Six Faithful Serving Men

by Charl Dreyer on June 30, 2009 · 0 comments

in Documents

Managing Agile will release its Business Case template soon. Be sure to keep a look out for it.

“The formulation of a problem is often more essential than its solution,” Albert Einstein once said. I’m sure he wasn’t talking about a business case at the time, but it’s equally apt to apply it to this essential product tool.

Many business cases I’ve read are framed in the solution domain, which should concern us because the business case may propose solving the wrong problem. As technology derives its value from the underlying business problem solved, solving the wrong problem will result in a sub-optimal ROI. And solving the wrong problem means the solution will fail because it’s implemented in the wrong context. [click to continue…]

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Tagged as: agile, benefit, business case, documents, need, product, product owner, remarkable

Hire Your Next Boss

by Charl Dreyer on June 25, 2009 · 0 comments

in Jobs

Managing Agile has just launched Agile.jobs, which is a free service to you (and your new boss). Agile.jobs is a place where you can create job offers to prospective employers. And after we put you in contact with them, you can interiew your new boss and company to see if they are an ideal fit for you.

It probably sounds a bit odd, I know, but once you get your head around this, it’ll make perfect sense. The chances of you finding your ideal position the next time you’re in the job market are statistically very slim.

One reason is that recruitment agencies operate in substantially the same way as they always have despite the digital revolution. And employers are increasingly dissatisfied with their low value-add. Someone could offer employers this service cheaper, faster, and more effectively than agencies. That someone could be you. [click to continue…]

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Tagged as: agile, leader, personal development, product owner, remarkable, scrum master, smartsource, strategic, team

10+ Deploys Per Day At Flickr

by Charl DreyerJune 24, 2009 Agile.tv
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Communications and cooperation between development and operations isn’t optional, it’s mandatory. Flickr takes the idea of ‘release early, release often’ to an extreme: On a normal day there are 10 full deployments of the site to their servers. This session discusses why this rate of change works so well, and the culture and technology at Flickr needed to make it possible.

Tagged as: continuous integration, effectiveness, efficiency, remarkable

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Ideal Software Design

by Charl DreyerJune 23, 2009 Working Software
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The picture of the software designer deriving his design in a rational, error-free way from a statement of requirements is quite unrealistic. No system has ever been developed in that way, and probably none ever will. Even the small program developments shown in textbooks and papers are unreal. They have been revised and polished until the author has shown us what he wishes he had done, not what actually did happen.

Tagged as: effectiveness, software

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Man Survives Lion Attack

by Charl DreyerJune 20, 2009 Polls
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Bureaucracy is the mother-of-all legacy systems. It directs what you do and how you do it. And if you want to overturn it, or simply change it a little, or arrest its operation for just one team, it won’t let you. I’ll bet it’s the single biggest impediment to your agile ambitions. But you’re correct to want to change it, because these days bureaucracy is not the best organizing principle we can think of.

Tagged as: agile, bureaucracy, change, entrepreneur, leader

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The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid

by Charl DreyerJune 18, 2009 Must Reads
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We have a long way to go before the social transformation of inequalities around the world will be accomplished. But being a long way from reaching that goal should not be a deterrent to working towards it. Slowing growth and financial crises in overserved markets may mean companies have no other option than to enter these Bottom of the Pyramid markets. When you do, you’ll find it a win:win.

Tagged as: customer, entrepreneur, extralegal, market, poor, underserved

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What Are You Doing?

by Charl DreyerJune 17, 2009 Responding to Change
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It is a good idea for each product to have a product positioning statement. Both you and those on your product team should be able to quote this verbatim. They should revisit this every morning before they start work. Then compare what you’re doing, or more likely should be doing, to honor this statement.

Tagged as: market, product, strategy, vision

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Been There, Done That

by Charl DreyerJune 16, 2009 Individuals and Interactions
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You’re in the zone, making real progress, when Outlook reminds you to attend a meeting in the next 10 minutes. Let alone being unprepared, you had forgotten the meeting altogether. And your thoughts are all over the place. “No worries,” you tell yourself, “I’ll find the furthest corner of the room and hope that nobody asks me a question.” What a waste of time and money.

Tagged as: bureaucracy, bureaucratic, time

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Scrum Tuning: Lessons Learned from Google

by Charl DreyerJune 15, 2009 Agile.tv
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The IT boom spawned start ups that were used to running small, entrepreneurial teams. But how do you scale this in bigger organizations? Jeff Sutherland, the inventor and co-creator of Scrum uses Google Adwords’ Scrum implementation to describe some of the subtle aspects of Scrum along with suggested next steps that can help in distributing and scaling Scrum in a ‘Googley way’.

Tagged as: agile, benefit, done, scrum

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Telling a Story

by Charl DreyerJune 14, 2009 Individuals and Interactions
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“A vision is a story people tell with their lives.” Each one of us becomes so gripped by something that we live it out in a way that speaks clearly to all who choose to listen. Stop for a moment and listen to the story your life is telling. What story is your team telling? Does their story assure you that they have caught your vision?

Tagged as: leader, leadership, vision

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