August 19th, 2010
Outside of a work environment, we often come across people who wonder what’s so difficult about project management, as, after all, we all have to exhibit some degree of being able to manage things in our normal lives.
What we suggest is the difference, though, is the scope of the project, and the fact that it will usually have predefined goals and outcomes, rather than having a vague sense of wanting to change things. For example, a basic project could be to travel from point A to point B.
Using some project management methodologies, we could break this project (journey) into “bite size” chunks, and assess how effective we were being at each stage - thus adopting a fairly basic project management approach to the matter at hand. This is the opposite of setting off at a time you think will allow you to get to point B before you need to be there, as you can then update your project plan according to how far along you are at each stage.
So even the simplest of tasks can benefit from some elementary project management practices.
Tags: project management
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August 17th, 2010
We were explaining to a client of ours recently the process of Incremental Delivery, as it was something they weren’t particularly used to from their previous projects. They’d always broken down a project into “chunks” that could be tackled in stages, but had then delivered the end result all at once, based on checking off all the “chunk” elements before going live.
We explained that the Agile approach is different, in that you actually deliver the stages of the project as they are performed - hence incremental delivery, as opposed to a “big bang approach”. At first, of course, the client was unsure, but when we delivered the whole project in a shorter time frame than they’d anticipated, having ironed out all the issues as we went along, they were certainly convinced that incremental delivery is the way forward (in more ways than one!).
Tags: agile methodology
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August 15th, 2010
Despite being one of the world’s most famous management gurus, Charles Handy describes himself as a “social philosopher”. During his career, he has been rated as the second most influential living management thinker, and has written a series of bestselling books outlining his theories.
Several of these books, including “The Empty Raincoat”, “The Age of Unreason” and “Understanding Organizations” are key components of the reading lists for many MBAs throughout the world, and helped Handy to earn his enviable reputation.
His autobiography, “Myself and Other More Important Matters”, published in 2006, was another bestseller, and helped shed light on his background and the reasoning behind his management ideas. Among these is the famous “Shamrock organisation”, where a business is based on its core of essential executives and workers, and is supported by outside contractors and part-time workers.
You can find out more about Charles Handy from the BBC’s Radio Programme - The Handy Guide to the Gurus of Management.
Tags: management
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August 13th, 2010
It’s quite a common topic of conversation in our office to discuss the varying nature of the organisations we work with. Whether these are charities, member associations, multinational corporations or smaller boutique operations, it’s always interesting to compare the similarities and differences between them.
Of course, being Agile consultants, our own culture is designed to adapt to any and every situation, and it’s this type of flexibility that we try to enable within our clients. Very few of them start out this way, of course, and it’s always a little surprising to find how similar in outlook most organisations are before they start adopting Agile practices. We’ll be taking a look at some different types of organisation, and the cultures we usually find there, over the coming months, and sharing some of our thoughts here.
Tags: Agile, clients
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August 11th, 2010
Another of the confirmed speakers for the Agile Enterprise Forum is John Seddon. John is a well-known “management guru”, and bestselling author. He acknowledges the influence of W.E Deming and Taiichi Ohno on his work and today he describes what his consultancy firm, Vanguard, does as a combination of systems thinking – ‘how work works’, and intervention theory – ‘how to change it’.
John gained both a BSc and an MSc in psychology in the 1970s, and has been awarded the title of honorary visiting professor at the University of Cardiff.
He will be leading the final workshop of the day on 30th September, entitled “Changing our thinking about IT: spend less, get much more”.
Tags: agile conference
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August 9th, 2010
The third of the speakers at the forthcoming Agile Enterprise Forum in London is Mary Poppendieck. Mary is one of the most recognisable figures in Lean and Agile software development, having written several pioneering books on the subject, including “Lean Software Development: An Agile Tooklit”, which she co-wrote with her husband, Tom.
Mary and Tom Poppendieck are the people behind the company, Poppendieck LLC, which “is dedicated to bringing Lean thinking to software development”. Says Mary of her book: “Our first book is aimed at people who do not understand why Agile development is a good approach. It provides the underlying justification for rapid, incremental development”.
Mary is presenting the third workshop on 30th September, “Agile Governance - tying work to value”.
Tags: agile conference
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August 7th, 2010
Another speaker at the Agile Enterprise Forum is Don Reinertsen. He is world-renowned for his work in managing product development, going right back to 1983, when he first shot to the world’s attention with some groundbreaking work that helped pioneer the “cycle-time reduction movement”.
Before this original work with McKinsey, Don gained a BSc in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University, and an MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School. Anyone who has attended one of his presentations or workshops will be aware how inspiring he is as a speaker.
Don will be leading the second workshop at the Forum on September 30th, based on “Lean Product Development as if Economics Matters”.
Tags: agile conference
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August 5th, 2010
At the forthcoming AGILE ENTERPRISE FORUM (www.AgileEnterpriseForum.com), a stellar line-up of speakers has been assembled. One of these is Chris Potts. Chris is an award-winning speaker and a highly sought after corporate strategist, specialising in helping organisations to execute their change and IT strategies. From his own website:
“His hallmark techniques, including one-page strategies, investment culture diagnoses, inverted investment portfolios and ‘expert IT customer’ operating models, have been used by industry-leading companies around the world.”
Chris is perhaps most famous for developing the fruITion strategy, as outlined in his bestselling book “fruITion: Creating the Ultimate Corporate Strategy for Information Technology”. He will be presenting the first workshop at the AGILE ENTERPRISE FORUM in London on September 30th.
Tags: agile conference
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August 3rd, 2010
We’re often asked what we consider to be the difference between Lean and Agile, and if you ask 5 different people around our office, you’ll get 5 different answers. (Actually, if you ask the same person 5 times you’ll probably get 5 different answers - depending on who it is you’re asking). So we thought we’d state explicitly our views on the topic.
Simply put, there is no difference between Lean and Agile. To put it more complicatedly, though, there are subtle differences that we would notice in order to define something as being either Lean or Agile, but at the root of their existence, Lean is Agile, and Agile is Lean.
So no need to ask us that question again….
Tags: Agile, Lean
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August 1st, 2010
Being ill isn’t something you would normally associate with agile methodology. However, one of our team here was suffering from a very upset stomach recently, and found he couldn’t concentrate on the work at hand. You may be wondering - what’s this got to do with agile? Well, in order to ensure everything carried on smoothly, our team member utilised Agile practices before retiring to bed for the day.
He prioritised his workload based on business goals, then set about providing incremental delivery of value through doing “just enough” to see everything continuing on its way, based on dealing with the things that were prioritised as best he could, then alerting everyone else involved that they’d have to adapt to the new situation and take up things from where he’d left off. This process went extremely well, and we’re glad to see he’s now made a full recovery.
Tags: Agile
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