from equal speaking time during meetings to celebrating failure, plus a new tool to ease the often challenging task of communicating project issues: the Definition of Broken. More tools are from John Cutler, who points to the free template library of the complete North Star metrics framework. Lastly, Nicole Abi-Esber and Juliana Schroeder claim that people underestimate how much others want to receive feedback.

Food for Agile Thought #389: Scrum’s Failure, Staying Scrappy for Innovation, Forecasting 2.0, ProductOps Handbook — Age-of-Product.com

Did you miss the previous Food for Agile Thought’s issue 388?

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🎓 Join Stefan in one of his upcoming Professional Scrum training classes!

📖 Get notified when the Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide book is available!

HoA EXTRA: How Elon Musk Would Run YOUR Business with Joe Justice, May 4, 2023 — Age-of-Product.com

Join your peers on May 4, 2023: HoA EXTRA: How Elon Musk Would Run YOUR Business with Joe Justice.

🏆 The Tip of the Week: Scrum Anti-Patterns

Shane Gibson and Stefan Wolpers: 🎙 Scrum Anti Patterns

In shameless self-promotion, I want to point to the No Nonsense Agile Podcast that Murray Robinson, Shane Gibson, and I recorded recently.

🍋 The Lemon of the Week

No lemon this week.

➿ Agile & Scrum

Jason Godesky (via Medium): Why Scrum Fails

Jason Godesky reminds us that few have ever worked in a true Scrum team, but many have in a Scrum cargo cult environment.

Philip Rogers (via Medium): A Fresh Perspective on Forecasting in Software Development

Philip Rogers delves into bias and noise, and how they influence forecasts.

Tobias Maasland and Anna Weißhaar (via inovex GmbH): Using Fluid Scrum Teams in Data Products Development

Tobias Maasland and Anna Weißhaar share how they use Fluid Scrum Teams to manage multiple data products over various Sprints.

🎓 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills Class — May 16, 2023

The Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills (PSFS) training by Berlin Product People is a guaranteed one-day official Scrum.org class for advanced Scrum practitioners and agile coaches, including the industry-acknowledged PSFS certification. This PSFS training class is in English.

Enjoy the benefits of an live-virtual immersive class with like-minded agile peers from 09:00 – 17:30 o’clock CET.

Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills Class — May 16, 2023 — Berlin-Product-People.com

Learn more: 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills Class — May 16, 2023.

👉 From time to time, we can offer last-minute seats for training classes at cost to individuals who do not have access to a corporate training budget. If you like to be notified about these opportunities, please register here.

🎯 Product

Rich Mironov: The Chocolate Cake Problem

Rich Mironov analyzes the fundamental misalignment between the ‘business’ — focusing on one customer at a time — and ‘product/engineering,’ focusing on the overall impact for the installed base.

Deb Liu: Staying Scrappy

Deb Liu points to the importance of embracing a learning mindset as the driver of innovation, while process, vetos, institutional memory, and the vilification of failure work against it.

Antonia Landi and Lara Orrico: D.I.Y. Product Ops Handbook

Antonia Landi and Lara Orrico share a practical and actionable list of recommendations.

📯 Jira Anti-Patterns

If you ask people to come up with popular attributes for “Agile” or “agility,” Scrum and Jira will likely be among the top ten featured. Moreover, in any discussion about the topic, someone will mention that using Scrum running on top of Jira does not make an organization agile. However, more importantly, this notion is often only a tiny step from identifying Jira as a potential impediment to outright vilifying it. So in March 2023, I embarked on a non-representative research exercise to learn how organizations misuse Jira from a team perspective as I wanted to understand Jira anti-patterns.

Read on and learn more about how a project management tool that is reasonably usable when you use it out of the box without any modifications turns into a bureaucratic nightmare, what the reasons for this might be, and what we can do about it.

Jira Anti-Patterns —Age-of-Product.com

👉 Learn more: Jira Anti-Patterns.

🛠 Concepts, Tools & Measuring

Joost Minnaar (via Corporate Rebels): Here are 5 Proven Practices to Boost Psychological Safety

Joost Minnaar suggests five experiments to help foster a safe working environment, from equal speaking time during meetings to celebrating failure.

Mike Griffiths: Definition of Broken (DoB): A Tool for Improving Communications and Outcomes

Mike Griffiths suggests a tool to ease the often challenging task of communicating project issues.

John Cutler: Amplitude North Star Template Library

John Cutler points to the free template library of the complete North Star metrics framework.

🎶 Encore

(via Behavioral Scientist): Give More Feedback—Others Want It More Than You Think

Nicole Abi-Esber and Juliana Schroeder claim that people underestimate how much others want to receive their feedback.

Simone Cicero (via Boundaryless): The Trilemma of Organizational Unbundling

Simone Cicero and Emanuele Quintarelli explain what organizational unbundling is and why it is critical for the future of organizations.


📅 Scrum Training & Event Schedule

You can secure your seat for Scrum training classes, workshops, and meetups directly by following the corresponding link in the table below:

Date Class and Language City Price
🖥 💯 🇬🇧 April 2-30, 2024 GUARANTEED: Product Backlog Management Cohort Class (English; Live Virtual Class) Live Virtual Class €499 incl. 19% VAT
🖥 💯 🇬🇧 April 9, 2024 GUARANTEED: Hands-on Agile #60: A Q&A on Dynamic Reteaming with Heidi Helfand (English) Live Virtual Meetup FREE
🖥 💯 🇩🇪 April 10-11, 2024 GUARANTEED: Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German; Live Virtual Class) Live Virtual Class €1,299 incl. 19% VAT
🖥 💯 🇬🇧 April 23-24, 2024 GUARANTEED: Professional Scrum Master (Advanced) Training (PSM II; English; Live Virtual Class) Live Virtual Class €1,299 incl. 19% VAT
🖥 💯 🇬🇧 May 7, 2024 GUARANTEED: Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills Training (PSFS; English; Live Virtual Class) Live Virtual Class €749 incl. 19% VAT
🖥 💯 🇬🇧 May 7, 2024 GUARANTEED: Hands-on Agile #61: Toyota Kata Coaching for Agile Teams & Transformations with Fortune Buchholtz (English) Live Virtual Meetup FREE
🖥 🇩🇪 May 14-15, 2024 Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German; Live Virtual Class) Live Virtual Class €1,299 incl. 19% VAT
🖥 🇬🇧 May 28-29, 2024 Professional Scrum Master (Advanced) Training (PSM II; English; Live Virtual Class) Live Virtual Class €1,189 incl. 19% VAT
🖥 💯 🇬🇧 June 6, 2024 GUARANTEED: Hands-on Agile #62: From Backlog Manager to Product Manager: From Outputs to Outcomes w/ David Pereira (English) Live Virtual Meetup FREE
🖥 🇩🇪 June 25-26, 2024 Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German; Live Virtual Class) Live Virtual Class €1,299 incl. 19% VAT

See all upcoming classes here.

Professional Scrum Trainer Stefan Wolpers

You can book your seat for the training directly by following the corresponding links to the ticket shop. If the procurement process of your organization requires a different purchasing process, please contact Berlin Product People GmbH directly.

📺 Join 4,000-plus Agile Peers on Youtube

Now available on the Age-of-Product Youtube channel to improve learning, for example, about the Scrum’s failure:

Download the Remote Agile Guide for Free — Age-of-Product.com

✋ Do Not Miss Out and Learn more about Scrum’s Failure — Join the 12,000-plus Strong ‘Hands-on Agile’ Slack Community

I invite you to join the “Hands-on Agile” Slack Community and enjoy the benefits of a fast-growing, vibrant community of agile practitioners from around the world.

Large scale agile: Join the Hands-on Agile Slack Group

If you like to join all you have to do now is provide your credentials via this Google form, and I will sign you up. By the way, it’s free.

Help your team to learn about Scrum’s failure by pointing them to the free Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide:

Download the free Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide by PST Stefan Wolpers — 160 ways to improve as a Scrum Team — Age-of-Product.com

🗞️ Last Week’s Food for Agile Thought Edition

Read more: Food for Agile Thought #388: Perils of Deterministic Thinking, ChatGPT for Product Work, Interruption & Context Switching, Pre-Mortems.

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