Food for Agile Thought #381: Agile Is Alive and Kicking, Sales-Led Development Problems
Stefan Wolpers
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TL; DR: Agile Is Alive — Food for Agile Thought #381
Welcome to the 381st edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 36,846 peers. This week, we learn again that rumors of “Agile’s†demise are greatly exaggerated — Agile is alive. (Check out the Tip of the Week as a reply to this week’s ðŸ‹.) Also, we delve into the history of the technical debt concept and suggest how to manage the challenge sustainably and effectively. Next, follow the money: Allan Kelly addresses a typically ignored yet essential topic in many organizations: team finances.
Then, we reflect on the problems of allocating most development work to customization while starving the core product, also known as sales-led development. Moreover, we answer a vital question many product people share today: how to sustain the innovation momentum with fewer bucks? And Elad Gil asks whether early SaaS or AI companies are ever defensible at an early stage and delivers a comprehensive list of potential ways to build a moat. Alternatively, you can also steal from aggregated a list of ‘best practices used by successful product companies.’
Finally, Deb Liu suggests changing perspective when you are in a perceived conflict: retell your story with the other as the hero, and Buffer shared their extensive study on how ‘remote workers from around the world feel about remote work.’ Lastly, Jordan Harbinger interviews Alastair Smith on dictatorship. What I find particularly interesting about the talk is why bad behavior often makes for good politics. (I felt instantly reminded of some agile transformations in the past.)
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🆠The Tip of the Week: Agile Is Alive
Jason Yip (via Medium): The age of cargo cult Agile must end.
In an excellent, myth-busting piece, Jason Yip delves into the evolution and background of ‘agile,’ replying to this week’s Lemon ðŸ‹, see below.
Author:Â Jason Yip
🋠The Lemon of the Week
(via UX Collective): The age of Agile must end
In this week’s Lemon, Michael Burnett bashes ‘Agile,’ claiming that it has ‘fundamental flaws that have been glaring at us all along.’ Too bad that most of his assumptions are plain wrong, as Jason Yip shows in his reply, see The Tip of the Week.
âž¿ Agile &Â Scrum
Michael Feathers and Javier Bonnemaison (via Globant Blog): How to manage technical debt
Michael Feathers and Javier Bonnemaison delve into the history of the concept and suggest how to manage the challenge sustainably and effectively.
Authors: Michael Feathers and Javier Bonnemaison
Allan Kelly: Lets talk about money: the ultimate feedback loop
Allan Kelly addresses a typically ignored yet essential topic in many organizations: team finances.
Author:Â Allan Kelly
Spencer Fry: No [Product Managers], no problem: how we ship great products fast
Spencer Fry shares what he believes to be a better path for product development: introduce the role of the ‘Champion’ instead of having project or product managers. (Take this suggestion with a grain of salt as it applies only to small teams of 3–4 developers.)
Author:Â Spencer Fry
🎓 🖥 🇬🇧 Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills Class — March 23, 2023
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🎯 Product
🎙 Rich Mironov: The Problem with Sales-led Development
In this podcast, Murray Robinson and Shane Gibson talk to Rich Mironov about the problems of allocating most development work to customization while starving the core product.
Author:Â Rich Mironov
Recommended by LinkedIn
📺 Tendayi Viki (via Strategyzer): With companies cutting budgets — what should innovators do?
Tendayi Viki addresses a vital question many product people share today: how to sustain the innovation momentum with fewer bucks?
Author:Â Tendayi Viki
Elad Gil: Defensibility & Competition
Elad Gil asks whether early SaaS or AI companies are ever defensible at an early stage and delivers a comprehensive list of potential ways to build a moat.
Source:Defensibility & Competition
Author:Elad Gil
📯 ChatGPT Product Owner Job Interview — Will You Compete for a Position w/ an LLM Soon?
A few weeks ago, I ran a simulated job interview with ChatGPT for a fictitious Scrum Master position. Admittedly, I would not have invited this “interviewee†for an interview with other team members; however, the interview produced some remarkable answers. Consequently, I tried the same with a Product Owner position, aware of the challenges this would pose, as the Product Owner role is significantly fuzzier than the one of a Scrum Master. So, I took a few questions from the Hiring: 82 Scrum Product Owner Interview Questions guide and ran a ChatGPT Product Owner job interview.
Read on and learn whether a statistical model will challenge product people in the near future.
👉 Learn more: ChatGPT Product Owner Job Interview — Will You Compete for a Position w/ an LLM Soon?
🛠Concepts, Tools & Measuring
Piotr Kacała: Discover 100+ practices used by successful tech product companies
Piotr Kacała aggregated a list of ‘best practices used by successful product companies,’ including detailed guides on how to apply them.
Author: Piotr Kacała
Deb Liu: Everyone is the Hero of Their Own Story
Deb Liu suggests changing perspective when you are in a perceived conflict: retell your story with the other as the hero.
Author:Â Deb Liu
📈 (via Buffer): State Of Remote Work 2023
Buffer shared their extensive study on how ‘remote workers from around the world feel about remote work.’
🎶 Encore
🎙 Jordan Harbinger: The Dictator’s Handbook Part One
In this podcast, Jordan Harbinger interviews Alastair Smith on dictatorship. What I find particularly interesting is why bad behavior so often makes for good politics; I felt instantly reminded of some agile transformations in the past.
Author:Â Jordan Harbinger
📅 Training Classes, Meetups & Events 2023
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Food for Agile Thought 381: Agile Is Alive and Kicking, Sales-Led Development Problems, Innovation Budget Cuts, Show the Team the Money was first published on Age-of-Product.com.
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1yIn the way you and I understand, Agile will always be alive as it is the right way to do things. Unfortunately, the mobs don't agree, and the "brand" is destroyed. It needs to be reinvented. I have been doing much work on this behind the scenes and can see a great future; it's just not agile (in name and cargo cult misunderstandings)
CTO / Board / Advisor • I help companies building great product engineering teams
1yTruly honored to be mentioned here.
Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Agile 2 Academy; Executive level Agile and DevOps advisor and consultant; Lead author of Agile 2: The Next Iteration of Agile
1y"Agile is alive" The sun is always biggest just before it sets! Yes, Agile uptake is growing, but those are the "followers". The "leaders" are leaving the movement, as it _was_. The movement is moribund, and needs a reset.
Thought Provoker / COO - AI / Edge Computing
1yJust right in line with my post from this morning. I believe that "Agile" will continue to thrive, but there will be a schism: Those who are only in it because there's customer demand, but they either don't know or don't care to actively and aggressively discover better ways and help others do so --- and those who just won't want to be lumped with them, because they have a reputation to lose and wand to make an impact. I, for myself, am not in it for "Agile's sake" - I couldn't care less about the term. I want to build better organizations, with more flexibility, more adaptivity, better capability to turn potential into value, and recognizing that work is still, at its core, human. Since "Agile" has come to mean anything from Origami to Output Management and even Management Overhead these days, I find that the "cargo cult of Agile" will eventually implode as companies start to catch on that they're being taken for a ride. But that will still be years to come. For now, what we're seeing is more and more "first hour agilists" jumping ship.