Food for Agile Thought #465: Reverse Product Roadmap, Productwashing, Bossless Organizations, Framework Fever

TL; DR: Reverse Product Roadmap — Food for Agile Thought #465

Welcome to the 465th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 42,913 peers. This week, John Utz promotes a “reverse product roadmap” approach, focusing on feature elimination to simplify products. Mark Graban critiques command-and-control leadership for sabotaging Lean transformations by prioritizing cost-cutting, while Maarten Dalmijn warns against blindly adopting frameworks like SAFe without context. Also, Pim de Morree shares lessons from transforming Indaero into a bossless organization, and Ula Ojiaku highlights the dangers of “framework fever,” advocating for tailored, context-aware methodologies to prevent costly misalignments.

Next, Paolo Lacche introduces “product washing,” where companies falsely claim to implement product management, reducing PMs to powerless roles. Todd Lankford emphasizes delivering value over managing backlogs, offering actionable tips for Product Owners, and Warren Schirtzinger demystifies the misunderstood “crossing the chasm” concept, highlighting critical misapplications. Moreover, Aakash Gupta and Gagan Biyani delve into Maven’s cohort-based learning model, its scalability, the value of Product Management in startups, and long-term career strategies for job seekers.

Lastly, Viktor Cessan outlines how Viafree leveraged a remote Self-Selection process to transition disbanded teams, ensuring smooth integration and maintaining motivation, and Jock Busuttil addresses the backlash against the Spotify Model, emphasizing its evolution and enduring lessons. Eric Brechner shares strategies to avoid knowledge loss when key employees leave, while Soren Kaplan offers actionable steps to manage team conflict. Finally, Jerry Neumann challenges the belief in accelerating technology adoption, exploring the factors that truly influence adoption speed and societal impact.

🎓 January 27, 2025: The Advanced Product Backlog Management Course for Just $99!

👉 Please note:

The course includes membership in my former professional students’ brand-new Hands-on Agile community.

The course will only be available for sign-up until February 3, 2025!

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This week, the most popular discussion on LinkedIn was: Scrum Masters, are you working too much?

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🏆 The Tip of the Week: Reverse Product Roadmap

John Utz (via Product Coalition): Delete to Accelerate: Transforming Your Product with a Reverse Roadmap

John Utz advocates for a “reverse roadmap” approach, focusing on deleting unused or outdated product features to simplify and enhance the product. He argues that consistent feature elimination improves efficiency, user experience, and product focus.

🍋 Lemon of the Week

(via Medium): Alternatives to endless scrum

The author presents a bizarre solution to the “grind” of endless Scrum sprints: “scrum days” and “scrum holidays.” Instead of addressing the real problems in Scrum implementation, he advocates treating teams like toddlers needing nap time. Clearly, the principles of agility—and common sense—got lost somewhere between the two.

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➿ Agile & Leadership

Maarten Dalmijn: Why Do Most Agile Transformations Fail?

Maarten Dalmijn critiques the “copy-paste” mentality in Agile transformations, where organizations blindly implement frameworks like SAFe or the Spotify model without considering their unique context. He argues that such approaches often fail because they neglect the complexity of organizational systems.

Mark Graban: Lean Failure Explained: When Command-and-Control Leadership Sabotages Success

Mark Graban highlights how command-and-control leadership often sabotages Lean transformations by focusing solely on cost-cutting and neglecting Lean’s core principles of respect for people and continuous improvement, leading to predictable failure.

Pim de Morree (via Corporate Rebels): No Managers, No Problem? Our 12-Month Experiment in Running a Bossless Organization

Pim de Morree shares insights from a 12-month experiment at Indaero that transformed it into a bossless organization. While achieving significant financial growth, salary increases, and employee empowerment, the journey faced challenges in autonomy, conflict resolution, and stress management.

Uloaku (Ula) Ojiaku (via Forbes): The Pitfalls Of Framework Fever: Why One-Size-Fits-All Approaches Fail In Complex Organizations

Ula Ojiaku critiques the “framework fever” that leads organizations to adopt one-size-fits-all methodologies, causing more harm than good blindly. She advocates for customized, context-aware approaches to avoid costly misalignments.

🖥 🇬🇧 Advanced Professional Scrum Master Training w/ PSM II Certificate — November 18-19, 2024

Discover Scrum’s four success principles in this official Scrum.org Advanced Scrum Master training class including the industry-recognized PSM II certification. The PSM II training class is designed as a live virtual class and will be offered in English.

Enjoy the benefits of a live virtual immersive class with like-minded agile peers from 09:00 – 17:30 CEST.

Learn more: 🖥 🇬🇧 Advanced Professional Scrum Master Training w/ PSM II Certificate — November 18-19, 2024.

Customer Voice: “Dear Stefan, Thanks a lot for two intense and mindblowing days. Your way of teaching suites me perfectly. I must admit that all the positive feedback you have gotten is spot on! I would any time a day recommand your class to a Scrum Master who wants to add a whole new level to his/her scrum game. To all of you reading this. You have to experience Stefans class to understand how good it is.” (Source.)

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🎯 Product

Paolo Lacche (via UX Collective): Is your company productwashing? How most tech organizations became the real imposters in the product world

Paolo Lacche coined the term “product washing” to describe companies that claim to have a product management function but fail miserably. These companies reduce PMs to powerless project managers and damage the entire industry.

Todd Lankford (via Medium): Escape the Backlog Black Hole: How I Help Product Owners Harvest Early Value

Todd Lankford argues that Product Owners should focus on delivering value rather than managing backlogs, offering five practical tips on shifting from Product Backlog administration to harvesting early value for users and businesses.

Warren Schirtzinger: Chasm Crossing Confusion

Warren Schirtzinger explains why the concept of “crossing the chasm” in the technology adoption lifecycle is widely misunderstood, highlighting six critical areas of confusion, from mischaracterizing innovations to applying chasm theory inappropriately across industries.

Aakash Gupta and Gagan Biyani: 🎙 How Maven Builds Product, and Whether You Should Take a Maven PM Course with Maven CEO Gagan Biyani

Aakash Gupta and Gagan Biyani discuss Maven’s cohort-based learning model, its scalable approach to high-engagement courses, and the importance of Product Management in startups. They also explore founder leadership, long-term job search strategies, and building value-driven careers.

📯 Join the Scrum Master Salary Report 2025 — 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 December 2024 to create the report in time for February 2025. The report will be available for free.

📈 Join the Anonymous Poll for the Upcoming Free Scrum Master Salary Report 2025.

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Learn more: Transformation to Agile Primitives: Rebuilding Agility from the Ground Up.

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📅 Hands-on Agile 2025 Is Here — Join 300-plus Peers: From Concept-Based to Context-Based Agility

I am thrilled to announce that Hands-on Agile 2025 is officially on the horizon and will be free to attend from February 4-6, 2025. This time, we will focus on how Agile needs to evolve from concept-based agility to context-based agility.

But before we discuss what that means, let’s take a step back and consider why Hands-on Agile 2025 is going to be a can’t-miss event for everyone in the agile community.

For those unfamiliar, Hands-on Agile isn’t just another conference. It’s an event built around the Barcamp model, meaning it’s a self-organized, community-driven gathering with one goal: Sharing knowledge and experiences.

From February 4 to 6, 2025, we will spend three energizing days engaging in sessions, practicing agile games, sharing war stories, and learning directly from each other. Hands-on Agile is all about creating a space for practitioners, coaches, leaders, and newcomers to connect in a truly hands-on way.

Save Your Seat Now!

There are no tickets; Hands-on Agile 2025 is free.

However, you will need to register nevertheless. Otherwise, you would not receive, for example, the invitation to the HoA2025 community or have access to individual session access credentials:

Please note:

For technical reasons, your sign-up confirmation will be sent from stefan [at] age-of-product.com.
Your registration to Hands-on Agile 2025 will also subscribe you to Stefan’s Food for Agile newsletter, one of the largest independent newsletters on agile practices worldwide.
Your invitation to join the Hands-on Agile 2025 community will be limited to February 28, 2025.

🛠 Concepts, Tools & Measuring

Viktor Cessan: Case Study: Remote Self-Selection at Viafree

Viktor Cessan shares how Viafree successfully used a remote and partial Self-Selection process to transition disbanded teams into Viaplay’s teams. With careful preparation, team alignment, and flexibility in choices, the process allowed for smooth integration despite the challenges of remote work, minimizing downtime while preserving employee motivation and engagement.

Jock Busuttil: The Backlash against the Spotify Model

Jock Busuttil discusses the backlash against the Spotify Model, emphasizing that it was merely a snapshot in time for Spotify, evolving as the company grew. He explores its limitations, misconceptions, and enduring lessons on autonomy, collaboration, and alignment with strategic goals.

Eric Brechner: Knowledge loss

Eric Brechner explains how to avoid knowledge loss when key employees leave, emphasizing assigning primary and backup owners to critical areas rather than relying on departing SMEs to document or verbally transfer knowledge.

Soren Kaplan: Collaboration Strategies for Managing Team Conflict

Soren Kaplan highlights common sources of team conflict, such as communication issues, role ambiguity, and personality clashes. They provide actionable strategies, from fostering open communication to implementing structured conflict resolution processes to transform conflict into collaboration.

🎶 Encore

Jerry Neumann: The Illusion of Acceleration

Jerry Neumann challenges the widely held belief that the rate of technology adoption is accelerating. He argues that adoption speed is influenced by factors such as relative advantage, compatibility, and complexity, rather than technological inevitability, and cautions against conflating fast adoption with long-term societal impact.

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 6,000-plus Agile Peers on Youtube

Now available on the Age-of-Product Youtube channel to improve learning, for example, about the Reverse Product Roadmap:

Hands-on Agile 62: From Backlog Manager to Product Manager with David Pereira.

Hands-on Agile 61: Toyota Kata Coaching for Agile Teams & Transformations with Fortune Buchholtz.

Hands-on Agile 59: Tackling Fake Agility with Johanna Rothman.

Hands-on Agile 57: Humble Planning with Maarten Dalmijn.

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.

✋ Do Not Miss Out and Learn About the Reverse Product Roadmap — Join the 20,000-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 Bringing Problems to Leaders by pointing them to the free Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide:

🗞️ Last Week’s Food for Agile Thought Edition

Read more: Food for Agile Thought #464: Rapid Prototyping with Claude, Ignoring Feature Requests, Sabotating Innovation, Bayer’s Radical Transformation

The post Food for Agile Thought #465: Reverse Product Roadmap, Productwashing, Bossless Organizations, Framework Fever appeared first on Age-of-Product.com.