Your path to business agility
When Kent Beck first articulated the principles of agile programming, he spearheaded the greatest change in software methodology in the last twenty years, and therefore perhaps of all time in such a young art. As I cannot hope to improve upon his exposition of the synergetic principles of Extreme Programming, I would like to explain how...
Throughout my career, there have been a few examples of good business partnerships — partnerships that are truly beneficial for both sides. I have many more examples of “Barney” type partnerships that take a good chunk of bandwidth for little return. The most successful partnerships, in my experience, have been built around a “build vs...
I’ve never met a homebuilder who wants to build a roof before pouring a foundation. Yet when I talk with executives about optimizing product development portfolios for customer appeal, competitive impact, and resource allocation, they sometimes ask this question first: how can we do a better job of optimizing development investments across our major lines...
Last week saw me traveling, which means I had some time to do a little airplane reading. I had the July/August edition of the Harvard Business Review with me and read a few thought-provoking articles. The first is titled “The Execution Trap.” A lot of good thoughts but the main thread is that there should not...
Every product management job I have ever had, no matter the size of the company, I have wrestled with the question — “How do I determine the right innovation vs maintenance mix?” In most of my jobs, I have struggled with this question on a daily basis, constantly making sure that the “small” priority decisions...
Good IT Governance has numerous benefits for running an IT organization. A solid understanding and control of resources, work effort, and costs will drive better decisions. Having that information readily available, on-demand, will drive more timely decision making. There are many sources CIO’s and IT organizations look to for guidance and examples on governance models...
I regularly find myself reading the thoughts and opinions of experts on management and how I can be a better manager. I’m never actually surprised by what I read – I think most of it is obvious. At the same time it’s easy to agree with what you’ve read, but difficult to put it into...
Developers that work with an issue tracking system are torn between two extremes. They often would like to know everything that is happening on their project yet their main focus is on tasks assigned to them. In practice, neither an overly nosey or a hermit-like approach works well, as developers are either overwhelmed by the...
IT Governance often represents a new way of doing business: An IT Governance training strategy must incorporate change management. An initiative as impactful as an IT Governance Solution typically requires an organization to implement new roles, processes and automation. The changes can appear daunting for many employees whose first experience with the new techniques is...
In a blog post today on agilefocus.com, William Pietri outlines his approach to tracking experimental work through the value stream of a Lean Startup. Being a “Lean Startup” ourselves (though we don’t really think of ourselves as a “startup”…but close enough), I found this line of thought intriguing. So, I decided to take a crack at modeling...
