Less than 24 hours back from two great conferences in Istanbul and Paris before heading to Hamburg to complete the tour. Lean Kanban Central Europe brings together more than 30 international …
Slicing ideas – choose your weapon!
One of the cheapest ways to tilt the playing field is to reduce the “batching” together of features and requirements. It was a big part of what we did at Maersk …
#LKUK14: Lean Kanban UK – London
We’re coming to London! Lean Kanban United Kingdom is for managers, team leads, consultants and executives who want to more reliably deliver the products and services their customers demand. From …
Context matters
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 …
This time, it’s personal
We are about to see a significant shift of focus in personal computing. The smartphone is fast approaching saturation. It’s gotten to the point where if your parents don’t have a smartphone …
Why bother *quantifying* the Cost of Delay?
Quantifying the Cost of Delay of the things we are working on helps us with: Improving the ROI delivered with a scarce resource Managing the demands of multiple stakeholders Making sensible …
We can’t afford mismanagement
Horace Deidu recently started working at The Clayton Christensen Institute, to help further develop the theory of disruptive innovation. Here, he nails his thesis on the door of Wall Street: …
SAFe and Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF)
In 2012, when Dean Leffingwell launched the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) it was obvious the impact that Don Reinertsen’s teachings had on elements of the design. In particular, SAFe specifies Don’s recommended …
WSJF – Weighted Shortest Job First
What is WSJF? Weighted Shortest Job First is a scheduling algorithm (or if you prefer, prioritisation method) that maximises the amount of whatever it is you choose to “weight” by in …
Tribal Leadership
Interested in culture, and introducing change in organisations? Özlem Yüce has a great intro to the Tribal Leadership stages that is well worth a read. I want to expand on a couple …
Product Development Payoff Asymmetry
I recently gave a talk at a conference about “Tilting the playing field in product development”. I went through a number of “False Friends” – things that seem like a good …
The question every CEO should be asking themselves
This! With the vastness of opportunities in technology, how are you going to retain your most important resource? Talent is far harder to obtain than capital. We are obsessed with …
Why are people afraid of estimating value?
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. …
Iterations vs Increments (Mona Lisa and Mrs Fox)
One of the best ways to tilt the playing field of Product Development is to take an iterative or incremental approach. What does this mean though? It is easy to get …
Innovation and cannibalization
How should we treat cannibalization when considering value and urgency? I have been asked this a number of times, usually in the context of quantifying the Cost of Delay. …
#Agile2014
We’re coming to Orlando! Serious teams, developers, managers and executives from over 40 countries are about to descend on an unsuspecting Orlando, Florida. There’ll be over 1,800 attendees exploring more than …
Degrees, Decisions, Design
What is design? As an engineer, I have some tacit knowledge of design – but I have always struggled to explain what it really means. When I started my career, I …
On Innovation
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 …
#MIXIT14 – Prioritising ideas using Cost of Delay
Özlem Yüce is coming to Lyon, France to speak at MIXIT14! How can we survive in a world where stakeholders want it all – and they want it yesterday? Are …
