Food For Thought #95
Age of Product’s Food for Thought of June 11th, 2017 doubts that Jeff Sutherland’s “Twice the Work in Half the Time” was helpful for the agile cause. We also join John Cutler who is growing tired of the agile bashing where agile is being made responsible for everything your organization fails at. Probably — just a thought — an agile transition needs more time than the suits were willing to allocate in their proposal to the board.
On the product side, we learn about twelve principles of running experiments, and how to gather feedback from stakeholders while avoiding that your product is caught between a rock and a hard place. Do you know how to run experiments properly? If not, we can help with that, too.
Lastly: Do you remember the workshop when you built a lego duck for the first time? We have a great story on how Lego managed to return from the brink of collapse.
Agile & Dark Scrum
Ron Jeffries: Twice the Effort All the Time
Ron Jeffries on Dark Scrum, the certification industry, and Jeff Sutherland’s unfortunate “Twice the Work in Half the Time.”
Source: Twice the Effort All the Time
Author: Ron Jeffries
🏆 TIP OF THE WEEK — If you only can afford 10 minutes, read this one!
John Cutler (via Hacker Noon): Agile Didn’t Eat Your Homework…
John Cutler is tired of reading articles that blame Agile for every conceivable dysfunction of the organization — a rant worth reading.
Source: Hacker Noon: Agile Didn’t Eat Your Homework…
Author: John Cutler
(via The Clever PM): Why ‘Scrumbut’ Shouldn’t Be a Bad Word
The Clever PM believes that “ScrumBut” simply can’t be as bad as the Scrum folk want us to think.
Source: The Clever PM: Why ‘Scrumbut’ Shouldn’t Be a Bad Word
Mike Orzen: 7 Things Coaches Need to Get Over
Mike Orzen shares seven common misperceptions about coaching practical problem-solving skills and developing lean thinking.
Source: 7 Things Coaches Need to Get Over
Author: Mike Orzen
Renee Troughton: Scaling Agile Tricks Series: Economically efficient teaming
Renee Troughton shares an overview on agile team building, namely feature teams, component teams, and architectural layer teams.
Source: Scaling Agile Tricks Series: Economically efficient teaming
Author: Renee Troughton
👍 Pros & cons of feature and component teams.
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📯 Update: Scrum Master Salary Report 2017
When we started the survey, I thought that we would collect data until May 1st, and have the report available by the end of May. That turned out to be a bit too optimistic given that four people are involved in creating the survey.
Therefore, we like to share in advance some of the findings from the 2017 Scrum Master Salary Report:
- Women have astounding chances and salary possibilities in the field. (We could not identify a gender pay gap.)
- The United States is the highest paying country for Scrum Masters, while India is the lowest.
- Without some form of certification, getting into the career path is almost impossible.
- Additional education has no effect on salary.
- Some form of previous experience is often a prerequisite.
- If you are in for the money, become a freelancer.
We are working hard to make the report available by the end of June or early July — and we kindly ask for your patience… 🙏
The Report Will Become an Application: As we keep getting new replies — we have already more than 685 as of today — we are planning to turn the report into a small application you can query yourself.
Product & Lean
Zevae M. Zaheer: 12 principles for better experiments
Zevae M. Zaheer describes the twelve biggest challenges when moving to an experiment-first approach, and how to meet them.
Source: 12 principles for better experiments
Author: Zevae M. Zaheer
👍 Hands-on rules on how to run experiments.
(via First Round Capital): Agile Orthodoxy: Dear PMs, It’s Time to Rethink Agile at Enterprise Startups
Ogi Kavazovic believes that too many product leaders attempt to develop enterprise software using short-term, agile thinking.
Source: First Round Capital: Agile Orthodoxy: Dear PMs, It’s Time to Rethink Agile at Enterprise Startups
👍 Agile is unfit for creating B2B software? That are heretic thoughts, aren’t they?
Julie Zhuo: How do you protect the product from being ‘designed by committee?’
Julie Zhuo shares her approach on gathering feedback and opinions from stakeholders a way that is helpful.
Source: How do you protect the product from being ‘designed by committee?’
Author: Julie Zhuo
The Essential Read
(via The Guardian): How Lego clicked: the brand that reinvented itself
Johnny Davis reports on the revival of Lego which has been hailed as the greatest turnaround in corporate history, and the role innovation played.
Source: The Guardian: How Lego clicked: the brand that reinvented itself
👍 Do you remember the workshop when you built a lego duck for the first time?
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