Well facilitated brainstorming sessions are amazing. A creative, sharing atmosphere is built. Numerous ideas are generated. Participants feel productive, valued, and are enthusiastic. By contrast, poorly run meetings are horrible. Little is accomplished. People feel frustrated and that they wasted their time. Brainstorming is a […]
Many organizations struggle with project portfolio management (PPM). On the face of it, portfolio management should be easy. We want to align our fi\unding decisions to the organization’s strategic objectives. Since budgets are limited, this becomes a constrained optimization problem, which most easily performed in […]
Go to Boston. In the Beacon Hill neighborhood, you will find the Paramount Restaurant. The Paramount is both a great eating experience and a fine example of Lean production. The restaurant was opened in 1937. Its unusual service policy that is prominently posted on the […]
Organizations starting their Agile journey are confronted with an array of choices. One early decision is, what methodology and process to follow? The authors of the Agile Manifesto represented many approaches, methodologies, and frameworks. The common theme was that they had uncovered better ways of […]
Many of us are “knowledge workers.” We do not physically create a product. We work in areas that are important to our enterprise, but do not directly serve customers. We work in finance, marketing, technology, or similar functions. As knowledge workers it is hard to […]
Agile is an effective software development framework. Teams using Agile deliver value in short, iterative, increments. The starting point of the delivery cycle is the Product Backlog. The Backlog is the single, prioritized list of everything wanted for the product, including: New business or user […]
Adopting a product mindset is critical when transforming to an Agile development methodology, like Scrum. Shifting our thinking from project to product expands our view beyond the confines of the triple constraint—scope, cost, and time. The product mindset forces us to consider the larger, strategic […]
When teaching classes on Agile and DevOps, I am always presented with the comment, “We’ve been Agile for years, but…” The student then continues to describe an organization rife with Agile ant-patterns. Agile and DevOps are primarily cultural transformations. To “be Agile,” we need to […]
Agile software projects have significantly better outcomes than Waterfall methodologies. Statistics from the 2015 Standish Group’s Chaos Report show that, on average, Agile projects are three times more likely to be successful than Waterfall projects. This gap is even more pronounced for medium and large-sized […]
There has been a tectonic shift in how software is developed. Terms like Agile, CI/CD, DevOps, BDD, and TDD are new additions to the IT vocabulary. These new practices and related tools promise to significantly reduce the time and effort required to build, test, and […]