Let’s face it: While your enthusiasm for the big picture of agile practices is admirable, your stakeholders will most likely be moved by one thought only at the beginning of the transition: “What’s in for me? How will I now have my requirements delivered?”. Read on and learn about one way how to kick-off the transition to a learning organization by pitching a simplified version the big picture of agile practices to your stakeholders first.

1. The Big Picture of Agile
Four Fallacies or: How to Pitch the ‘Agile Mindset’
ProductCamp Berlin 2016

2. There’s Plenty of “Agile”

3. There’s Plenty of “Agile”

4. Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan
Manifesto for Agile Software
Development
Source: http://www.agilemanifesto.org/

5. “Sound and prudent judgment based on a
simple perception of the situation or facts.”
Common Sense
ˈkä-mən-ˈsen(t)s
Source: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/common+sense

6. Doing “Agile” or Being Agile?
Worldwide Scrum Alliance members:
• Certified Scrum Masters: 389.706
• Certified Scrum Product Owners: 85.575
• Certified Scrum Professionals: 4.705
• Certified Scrum Developers: 4.264
• Certified Scrum Trainers: 215
Source: https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/certificant-directory.aspx?

7. Processes &
Tools
Practices
Principles
Values
Mindset
Agile Onion
Source: http://www.adventureswithagile.com/2016/08/10/what-is-agile/
This can be adopted
C&C style
This requires
cultural &
organizational
change
Move to a learning
organization
Less powerful,
more visible
More powerful,
less visible

8. How come then that
“Agile”
is so hard to master in practice?

9. Fallacy #1: Everyone Loves “Agile”
What-is-in-for-me syndrome:
• Autonomy, mastery & purpose kill
jobs…
• …and applying Taylorism still pays
well:
• Personal agendas
• Career optimization
• Politics
Source: https://memegenerator.net/instance/23491837

10. Fallacy #2: One C-Level Can Sponsor Change
Source: https://age-of-product.com/agile-micromanagement/
Change needs to be fundamental:
• Traits of the ‘learning organization’:
• Running experiments
• Embracing failure
• Abandoning the “heroic inventor”
mental model
• Effectiveness over efficiency
• Self-organizing teams leading to…
• … a ‘Team of teams’ structure

11. Fallacy #3: We Scale Like Spotify
Henrik Kniberg:
“…wasn’t a big re-make, more like a
continuous stream of small iterative
improvements to our organization
and process. We have been growing
for three years, and the way we work
today has evolved naturally over
time.”
Source: https://www.infoq.com/news/2016/10/no-spotify-model

12. Fallacy #4: We’re all Software Companies Now
Marc Andreessen:
“In short, software is eating the
world.”
Source: http://a16z.com/2016/08/20/why-software-is-eating-the-world/

13. Source: https://age-of-product.com/big-picture-agile/

14. A Simplified Big Picture of “Agile”
Product discovery:
• Ideas and “requirements” long-list,
competing for engineering resources
• Application of the “valuable,
feasible, and usable” filter…
• …thus identifying the short-list of
test-worthy hypotheses
• Running (lean) experiments to…
• …validate hypotheses.

15. A Simplified Big Picture of “Agile” (II)
Product delivery:
• POs as the gatekeepers of the product backlog
• The product backlog, representing at any given
time the most valuable set of tasks for a Scrum
team
• The continuous product backlog refinement
process…
• …leading to the next set of user stories, tech
tasks, spikes, or bugs.
Source: https://age-of-product.com/big-picture-agile/

16. Winning Hearts & Minds of Stakeholders
App building w/ newbies:
• Works for sales, marketing,
customer care, finance, HR…
• Workshop takes about 5-6 hours
• Have them built a clickable
prototype
• Example here: Team event
organization app
Source: https://age-of-product.com/app-prototyping-with-absolute-beginners-agile-experiments//

17. How to Get in Touch:
Email: stefan@age-of-product.com
Blog: https://age-of-product.com
Twitter: @AgeofProduct
Twitter: @StefanW
Slack: hands-onagile.slack.com