Product

1-day sprints are a fantastic way of turning the traditional time pressures a team might face from negative to positive. They act as a time constraint on the team and force clarity, agility and feedback into your work system in far more significant amounts than you might already have. They can act as circuit breakers for teams struggling to meet sprint goals. They can create momentum in and outside of the team and encourage teams to focus on producing the smallest impact possible for your users. They carry risk, but some thoughtful conversations upfront can minimise any negative impact later on - and the rewards are well worth it. ...

Digital Transformation, Digital Experience, Digital Thought Leader, Digital Coffee Table, Digital DevOps Team, Digital Dystopia Some of these things are not like the others. Have you heard the phrase ‘digital’ so many times it loses all meaning? Try saying it a hundred times and see if the word still sticks in your brain. If you’re like me, it’ll slide right away like a fried egg off a bald head. Now imagine baldy over there is your company. It’s risky for a thing to be so pervasive that one cannot escape it, or mentions of it (or articles about it - no the irony is not lost). ...

Digital transformations don’t work. Everyone wants to talk about digital-led businesses. Every business is a software business, even when they aren’t, people will tell you. But the focus on big bang, project managed, change agent-driven initiatives tend to leave sour tastes in the mouths of long-standing staff. Naive technologists or agilists or product people for that matter exacerbate this when they perform the business strategy equivalent of the ‘seagull’. Discontent frequently morphs into outright opposition, and emotion becomes the dominant decision-making force rather than observation and planning. Eventually, what good will the agent(s) had is exhausted, and they leave the business. Sometimes voluntarily, sometimes less so. ...

What do when you don’t know what to do? Even worse: What do you do when people are paying you to do things, and expect you to do things, but you don’t know what to do? Are you in a brand new domain? A brand new type of business or a completely new role? What about if you’re in a completely new industry? Having just started a new role, the pressure to deliver and deliver quickly can be quite daunting. Using hypothesis-driven processes in your daily life can ease the tension. ...