Food for Agile Thought #158

Stefan Wolpers
Sep 7, 2018 · 4 min read

Food for Agile Thought’s issue #158 visits the poster child of self-managed organizations — Semco — , we deal with building trust in teams, and we learn why agile companies no longer require plans.

We appreciate Roman Pichler’s sprint planning tips & tricks for product owners, we dive into the commandments of outstanding products, and we understand how falling in love with a solution can wreck a whole organization.

Lastly, we come back to product discovery and learn a new approach how to reinvent a strategy to figure out what’s worth building.

Have a great week!

🏆 The Essential Read: Semco Transformation


(via Corporate Rebels): Fixing Work That Sucks: Semco’s Step-By-Step Transformation

Corporate Rebels interviewed Ricardo Semler, Clovis Bojikian and Semco workers how the poster child of self-management is doing.

Source: Corporate Rebels: Fixing Work That Sucks: Semco’s Step-By-Step Transformation


Agile & Scrum


Roman Pichler: Sprint Planning Tips for Product Owners

Roman Pichler shares tips for product owners on how to get more out of Scrum’s most important event — the sprint planning.

Source: Sprint Planning Tips for Product Owners

Author: Roman Pichler


Tanner Wortham: How Do I Foster Trust Within My Team?

Tanner Wortham reflects on the most challenging task for any Scrum Master.

Source: How Do I Foster Trust Within My Team?

Author: Rob Wortham


Dilbert: We Don’t Need a Plan. We Are an Agile Company.

The pointy-haired boss suggests to move fast and fix the mistakes on the go.

Source: We Don’t Need a Plan. We Are an Agile Company.

Author: Scott Adams


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📯 The Meta-Retrospective

A meta-retrospective is an excellent exercise to foster collaboration within the extended team, create a shared understanding of the big picture, and immediately create valuable action-items. It comprises of the team members of one or several product teams — or representative from those — and stakeholders. Participants from the stakeholder side are people from the business as well as customers. Meta-retrospectives are useful both as a regular event, say once a quarter, or after achieving a particular milestone, for example, a specific release of the product.

Read more: The Meta-Retrospective — How To Get Customers and Stakeholders Onboard.


Product & Lean


Jeff Davidson (via The Startup): The 10 Commandments of Good Products

The 10 Commandments of Good Products
Image from medium.com

Jeff Davidson examines why we buy what we buy, and how a product ‘spreads’ to reach profitability.

Source: The Startup: The 10 Commandments of Good Products

Author: Jeff Davidson


Hope Gurion (via Insight Venture Partners): The Best Product Teams Crave Truth and Do Math

Hope Gurion analyzes the failure of PlayPump, rooted in the unfounded feeling of certainty among its makers.

Source: Insight Venture Partners: The Best Product Teams Crave Truth and Do Math

Author: Hope Gurion


Matteo Cavucci (via Avanscoperta Blog): Product Discovery Strategy with EventStorming and Lean Value Tree

Matteo Cavucci shares a success story on how to invent a new strategy to figure out what’s worth building.

Source: Avanscoperta Blog: Product Discovery Strategy with EventStorming and Lean Value Tree

Author: Matteo Cavucci


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Food for Agile Thought #158: Semco Transformation, Trust, 10 Product Commandments, Unfounded Confidence was first published on Age-of-Product.com.

Food for Agile Thought

Best posts from last week on agile and lean methodologies, Scrum and product management. Manually curated, no robots involved.

Stefan Wolpers

Written by

I have worked for 13-plus years as an agile coach, Scrum Master, and Product Owner. Professional Scrum Trainer (PST) with Scrum.org.

Food for Agile Thought

Best posts from last week on agile and lean methodologies, Scrum and product management. Manually curated, no robots involved.

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