Some organisations struggle with team stability due to having to deal with multiple stakeholders. This is a fairly common situation. Typically, these stakeholders represent completely different departments or “silos” in an organisation, and they often have their own budgets. (This exposes one of the issues with departmental budgets in that they often make a claim on…

This Popular Mechanics article about Elevator Scheduling Algorithms is well worth a read. This part in particular struck me: With the elevators directing themselves, engineers had to spell out rules for when to go where. The simplest method was for the elevators to shuttle back and forth between predefined “terminal floors” at scheduled intervals. It was like…

I’m going to break the first rule of #NoProjects (again), to collect a few artefacts in one place, mostly for reference purposes. I’ve been learning about the limitations of and dismantling what I would suggest is the abuse of the project vehicle in inappropriate contexts for a long time now. The turning point for me was possibly the point…

From a while back, but still as relevant today as back then. Feel free to join in… #iHaveADream that Project Managers are incentivised to kill projects early, by exposing assumptions about value & testing them quickly — Joshua J. Arnold (@joshuajames) November 18, 2015 #IHaveADream, that estimates will no longer be used as a tool…

In a comment on another post, Chris Matts pointed towards a video that I think every manager should watch. The video is of Clay Christensen at the Drucker Forum outlining his categorisation of innovation and presenting an argument that the world of finance has driven us to using the wrong metrics. It’s only 15 minutes…

Charlton Ogburn, an Officer during World War II wrote this in 1957: We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganized. Presumably the plans for our employment were being changed. I was to learn later in life that, perhaps because we are so…

You hear a lot of people talking about “Scaling” Software Delivery. Like it or not, it is something many large organisations spend a lot of energy struggling with. What I find interesting though, is how it often means that they want to skip the learning part and go straight to the scaled setup (often following…

Having been involved in a number of “Digital Transformations” I’ve observed some useful patterns of both failure and success that you might want to consider. I hesitate to use the term “Digital Transformation” because isn’t very well defined. It has also been somewhat abused, much like “Agile Transformation” that came before it. Nevertheless, there are many…

When it comes to software, in many organisations the PMO – Project Management Office – is part of the problem rather than part of the solution. Part of the reason for this is that the approach doesn’t really fit the context. Developing great software that people love is not like building an office block. As I’ve written about before, the project paradigm…

The Highest Paid Person’s Opinion. If you’ve spent any reasonable length of time in a large corporate environment you will probably have seen something a bit like this first hand. It usually happens when a group of people are attempting to make a difficult decision, for which there are lots of opinions, but not a lot…

This, from a great piece by @tcarmody on the film Alien, and what it teaches us about ourselves and technology: That’s what technology is. It’s the world of things, some impossibly stupid, some smarter than we are, we have assembled around ourselves to cover over our fundamental weaknesses as a species. The strength we have,…

Jim Womack’s keynote at the LPPDE14 conference in Durham nicely captures one of the key problems faced in Product Development: Most organizations are organized vertically […] but the product needs to flow horizontally across the organization in order to be made right/well and solve a real problem for the customer. Every time the vertical and horizontal…

Many observers will look at ApplePay and misunderstand it. They will likely see it as another example of Apple coming late to the party with nothing that hasn’t already been done before – and dominating on the basis of superior “marketing”. (Presumably this is primarily thanks to their brand and those who would buy and…

I posted an answer on Quora the other day in response to the question about how to gamify sprints as a way of motivating teams: Try sharing with the team the #CostOfDelay of the things they are working on in $/week. For example: “The Cost of Delay for this story is $50,000/week. What this means…

Randall Munroe of XKCD with a nice example of why useful rules of thumb that apply well in one context don’t always apply elsewhere… I hear lots of these. People with a software background seem to be really good at “generalising the particular”. One piece flow = good. Push = bad. Estimates = waste. Prioritisation = waste.…

When it comes to estimating value the biggest barrier is usually our own fixed-mindset. It is our prejudices and perceptions, fears and uncertainties that stop us from seeing what might be. To an impartial observer, it might seem like we have an allergy — where if we were to talk about value in terms of money,…

Q: What are the biggest obstacles organisations face when it comes to innovation? Three things: culture, culture and culture. This manifests in different ways in different organisations but at its root, it’s culture that tends to hold you back the most. Innovation requires a discovery mindset, continuous improvement and a collaborative environment. In large organisations…