Food for Agile Thought #409: How to Be Unproductive, Customers Hate the MVP, Waterfall Misconceptions, Supporting Continuous Discovery

TL; DR: How to Be Unproductive — Food for Agile Thought #409

Welcome to the 409th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 48,883 peers. This week, we explore several provocative perspectives: John Cutler delves into factors affecting developer productivity, or: how to be unproductive, suggesting the environment plays a more substantial role than individual aptitude. Kris Brandow makes a case for the undervalued potential of the Waterfall method. Stephan Schmidt pinpoints the unintentional merger of Scrum and Waterfall into “Scrumfall” due to external pressures. Lastly, Ben Biran shares insights from Zapier’s Interfaces team, emphasizing how shifting prioritization duties to engineering leaders can catalyze team performance and culture.

Then, Jason Cohen critiques the widely adopted MVP approach for sidelining the user experience and calls for its reevaluation. In conversation with Lenny Rachitsky, Tim Holley of Etsy unfolds his ten-year odyssey with the e-commerce giant, touching on various facets, from handling the pandemic-induced surge to fine-tuning marketplace dynamics. Meanwhile, Arne Kittler brings product maven Teresa Torres into the spotlight, who, in dialogue with Petra Wille, clarifies the essence of product discovery grounded in customer feedback.

Lastly, Mike Cottmeyer tackles the growing disillusionment among leaders with Agile, offering ways to reignite their interest and commitment. Mikkel Krenchel sheds light on the rising societal apprehensions around AI, emphasizing the often-overlooked importance of ethnographers in shaping AI’s ethical trajectory. Lastly, Nick Ianetta puzzles over the marked distinction between Research Operations and Market Research Operations, probing the reasons behind their strategic organizational separation.

🏅 The most popular discussion on LinkedIn last week was: I am torn: Should a Scrum Master be technical or not?

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

Did you miss the previous Food for Agile Thought’s issue 408?

🗞 Shall I notify you about articles like this one? Awesome! You can sign up here for the ‘Food for Agile Thought’ newsletter and join 48,000-plus subscribers.

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

👉 Join the community and help create the next edition of the Scrum Master Salary Report!

🏆 The Tip of the Week: How to Be Unproductive

John Cutler: The Ultimate Guide to Developer Counter-Productivity

John Cutler argues that the environment influences developer productivity more than individual skills. Counter-productive developers are often stuck in low-leverage activities. Instead of assessing individual productivity, address factors causing low/negative leverage. Instead, teams should track where their time goes, aiming for high-leverage tasks.

🍋 Lemon of the Week

Prateek Singh (via Medium): The Anti-Agile Manifesto

This week’s Lemon critiques Agile’s practicality, noting widespread dissatisfaction among developers and senior managers. Despite Agile’s principles, the majority of implementations seem ineffective, suggesting a fundamental flaw in its real-world application.

➿ Agile & Scrum

Kris Brandow (via Changelog): ‘Waterfall’ doesn’t mean what you think it means

Kris Brandow challenges common Waterfall perceptions, revisiting its roots through key papers to argue its underrated value in today’s software processes.

Stephan Schmidt: Why we always end up with waterfall

Stephan Schmidt argues that despite agile adoption, external pressures and the pursuit of efficiency often reintroduce waterfall elements into Scrum processes, leading to hybrids like Scrumfall.

(via Medium): Hand over product prioritization to Engineering Managers. Here’s why.

Ben Biran describes how shifting prioritization responsibilities from product managers to engineering leaders can significantly boost team effectiveness. By adopting a product mindset within engineering at Zapier’s Interfaces team, they observed improved outcomes, faster learning, and enhanced team culture.

🎓 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills Class w/ PSFS Certificate — October 4, 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 a compact immersive class with like-minded agile peers from 09:00 – 17:30 o’clock CEST.

Learn more: 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills Class w/ PSFS Certificate — October 4, 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

Jason Cohen (via Jason Cohen): Your customers hate MVPs. Make a SLC instead.

Jason Cohen emphasizes that while product teams have consistently favored the MVP approach for its quick insights, it often neglects the customer experience, suggesting a need to reevaluate and refine the process.

Lenny Rachitsky and Tim Holley: 🎙 Inside Etsy’s product, growth, and marketplace evolution

Tim Holley, VP of Product at Etsy, and Lenny Rachitsky discuss Tim’s decade-long journey with the company, sharing insights on corporate culture shifts, Etsy’s pandemic-driven e-commerce boom, balancing marketplace supply and demand, addressing the “graduation problem”, and hiring tips for product managers.

Teresa Torres and Petra Wille: 📺 How Can Product Leaders Support Continuous Discovery?

Arne Kittler introduces product expert Teresa Torres. In a chat with Petra Wille, Teresa defined product discovery as making informed decisions on what to build using customer feedback.

📈 Join the Scrum Master Salary Report 2024 — Let Us Create Transparency

The purpose of this anonymous Scrum Master salary report is to create a clear, data-backed benchmark that allows everyone in the Agile community to understand whether their compensation is adequate. The report will cover Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches, both employed and freelancing.

The goal is to have at least 1,000 replies by the end of November 2023 to create the report in time for January 2024. Of course, the report will be available for free.

Learn more: Join the Scrum Master Salary Report 2024 — Let Us Create Transparency!

🛠 Concepts, Tools & Measuring

Mike Cottmeyer (via Leading Agile): 📺 How You Define Success in Agile Matters

The Agile community is split between viewing Agile as an iterative delivery and as a cultural movement. Many leaders have grown disillusioned with Agile. In this video, Mike Cottmeyer addresses how to re-engage these leaders.

Mikkel Krenchel (via epicpeople): Ethnography for the AI Age: How to Get Started

Mikkel Krenchel claims that AI advancements raise societal concerns like biases and privacy issues. While many focus on AI ethics, the role of ethnographers remains underutilized. These professionals should understand AI better and engage early in its development.

(via Team ReOps): Research Is Research: Rethinking Market Research’s Place in ResearchOps

Research Operations and Market Research Operations are distinct disciplines. Search results vary significantly between them, emphasizing their separation in many organizations. Nick Ianetta asks, Why is this?

🎶 Encore

There are no entries to this category this week.

See all upcoming classes here.

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 5,000-plus Agile Peers on Youtube

Now available on the Age-of-Product Youtube channel to improve learning, for example, how to avoid to be unproductive:

Hands-on Agile EXTRA: How Elon Musk Would Run YOUR Business with Joe Justice.

Hands-on Agile 50: The Product Community of Practice with Petra Wille.

Hands-on Agile 46: The Agile Fluency Model ® with Diana Larsen.

Hands-on Agile 43: Outcome-Based Product Planning with Jeff Gothelf.

Hands-on Agile 42: Lean Roadmapping and OKRs with Janna Bastow.

Hands-on Agile 38: The Product Owner with Roman Pichler.

✋ Do Not Miss Out and Learn to Avoid to Be Unproductive — 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.

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 explore how to avoid to be unproductive by pointing them to the free Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide:

🗞️ Last Week’s Food for Agile Thought Edition

Read more: Food for Agile Thought #408: Developer Productivity, Double Diamond Improvements, Defining Product Problems, Scrum a Failure by Design?

The post Food for Agile Thought #409: How to Be Unproductive, Customers Hate the MVP, Waterfall Misconceptions, Supporting Continuous Discovery appeared first on Age-of-Product.com.