Rightshifting the HiveMind This is the first in what may become a series of posts charting the Rightshifting journey of the HiveMind Network. I’m feeling somewhat uneasy about the idea of embarking on such a rightshifting journey. Personally, I prefer to travel in company rather than alone, and I prefer to enjoy the journey rather than look …Read More
Head, Heart And Soul
How many organisations have you come across with a heart? And with a soul? Personally, it’s been precious few. Yet for those rare encounters, it’s a palpable joy, isn’t it? Precious indeed.
A signal from Conway’s Law?
This blog post explores how your org design decisions impact organisation productivity and what signals might help you to understand if your teams are aligned to purpose. In my work across large-scale software development organisations I’ve observed a number of different ways that teams are commonly structured and organised…
Measures of Effectiveness Cheat Sheet
In this cheat sheet you’ll find 20 useful metrics commonly used by software development teams which can be used to improve their effectiveness. It has been written with the backdrop of two previous articles I’ve written (In the pursuit of effectiveness and Kanban’s Geological Record) which will give you further context to get the most from the cheat sheet.
In the pursuit of effectiveness
It’s probably worth starting by explaining where the three circles ideas came from. Most of it is born out of my frustrations of seeing too many attempts at Agile fail or become very hard work to the extent that Agile gets a bad name or teams adopt a “fragile” approach instead. In all client meetings … Continue reading →
Lean Risk Management Tool
I’ve been experimenting with this approach to risk assessment. Twelve simple questions that act as your crystal ball into the future on the mental impact the work you are undertaking may have to you and your team. It may also help you to get some insight into the likely outcome of your endeavor. All of these…
Lean Agile Adoption Tool
I often hear teams saying they want to be Agile. I always remind them the end goal isn’t to be Agile but to be effective. Lean Agile practices have the potential to make you more effective but making a list of “Agile practices” and implementing them in your teams without asking why can be a…
Beyond Continuous Improvement
“The System is not the sum of the behaviour of its parts – it’s the product of their interactions.” This talk from Ackoff is one of my all time favourites. There are many concepts of Systems Thinking discussed (all within 12 mins!) which managers should pay attention to. Enjoy! Filed under: Kanban, Rightshifting, Systems Thinking
Education is a system of indoctrination of the young
I found many similarities between Noam Chomsky’s points and behaviours in Corporations – but of course I would. The education system is designed to churn out conformists as Noam points out with his reference to the Japanese educational system and the impact it had on industry. I see many examples of indoctrination within corporations. Those … Continue reading →
Agile is broken, here’s why
When you read the title of this blog post how did it make you feel? What about the following statement? “You need to stop doing Scrum, XP, Kanban, or anything under the Lean/Agile umbrella as they are all bad/flawed approaches to software development” Do you think I’m mad? Are you feeling a little angry with … »
