Rotten Carrots
In a recent TED Talk, Dan Pink waxed eloquently about the ‘surprising science of motivation‘, describing the problems with how we run our businesses. I agree with what he has to say, and would take it even one step further. Read more
Attacking Technical Debt
Two of the artifacts of incremental or iterative development are that you tend to use scaffolding as you go to prop up the product, and you tend to build similar capabilities in several different locations. Over time these can add up to quite a bit of cruft, or technical debt. Read more
No More Mills!
I have found over the years that there are two reasons that people will engage organizations like ours to work with them: to demonstrate to a third-party that they are doing a bang-up job, or to actually improve at what they do. Read more
The 5 Biggest Team Delusions
Filed under: Agility, Process, Project management, Teamwork
Over the years, there are a number of statements that I hear that make me step back for a moment. Some are relatively new, some have been around as long as I can remember, but every one of these, in my experience, usually means something very different (and less effective) than what the words might indicate. I’m sure there are more, but this is a start. Read more
Balancing Cool with Necessity
Very often, for an established business or for one struggling to enter an existing market space, the biggest challenge is how to balance those features which are expected in that domain of products with those that will set the business apart from the competition. How well that tightrope is walked often makes or breaks the perceived value of the product, and sometimes the overall success of business. Read more
Cultural Barriers
When I travel, whether it is overseas or to a part of the city I am not familiar with, I come away with the impression that we are all closer than we originally think. The same is true as I work with organizations that have grown to the size where they are split into separate teams: we are closer than we think. Read more
