The Best of Winning Strategy 2024

If you read one post this year, read this one — my most popular posts categorized and organized.

👋 Hello, I’m Vibhor, and welcome to the ⭐️ free edition ⭐️ of Winning Strategy, the fastest-growing Agile Product Newsletter on the planet. Each week, I cover two topics and provide helpful guides, training documents and templates to help your teams build great Products.

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What a year this has been. I never thought I would be able to sustain this newsletter this far. But here we are. After two complete years, 180+ posts, and 1.5 million email views 🤯 in 2024, I feel humbled. Without your support and belief, this would have been impossible. Your timely, friendly messages and encouragement uplifted me whenever I felt weak.

From the bottom of my heart, I thank you. Thank you for reading and for subscribing. There is so much more to come.

As the year comes to a close, I reviewed all my previous posts (more than 180!), selected the best ones, and organized them into helpful categories based on the question, “What problem do I need help with?” You can see these categories below.

1. 🌟 Career development & growth

2. 🤝 Team performance & dynamics

3. 📈 Agile implementation & scaling

4. 🛠️ Technical process management

5. 📊 Metrics & Reporting

6. 🗣️ Stakeholder & communication management

7. 👩‍💼 Role-specific guidance

8. ⚙️ Project & process optimization

9. 🎓 Onboarding & training

10. 🧰 Tools & templates

Moving ahead, I’ll turn this post into a dynamic document to keep track of all the great content I share across various channels, so be sure to bookmark it for future reference. Enjoy!

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🌟 Career development & growth

1. How to Get Your 1st Scrum Master Role

2. From Scrum Master to Being a Product Owner

3. First 30-60-90 Days as a Scrum Master

4. First 30 Days as an Agile Coach

5. First 30 Days of a Product Owner

6. Climb the Corporate Ladder: Mastering the Art of Frequent Job Promotions

7. How to Research a Company? Job Interview Essentials

8. 10 Mistakes in Your First 30 Days - Agile Coach

9. How to Decide Your Next Career Move?

10. Why Some Product Owners Are Harder to Work With Than Others?

11. The Power of Executive Presence

12. How to Showcase Your Contribution to Organizational Success?

13. How to Navigate Your Role as a Contract-Based Scrum Master Expected to Do PM Work

14. Enterprise Agile Coach Interview Preparation

15. Learn the Art of Asking Questions - Coaching Cards

16. Leadership Glitch

17. Observation as a Skill: How to Observe a Team Like Sherlock Holmes?

18. The Secret Behind Your Boss's Mindset

19. 6 Secrets to Winning Without Luck

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🤝 Team performance & dynamics

1. From under-performing to high-performing team

2. Team Trust Coaching Cards

3. A Surprising Technique That Creates Team Cohesion

4. 2 Steps to Team Building

5. 6 Killer Blind Spots Your Team Isn't Aware of + Template

6. Why Large Teams Suck?

7. Why Do We Need a Team? The Science Behind Innovation

8. How to Overcome Reluctance and Silent Resistance From Team Members?

9. Persona Creation + Training PDF

10. Team Topologies and Agile + Template

11. 15 Minute Exercise That Helps You Increase Your Team's Engagement + Template

12. 4 Types of People Who Can Make or Break Your Scrum Team

13. How Can You Create Self-Organizing Teams?

14. What to Do When - Your Team Ignores Your Suggestions?

15. How to Merge a Waterfall Team with a Scrum Team?

16. A Surprising Technique That Triggers Team Cohesion

17. How do you record skills and strengths of your team members?

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📈 Agile implementation & scaling

1. The Challenge with Scaling Agile Practices for Multi-Team Projects

2. First Principles of Scaling Agile Practices

3. 5 Ingredients for Multi-Team Alignment

4. How to Distribute Product Backlog Items to Multiple Teams?

5. Defining Convergence Points for Multiple Agile Teams + Template

6. Scrumban for Scrum Teams

7. Role of Scrum Master When the Company is Transitioning to SAFe

8. 14 Different Agile Frameworks and How to Pick the Right One

9. How Single Teams Master Agility?

10. Developmental vs Operational Value Streams

11. Hybrid Agile: What Is It?

12. 5 Techniques to Create and Clarify Roles Within Large Teams + Templates

13. Role of Sponsors, Stakeholders, and Managers in Agile + Training Checklist

14. Enterprise Agile for Executives - Training Deck

15. Agile Coach Onboarding

16. The Art of Influential Leadership

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🛠️ Technical process management

1. Simplifying Value Stream Mapping for Agile/Scrum Teams

2. How to Measure Technical Debt in Scrum?

3. Bugs vs Defects: How to Handle Bugs and Defects Introduced Mid-Sprint?

4. Definition of Done (DoD): Quick Technique to Define Your Team's DoD

5. Definition of Ready Simplified

6. How to Break User Stories into Tasks?

7. 9 Different Types of Scrum Metrics

8. Simplifying Cumulative Flow Diagram

9. Risk vs Impediment

10. Risk Management in Agile

11. System Integration Testing and Scrum

12. Product Requirements Document & Agile: What You Need to Know + Template

13. Different Types of Product Requirements & Agile

14. Order, Prioritize, and Estimate User Stories Simultaneously

15. Behaviour Driven Development (BDD) for Scrum Teams

16. SPIKES - 101

17. Agile Product Development - Training Deck

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📊 Metrics & Reporting

1. 9 Different Types of Scrum Metrics

2. Metrics for Project-Based Scrum Teams

3. Simplifying Cumulative Flow Diagram

4. How to Present Scrum Metrics to the C-Suite

5. Defect Management for Scrum Teams

6. What Are Release Health Metrics?

7. How to Showcase Business Value Delivered During Sprint Review?

8. Risk vs Impediment

9. Risk Management in Agile

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🗣️ Stakeholder & communication management

1. How to Present the Scrum Metrics to the C-Suite?

2. How to Showcase Business Value Delivered During Sprint Review?

3. How to Discuss Metrics With Your Team?

4. Stakeholder Management for Scrum Masters

5. What to Share and What to Hide From Stakeholders During Sprint Review?

6. How to Interrupt Senior Stakeholders as a Facilitator?

7. When Stakeholders Don’t Have Time for UAT

8. Conflict and Complaint Resolution 101 for Scrum Masters

9. The Secret of 20 in the 80/20 Rule

10. How to Get Their Buy-In on Agile in 1 Hour

11. What to Do if Product Owner is Not Present for Sprint Planning Meeting?

12. Persuasion - The Skill You Need to Lead Without Authority

13. Workplace Networking 101 for Scrum Masters

14. Problem Solving and Reporting to Stakeholders

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👩‍💼 Role-specific guidance

1. First 30-60-90 Days as a Scrum Master

2. First 30 Days of a Product Owner - Complete Schedule

3. First 30-60-90 Days of a Product Owner

4. Role of Scrum Master in SAFe

5. How to Succeed as a Release Train Engineer (RTE)?

6. Duties of a Release Train Engineer

7. Being a Scrum Master for a Shared Services Team

8. Role of Sponsors, Stakeholders, and Managers in Agile + Training Checklist

9. What Does a Scrum Master Observe in a Daily Scrum?

10. What Do You Do as a Project Manager on an Agile Team?

11. Role and Responsibility Template

12. Business Analyst's Role and Responsibilities in Agile - Training Deck

13. Test Lead Onboarding - Training Deck

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⚙️ Project & process optimization

1. How to Stop Chasing Your Team for Scrum Events?

2. 6 Steps to Effectively Manage Product Backlog

3. Backlog Management Events — Training Deck

4. How Great Scrum Masters Handle Process Resistance

5. Agile Coaching Lifecycle

6. Agile Project Mobilization / Kickoff - Training Deck

7. Story Mapping Workshop Simplified

8. How to Calculate Team Capacity for the Upcoming Sprint + Template

9. Kanban Board Strategy for Support and Development Work

10. How to Manage Sprint Carryovers + Template

11. Metrics for Project-Based Scrum Teams

12. What Are Release Health Metrics?

13. Parameters for Agile Assessment (With Data Collection Template)

14. Scrum Team Capacity Template - Ver.2

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🎓 Onboarding & training

1. Agile Coach Onboarding

2. First 30-60-90 Days as a Scrum Master

3. 1 Year Training Plan for Scrum and Agile Teams + Template

4. Agile Product Development - Training Deck

5. Product Owner Onboarding - Training Deck

6. Train the Trainer - OKR Training Deck

7. Kanban Foundations Training Deck

8. Persona Creation + Training PDF

9. QA Onboarding - Training Deck

10. One-Day Workshop Agenda to Onboard New and Experienced Teams

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🧰 Tools & templates

1. Scrum Team Capacity Template - Ver.2

2. Persona Creation + Training PDF

3. Role and Responsibility Template

4. Parameters for Agile Assessment (With Data Collection Template)

5. Defining Convergence Points for Multiple Agile Teams + Template

6. How to Distribute Product Backlog Items to Multiple Teams? + Template

7. 6 Killer Blind Spots Your Team Isn’t Aware of + Template

8. 15 Minute Exercise That Helps You Increase Your Team's Engagement + Template

9. 1:1 Interviews to Map Your Team's Current State + 11 Templates

Stay connected!

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Have a wonderful and very productive new year 🙏

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Insights of the week

I re-read the book — Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade

Below is a summary of all the insights I highlighted.

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Let me know what you think! Is this useful? What could be better? You can reply to this email to send your message directly to my inbox.

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"It's not your responsibility to bear the stress because others cannot; it's rather your responsibility to show others how to respond to it."

Anonymous