Food for Agile Thought #420: Triple Track Development, Outcome Roadmaps, Building Trust, ProductOps Guide

TL; DR: Triple Track Development, Building Trust — Food for Agile Thought #420

Welcome to the 420th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 49,687 peers. This week, Paulo Caroli introduces Triple Track Development, blending Business Strategy, Discovery, and Delivery for digital product evolution. Jacob Kaplan-Moss discusses trust-building in management, emphasizing the need for consistency and transparency. We delve into Wharton research by Peter Cappelli, revealing how excessive comfort impacts workplace performance, and Gergely Orosz examines the evolution of software backend development with insights from Joshua Burgin. Plus, we tackle the feature factory dilemma in large organizations, exploring its effects on Agile principles and strategies to overcome it.

Then, Itamar Gilad proposes a blended roadmap approach for adaptability in planning. Lenny Rachitsky interviews Melissa Perri and Denise Tilles, highlighting the significance of product operations. At the same time, Teresa Torres and Hope Gurion discuss balancing product discovery with delivery, while Marc Abraham emphasizes the importance of prioritization and saying “no” in decision-making.

Lastly, John Cutler explores systems thinking and business efficiency with Leah Tharin, and Jeff Gothelf presents a guide on designing lightweight experiments. Moreover, Christoph Roser examines the impact of overburden in manufacturing on employees and machinery. Finally, Dennis Hambeukers highlights the role of good design in fostering agility and collaboration.

📖 Preorder the Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide book now for delivery in January 2024!

🗞️ Exclusively on my Substack Newsletter: Sprint Planning Anti-Patterns — An Excerpt from the Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide (5).

🥇 The most popular discussion on LinkedIn last week was: #Stakeholders — necessary or impediment? 🧐

Did you miss the previous Food for Agile Thought’s issue 419?

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

👉 Join 600-plus peers and help create the next edition of the Scrum Master Salary Report!

🏆 The Tip of the Week: Triple Track Development

Paulo Caroli: Triple Track Development: Business Innovation Through Continuous Discovery and Continuous Delivery

Paulo Caroli introduces Triple Track Development, an innovative approach combining Business Strategy, Discovery, and Delivery, reshaping digital product development and business agility.

🍋 Lemon of the Week

Rumesh Wijetunge: It is time to kill SCRUM

In a misguided take, the author challenges Scrum’s relevance in the modern, fast-paced world, overlooking its core principles and adaptability, and suggests questionable alternatives.

➿ Agile & Scrum

Jacob Kaplan-Moss: How to Build Trust

Jacob Kaplan-Moss delves into the complexities of building trust in management, emphasizing consistent, transparent actions and the importance of being good at management basics.

(via Knowledge @ Wharton): The Downside of Psychological Safety in the Workplace

The author suggests Wharton research by Peter Cappelli and his colleagues finds excessive workplace comfort can dampen performance, advocating for a balanced approach to psychological safety.

Gergely Orosz: The Roots of Today’s Modern Backend Engineering Practices

Gergely Orosz explores evolving software backend development practices from virtualization to cloud computing, featuring insights from industry veteran Joshua Burgin, ex-Amazon, and now at VMware.

🎓 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Product Backlog Management Cohort Class of Jan 23 to Feb 20, 2024

Discover the Product Owner success principles in this engaging Product Backlog Management cohort class and accelerate your professional growth and career perspective with tried & tested, hands-on practices:

Excel at delivering value regularly — your #1 career success factor.
Learn to distinguish between valuable and useless ideas.
Abandon the feature factory. Instead, learn to contribute to customer and organizational success.
Gain actionable insights, learn supportive tools, and practice everything in a safe community of like-minded peers.
Learn to say no and build trust and rapport with stakeholders while focusing on creating value.
Create engaging feedback loops.

The class will be offered in English.

Enjoy the benefits of an immersive cohort class with like-minded agile peers on the following dates:

Tuesday, January 23, 2024, from 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm o’clock CET.
Tuesday, February 6, 2024, from 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm o’clock CET.
Tuesday, February 20, 2024, from 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm o’clock CET.

Learn more: 🖥 💯 🇬🇧 Product Backlog Management Cohort Class of Jan 23 to Feb 20, 2024.

👉 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

Itamar Gilad: Planning With Outcome Roadmaps

Itamar Gilad debates the efficacy of classic roadmaps versus outcome-based ones in yearly planning, proposing a hybrid approach that balances goals with adaptability.

Lenny Rachitsky and Melissa Perri: 🎙 The Ultimate Guide to Product Operations

Lenny Rachitsky interviews Melissa Perri and Denise Tilles on the emerging role of product operations, discussing its benefits, key responsibilities, and integration with product management.

Teresa Torres and Hope Gurion: 📺 No Time for Discovery? Here’s How to Fix It.

Teresa Torres and Hope Gurion emphasize that product discovery doesn’t hinder delivery but should occur alongside it for optimal product development, addressing common objections to incorporating discovery into busy schedules.

Marc Abraham (via Medium): My product management toolkit (20): the art of saying ‘No’

Marc Abraham emphasizes the importance of saying “no” in product management, focusing on prioritization, constraints, and risk management as key factors in decision-making.

📯 Escaping the Feature Factory

The feature factory fate is not inevitable; there is hope to avoid becoming a mere cog in the machinery. Learn how!

In many large organizations, Scrum teams fall into the ‘feature factory’ trap, focusing more on churning out features than creating real value. It’s too bad that this shift undermines Agile principles and hampers long-term success and innovation. Let’s discuss how and why this happens and what we can do to break the chains of the feature factory.

Learn more: Escaping the Feature Factory — Refocussing From Output to Outcome.

🛠 Concepts, Tools & Measuring

Leah Tharin and John Cutler: Everything wrong with everything in a business

In this pod with Leah Tharin, John Cutler delves into systems thinking, exploring the complexities of business efficiency, decision-making biases, and the balance between individual and team habits.

Jeff Gothelf: 📺 How to Design Lightweight Experiments

Jeff Gothelf shares a video guide on designing lightweight experiments, detailing the journey from identifying a business problem to formulating and testing hypotheses in various time frames.

Christoph Roser: What Exactly Is Overburden (Muri)?

Christoph Roser examines the overburden concept (muri) in manufacturing, exploring its impact on employees and machinery, and emphasizes the importance of respect and resource management.

🎶 Encore

Dennis Hambeukers (via Medium): How good design enhances agility (Agile principle #9)

Dennis Hambeukers illustrates how good design, far beyond aesthetics, is crucial for agility, fostering collaboration, rapid prototyping, and a user-centric approach.

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, about Triple Track Development:

Hands-on Agile 54: Overcoming Common Product Backlog Management Traps with David Pereira.

Hands-on Agile 53: An Agile Coaches Guide to Storytelling with Bob Galen.

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 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 More About Triple Track Development — Join the 19,000-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 learn about Triple Track Development by pointing them to the free Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide:

🗞️ Last Week’s Food for Agile Thought Edition

Read more: Food for Agile Thought #419: Waterfall vs. Agile, Brian Chesky on Product, Musk vs. Bureaucracy, AI-Washing.

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