Here’s a perfect illustration of how organisational culture works: Something underneath the surface (not explicit or visible to individual actors) quietly amplifies conformity and dampens outliers. This is of course, …
Central Bank Digital Currency
CBDC discussions seem to be heating up. Be interesting to see where each of these four work streams at the European Central Bank lead to: “First, we will test the …
JTBD Lesson #3: Beware of Overserving!
Improving the product along obvious parameters of value as defined by your customers today tends to lead to overserving. At some point, it becomes more than they can absorb.
JTBD Lesson #2: The Job to be Done doesn’t change.
The second key lesson you might have already spotted in the example from Lesson 1: The JOB doesn’t change, The Product we hire does. Consider the previous JTBD, “sharing a …
JTBD Lesson #1: Focus on the higher purpose
As a Product team, it’s tempting to look at the product itself and focus almost entirely about how to make it “better” along parameters that we already measure, especially the …
JTBD (Jobs To Be Done) – An Intro
Jobs to be Done is a way of thinking about products and services. Using JTBD as a way of thinking brings a different perspective that helps us: Avoid building things …
Avoiding Disruption – 7 key points
The late Clayton M. Christensen researched and wrote one of the most frequently referenced books on innovation: “The Innovator’s Dilemma – when new technologies cause great firms to fail“. In …
Culture, Technology and Decay
In Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, Satis House (from the latin for “enough”) is a wonderful metaphor for technology in organisations today. So often, what you hope will satisfy you and …
Technical Debt != Bad Coding
“Technical Debt” is NOT the result of poor programming – it is the cost of not refactoring as you learn more about a solution. Like all things popular, “Technical Debt” has become a …
How is Cost of Delay in SAFe calculated?
TL;DR: Poorly. Not recommended! If you want to delve into the details, read this. (The main problems are that it uses some made up relative terms and then combines them …
CapEx, OpEx and Accounting for Teams
Years ago, I wrote about funding teams instead of projects. That covered a really common big-batch funding and approval problem: the feast and famine – and the learning curves that …
On Backlogs and Buffers
A Backlog is different to a Buffer. In short, a Backlog should be a safe waiting place, where it is: a) cheap and b) fast for ideas of all sizes …
Accountability vs Complexity
Ever been “held accountable” for something that you had no control or power over? I’ve previously spoken about how corrosive the words we use in organisations can be. Words matter. …
On “Trust” in Product Development
I rather rudely butted in on an interesting twitter exchange yesterday, which started off about assessments. John Cutler was sharing what he has learned from doing and iterating on them …
Cost of Delay and CD3 Prioritisation at Scale
“How to generate the highest Return On Investment toward strategic priorities — across multiple teams that need to work together.” I get asked this question a lot. I’ve also seen …
Part Two – “Velocity” needs to die. Alternative measures?
So, we’ve briefly looked at Velocity, what it is, how it gets abused and what the typical result of that is – and therefore the need for an alternative. Now …
“Velocity” needs to die. Alternative measures?
Over the years, I’ve spent a lot of time with senior Executives of different organisations. Along the way, I’ve noticed a tendency for them to latch onto, and misuse, the …
“Why doesn’t Apple make a printer?”
Someone asked the above question, and whilst it seems facile, I couldn’t resist… Short answer: because there’s no profit in it. Slightly longer answer… This quote from Tim Cook (emphasis …
Single Prioritised Backlog – chat with John Cutler
Had an interesting conversation with John Cutler yesterday to discuss the idea of having a single prioritised Backlog for an organisation. The genesis for the chat came from a tweet …
Survival in a demand-driven world
This is a really interesting read on Loose Threads. It talks about how the world of retail clothing has shifted from being supply-constrained to demand-driven. It looks at how Zara operates …