agile
When you're planning to launch a big new program (or other big effort) at work, it's valuable to step back and clarify, very succinctly the purpose and scope of this new thing. It's easy early on when planning a big new thing to think
agile
There are so many great systems out there on how to connect strategic planning to tactical operations, to ensure that strategic plans don't become shelfware (get put on a shelf and ignored). I'm a big fan of lots of thought leaders in this space, including Cal
agile
A few days ago, East City Book Shop hosted Cal Newport and David Sax for a book event to chat about David's new book The Future is Analog, which talks about the how when digital transformation happens, there's often an opposing trend, such as vinyl records
agile
Michael Gerber's The E-Myth Revisited, from way back in 1955, talks about the concept that an entrepreneur who starts and grows a company can't just work "in" the business (e.g. doing the work that generates revenue), but they have to work "on&
agile
There's a lot of value in automating things in your life -- making things automatic or easy to keep happening. Ramit Sethi has a great concept of automating your finances, where you design your budget and have the fundamentals of your personal finances automatically happen (e.g. You
agile
It sometimes feels like you need lots of words/pages/slides to look/sound credible, but great communicators go through the hard work of refining their idea/message/recommendation down to a crisp, easy-to-digest message. "I didn’t have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote
agile
So many leaders or teams quickly move too quickly (or skip entirely) the early parts of a new project/initiative, failing to invest real time in wrestling with questions like: * Should we do this project? (This question is skipped way too often -- think about investing in exercises like a
agile
At the recent 2019 Capability Counts conference, hosted by the CMMI Institute, I presented a session related to Enforcing Quality with DevOps Pipeline gates, where I provided an introduction to the concepts and technologies of DevOps, and how to use the concepts of Continuous Quality to improve software quality earlier
agile
I recently chatted with Tom Cagley on the Software Process and Measurement Podcast (SPaMCAST) about some of my experience helping scale operations at Halfaker using best practices from various business books (e.g. Good to Great), frameworks (e.g. CMMI), techniques (e.g. Agile Scrum), and tools (e.g. JIRA)
agile
Here's a list of books, podcasts, conferences, frameworks, methodologies, models, and other resources related to designing and building great organizations that I think are worth checking out. If you have any recommended additions, please email or send me a tweet. Books, Frameworks, and Standards Resource Key Takeaways Additional
agile
Early in my career, I was a leadership development conference (through Lockheed's great Engineering Leadership Development Program), where we played a game called Gold of the Desert Kings -- it was a group game, in a big event space ballroom packed with engineers from all over the country.
agile
Organizations must intentionally determine how opinionated their collaboration tools (business systems) should be, to align with their culture and business model. Opinionated tools align well with top-down organizational cultures, while non-opinionated tools align well with decentralized, self-organizing cultures. Organizations struggle at each extreme: 1. Top-down organizations struggle to scale effectively,