In the Lean Discovery blog we saw how these practices help us narrow our focus on an MVP and ensure we are building the right thing. Agile Delivery practices help us build the thing right. Moreover, nothing beats true validated learning than having a feature released to a subset of our user base and measuring specific…
Lean Discovery Practices help us validate our MVP to ensure we are building the right thing. Eric Ries, author of Lean Startup, reminds us that “The big question of our time is not can it be built, but should it be built?”Eric Ries To know that, we have to go through quick build, measure, and learn…
The Agile value proposition is about early delivery of business value, reduced risk, increased visibility, and increased adaptability. These are achieved by continuously delivering customer-valued functionality by building minimal viable products (MVP) and minimal marketable features (MMF). Minimum Viable Product vs. Minimal Marketable Feature The terms MVP or MMF are often used interchangeably, but are they…
Initial Understanding of Agile There are many problems organizations face in delivering digital solutions and products. These problems might be due to the long concept to deployment cycles and the lack of feedback loops in our traditional waterfall software development approach. To solve these problems, organizations decide to go Agile and take and iterative and incremental…
Delivering Digital Services to our stakeholders and customers is hard and the overall industry success rates are dismal. The reasons are many, but some of the most common problems are below. Do any of these sound familiar? Long and painful testing cycles: After months and months of coding an application, the team declares it done (but…
The term Digital Services refers to the electronic delivery of information including data and content across multiple platforms and devices like web or mobile. Information is presented in a way that is easy to use and understand and typically involves transactional services such as submitting forms for processing and receiving benefits. Think of applying for a…
Check out the video below of Sam Guckenhiemer presenting "Journey to Cloud Cadence" at Agile2014. Guckenhiemer describes a ten-year transformation at Microsoft Developer Division from a waterfallian box product delivery cycle of four years to Agile practices enabling a hybrid SaaS and on-prem business, with a single code base, triweekly delivery of new features in the…
Check out the video below of Diana Larsen presenting "Best Job Ever" at Agile2014. Diana calls on you to remember the everyday felt experiences of many early Agile teams that learned to love their work again. Early teams and practitioners focused on Agile as an opportunity to make things better for themselves, their customers, and their…
Check out the video below of Bjarte Bogsnes presenting on "Beyond Budgeting - An Agile Management Model for New Business and People Realities - The Statoil Implementation Journey" at Agile2014. Bjarte discusses the problems with traditional management, including budgeting and explores the Beyond Budgeting principles, redefining performance, dynamic forecasting and resource allocation. https://vimeo.com/154728120 Beyond Budgeting by…
Check out the video below of Gene Kim presenting on "Why Everyone Needs DevOps Now" at Agile2013. Gene Kim has been studying high-performing IT organizations since 1999. He is the author of the highly acclaimed “Visible Ops Handbook,” “The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win,” and was founder and CTO…
Check out the video below of Tim Lister presenting on "Forty Years of Trying to Play Well with Others" at Agile2013. Tim describes his work as a colleague, as an apprentice, as a mentor, and as a mediator. Tim describes how team dynamics have changed over the years, and how they bring new challenges to tight…
Check out the video below of Joe Justicei presenting on "Managing a Collaborative Multi-National Team in Real Time" at Agile2012. Joe share his story about the origins of WikiSpeed and building the X Prize car that gets 100 miles to the gallon. Joe talks about how he used Scrum to manufacture a fast, affordable, safe, fun,…
Check out the video below of Dr Sunita Maheshwari presenting on "Adventures of an Accidental Entrepreneur - A High Tech Teleradiology Venture from India" at Agile2012. Sunita traces the journey of a one-man, one-room company in India started by a Doctor without a job, to its present status as the number 1 nationally ranked teleradiology company…
Checkout the video below of Professor Robert Sutton presenting on "Scaling Up Excellence" at Agile2012. Bob digs into the lessons that he and Hayagreeva Rao learned about spreading excellence from people and places that have it to those that don’t. Scaling depends on instilling and spreading a mindset, not just growing a big footprint as fast…
Checkout the video below of Linda Rising presenting on "The Power of an Agile Mindset" at Agile2011. Linda wonders whether much of Agile's success was the result of the placebo effect, that is, good things happened because we believed they would. The placebo effect is a startling reminder of the power our minds have over our…