I have seen many people define “agile” (or, more often, “Agile” with a capital A). I wonder why this is such a common topic. I suspect it’s because we see such a wide range of definitions, and, by implication, a huge variety of imagined purposes for “Agile”.
Why Bringing Digital Into Stores Won’t Work And How To Prevent That Outcome
The biggest mistake I see in store technology implementations is a “build it and they will come” mentality. Or one that is overly focused on driving sales. Don’t get me wrong – the main objective of in-store activity should be to drive sales. The store is where 90% of sales are transacted, and anything that takes focus away from that risks jeopardizing a business model that is already stressed.
What If Agile Never Happened
he Agile approach to software development, although neither conceived nor born at Snowbird in 2001, coalesced and started to gain traction from around then.
What if the Snowbird gathering had never happened? What if the seeds which led to Snowbird had not been planted, or had fallen on barren ground?
Here’s a few hypotheses, or scenarios, to consider.
Retailers Weigh In On The State Of The Digital/Physical Union
With the proliferation of digital channels in retail, we recently took on the task of understanding how retailers view the state of the union. How do retailers, themselves, currently view the challenges, opportunities, roadblocks and technology enablers associated with how they support commerce across all of their consumer touchpoints – both physical and digital?
Retail Still Moves More Slowly Than Needed
A fascinating walk down memory lane. Granted, we “only” are talking about newsletter articles written over the past five years: since 2011, but five years is a long time in consumer IT years.
Here are some “flashbacks” that really could be published as new articles today.
Digital Channels And The Problems Ahead
I examined some data about how retailers have two main operational problems with their eCommerce operations: getting varying channels to work together, and optimizing the ways inventory is deployed across these channels. The gist of the article? Everything else pales in comparison.
What’s In The Way Of Better eCommerce?
We’ve seen interest in a major platform refresh, the introduction of mobile and social as eCommerce considerations, as well as convergence — where retailers increasingly view mobile and other non-commerce online activities in the context of their overall digital strategy, with their eCommerce platform as the centerpiece.
Why The Future of Humanity Depends On Organisational Psychotherapy
The future of work is collaborative knowledge work. Most, if not all, brawn (pink muscle) will be supplied by machines, robots and other mechanical automation, augmented by software to control the mechanical parts.
Increasingly, software will also subsume the work of individual specialists, experts and other single knowledge workers.
Only collaborative knowledge work – non-repetitive brain (grey muscle) work done by groups or teams of people – remains the domain of the human.
