In The Upside of Turbulence Donald Sull makes an insightful statement, “companies do not pass through life cycles, opportunities do.” Turbulence causes opportunities and companies learn to take advantage of them, or they wither. Managing this flow of opportunities, which are increasingly disruptive, requires organizations to think seriously about their agility; as Sull defines it [...]
Discipline without freedom is tyranny; freedom without discipline is chaos (Cullen Hightower). Morning Star is the largest tomato processor in the United States with 400 employees and over $700 million in annual revenues. Morning Star’s CEO, Chris Rufer, built a successful company on the principle of self-management where everyone is responsible for coordinating with colleagues, customer, [...]
The Agile Manifesto was written in a very deliberate style, for example, “Individuals and interactions over process and tools.” The word “over” was carefully chosen and establishes a key agile principle that many things in our world are too complex for black or white answers so we need to differentiate between what is critical and [...]
I’ve always been concerned that some agile practices are applied even when they are not appropriate for a particular situation. I’ve called this Agile 101, learning the basics, that Alistair Cockburn calls the Shu level of learning ( Shu-Ha-Ri are the three levels). All too often some agile practice or misunderstood principle will be inappropriately [...]
As I talk with companies around the world it’s clear that a significant number of them are still mired in the productivity, efficiency, and optimization mud. It’s easy to spot them because they are often maniacal about measuring velocity—team velocity, velocity across teams, rolling up velocity to an organizational level or even velocity per developer [...]
