“All of us like to think that human affairs are essentially rational. … The wealth of experience that fails to support this notion never seems to faze us. … That human affairs usually work not rationally but paradoxically.” “… because of the sense of omnipotence that plagues American management, the belief that no event or [...]
There is no Agility for Dummies. Agility isn’t a silver bullet. You don’t achieve it in five easy steps. So what is it? For myself, I’ve characterized agility in two statements: Agility is the ability to both create and respond to change in order to profit in a turbulent business environment. Agility is the ability [...]
One of the most vexing issues for executives and managers is balancing the need for both predictability and adaptability in software delivery. While this might seem like an either/or issue, the solutions are really both/and ones. In presentations I often ask the question, “How many of you have been on Agile teams and were asked [...]
To a manager’s question, “How much will project Zebra cost?” The comment, “I don’t know,” is usually an unacceptable (but often the best) response. A more specific answer such as, “Well, somewhere between $2 and $6 million dollars would be rejected in many, if not most, organizations. The project manager who says, “Project Zebra will [...]
In the last 6 months I’ve heard several senior-level executives talk about the need for clarity over certainty. Clarity sounds simple, but it’s not. We embrace agility because it helps us adapt to the turbulence — business, economic, and technological – that creates opportunity and peril. Most of the time significant changes create mounds of [...]
