TL; DR: Natural Agility — Food for Agile Thought #475
Welcome to the 475th edition of the Food for Agile Thought newsletter, shared with 42,812 peers. This week, Dave Snowden challenges the “Agile Industrial Complex” to move beyond rote behaviors toward fostering natural agility and strategic impact. Charles Lambdin dissects Agile’s waning influence, citing political naïveté and misaligned priorities, while Chris Matts warns of superficial “Product Transformations” in 2025, echoing past Agile missteps. Gene Gendel discusses with Andy Cleff and Jay Hrcsko how HR and finance can either constrain or enable agility. Finally, Gregor Ojstersek and Michał Poczwardowski offer actionable tips for creating meetings engineers won’t hate, emphasizing relevance and purpose.
Next, Aletheia Delivre introduces “Walk the Park” and “Customer Love Sprints,” rituals that help teams tackle UX debt and prioritize customer-focused improvements. John Cutler advocates for nuanced customer segmentation via organizational psychographics, aligning strategy and product with GTM approaches, and Marty Cagan reflects on AI’s evolving role in product management, examining its effects on discovery, creativity, and team satisfaction. Also, Jason Cohen shares actionable strategies for uncovering customer insights before building a product, emphasizing creative outreach and leveraging networks.
Lastly, Nir Eyal reframes failure as a growth opportunity, advocating for resilience through structured reflection and positivity. Benji Weber explores overcoming resistance to Extreme Programming by inviting teams to embrace collaboration and shared ownership. Moreover, Kent Beck contrasts the “Desert” and “Forest” mindsets, showcasing how XP practices lead to near-zero production bugs. Gustavo Razzetti uncovers five hidden team habits that sabotage collaboration, while Van Halen’s “no brown M&Ms” clause offers a metaphor for identifying overlooked details, much like sentinel species signal broader systemic risks.
🎓 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: Natural Agility
: 📺 Rewilding Agile — Agile to Agility
Dave Snowden critiques the “Agile Industrial Complex,” urging a shift from prescribed behaviors to fostering processes and interactions that generate agility, self-organization, and strategic value beyond mere code delivery.
🍋 Lemon of the Week
(via Medium): A Good Faith Critique of Scrum Based on it’s 2020 Guide
The author’s critique of Scrum’s 2020 Guide is a prime lemon of misunderstandings. From calling time-boxing rigid to dismissing cross-functionality as unrealistic, it’s a cocktail of misconceptions. And the irony of labeling Scrum both too rigid and too vague in the same breath? Priceless.
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➿ Agile & Leadership
: Why Agile Is Losing Steam
Charles Lambdin explores why Agile is losing momentum, critiquing its political naïveté, lack of strategic foresight, and organizations’ misaligned priorities favoring control over true agility.
: 2025 Predictions – Fake Product Transformations cross the Chasm.
Chris Matts predicts 2025 will see superficial “Product Transformations” plagued by context-free processes, certification schemes, and costly reorganizations—prioritizing optics over meaningful change, echoing past Agile and DevOps missteps.
(via Agile Uprising): 🎙 Beyond Agile Theater w Gene Gendel: Organizational Enablers
Gene Gendel discusses with Andy Cleff and Jay Hrcsko how HR policies and financial structures can enable or constrain agility, sharing strategies for transforming constraints into enablers of organizational change.
and : Why engineers hate meetings and how to fix it
Gregor Ojstersek and Michał Poczwardowski share practical tips to create effective, engineer-friendly meetings by focusing on purpose and relevance, minimizing disruption, and tailoring interactions to attendees’ needs and preferences.
🖥 🇬🇧 Advanced Professional Scrum Master Training w/ PSM II Certificate — February 12-13, 2025
Discover Scrum’s four success principles in this official Scrum.org Advanced Scrum Master training class, which includes the industry-recognized PSM II certification. The PSM II training class is designed as a live virtual class and will be in English.
Enjoy the benefits of a live virtual immersive class with like-minded agile peers from 09:00 – 17:30 CET.
Learn more: 🖥 🇬🇧 Advanced Professional Scrum Master Training w/ PSM II Certificate — February 12-13, 2025.
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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👉 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 would like to be notified about these opportunities, please register here.
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🎯 Product
(via UX Collective): Making product quality a team sport
Aletheia Delivre shares two impactful rituals—“Walk the Park” and “Customer Love Sprints”—that unite teams to prioritize product quality, address UX debt, and deliver meaningful, customer-focused improvements collaboratively.
: Beyond Firmographic-Based ICPs (Ideal Customer Profiles)
John Cutler emphasizes moving beyond simplistic firmographic ICPs to organizational psychographics, advocating for nuanced customer segmentation based on awareness, centralization, change dynamics, and effectiveness to align strategy, product, and GTM approaches.
(via Silicon Valley Product Group): AI Product Management 2 Years In
Marty Cagan reflects on two years of AI product management, highlighting its nuanced impact on product discovery, creativity, and job satisfaction while urging focus on the evolving questions AI raises for teams.
(via Jason Cohen): When you have nothing: How to find potential customers to interview
Jason Cohen shares strategies for finding and interviewing potential customers before building a product, emphasizing relationship-building, creative outreach methods, and leveraging networks to validate ideas and uncover insights.
📯 Is the Era of the Scrum Master Coming to an End?
If you hang out in the “Agile” bubble on LinkedIn, the dice have already been cast: Scrum is out (and the Scrum Master), and the new kid on the block is [insert your preferred successor framework choice here.] I’m not entirely certain about that, but several data points on my side suggest a decline in the role of the Scrum Master.
Read on and learn more about whether the Scrum Master is a role at risk.
Learn more: Is the Era of the Scrum Master Coming to an End?
📅 Hands-on Agile 2025 Is Here — Join 550-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
: Fail! Fail a Lot! It’s Good for You
Nir Eyal emphasizes failure as a natural part of growth, advocating resilience through self-compassion, positivity, and a structured “I failed” process to turn setbacks into progress.
: Overcoming Resistance to Extreme Programming
Benji Weber discusses overcoming resistance to Extreme Programming (XP), emphasizing the importance of inviting teams to take control, addressing misconceptions, and fostering collaboration through coaching, shared experiences, and supportive management practices.
: Bugs Optional?
Kent Beck reflects on software development’s “Desert” versus “Forest” mindset, explaining how Extreme Programming practices enable teams to achieve near-zero production bugs through collaboration, continuous improvement, and proactive design.
: Say Goodbye to These Five ‘Harmless’ Team Habits in 2025
Gustavo Razzetti identifies five hidden team habits—overcommitting, silent disagreement, urgency addiction, sugar-coated feedback, and meeting overload—that sabotage collaboration.
🎶 Encore
(via Odd Athenaeum): Van Halen and Brown M&Ms
Van Halen’s “no brown M&Ms” clause, often seen as rock excess, was actually a clever safety check, highlighting overlooked contract details—much like sentinel species signal environmental dangers.
📅 Scrum Training & Event Schedule
You can secure your seat for Scrum training classes, workshops, and meetups directly by following the corresponding link in the table below:
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 PM Tools:
- Hands-on Agile 64: Mastering Work Intake: The Key to Sustainability and Flow with Jeremy Willets and Tom Cagley.
- 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 EXTRA: How Elon Musk Would Run YOUR Business with Joe Justice.
✋ Do Not Miss Out and Learn About Natural Agility — 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 Effective Product Teams by pointing them to the free Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide:
🗞️ Last Week’s Food for Agile Thought Edition
The post Food for Agile Thought #475: Natural Agility, Fake Product Transformations, AI Product Management, Fail a Lot! appeared first on Age-of-Product.com.
