Food for Agile Thought #179: Agile Dogmas, Innovative Culture Paradoxes, Overcoming Inertia, and Risk-Aversion

Food for Agile Thought #179: Agile Dogmas, Innovative Culture Paradoxes, Overcoming Inertia, and Risk-Aversion


Food for Agile Thought’s issue #179 questions agile dogmas, we bust more Scrum myths and learn why innovative cultures are paradoxical.

We also explore how to avoid the building trap or to become a feature factory; we learn how to free ourselves from the shackles of inertia and risk-aversion, and we have our gut feeling confirmed that fixed scope, fixed time projects can go only one way — south.

Lastly, we learn what kings, and queens, and knights, and trolls have to do with agile transitions. (Yub, GoT is coming.)

Did you miss last week’s Food for Agile Thought’s issue #178?


🏆 The Essential Read


Gary Pisano (via Harvard Business Review): Innovation Isn’t All Fun and Games — Creativity Needs Discipline

Gary Pisano believes that innovative cultures are misunderstood. For example, he thinks that experiments require discipline, that tolerance for failure requires an intolerance for incompetence, and that collaboration needs to be balanced with individual accountability.

Source: Harvard Business Review: Innovation Isn’t All Fun and Games — Creativity Needs Discipline

Author: Gary Pisano


Agile Dogmas & Scrum


Dave Nicolette (via Leading Agile): Questioning Agile Dogma

Dave Nicolette challenges five agile dogmas from the Agile Manifesto and asks how they could probably be still valid today.

Source: Leading Agile: Questioning Agile Dogma

Author: Dave Nicolette


Christiaan Verwijs (via Scrum.org): Myth: The Product Backlog is Maintained Exclusively by the Product Owner

Christiaan Verwijs busts another myth — that no one except the Product Owner can touch the Product Backlog.

Source: Scrum.org: Myth: The Product Backlog is Maintained Exclusively by the Product Owner

Author: Christiaan Verwijs


Gerbrand Colombier (via Medium): Our agile Transition at Adsdaq

Gerbrand Colombier lets us participate in Adsdaq’s journey to become an agile organization, employing knights, and castles, and dragons.

Source: Medium: Our agile Transition at Adsdaq

Author: Gerbrand Colombier


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Product & Lean


Jeff Gothelf (via The Startup): Fixed time, fixed scope projects always end in 1 of 3 ways. None of them good.

Jeff Gothelf points at the three common outcomes of a command & control driven project. (There is a fourth one: reducing quality thus cutting corners.)

Source: The Startup: Fixed time, fixed scope projects always end in 1 of 3 ways. None of them good.

Author: Jeff Gothelf


Teresa Torres (via Product Talk): Prioritize Opportunities, Not Solutions

Teresa Torres points at the fallacy of many product teams that calculating a prioritization score is the way to create value for the customers.

Source: Product Talk: Prioritize Opportunities, Not Solutions

Author: Teresa Torres


(via Corporate Rebels): Break Free And Create An Experiment-Friendly Workplace

Corporate Rebels point at how to overcome an organization’s inertia, risk-avoidance, and lack of engagement.

Source: Corporate Rebels: Break Free And Create An Experiment-Friendly Workplace


🗞️ Last Week’s Food for Agile Thought Edition

Read moreFood for Agile Thought #178: Agile Transition Failures, Coaching Pitfalls, Product Canvas, Mitigating Product Risk


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Food for Agile Thought #179: Agile Dogmas, Innovative Culture Paradoxes, Overcoming Inertia, and Risk-Aversion was first published on Age-of-Product.com.

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