Jeff Patton recently reminded me of two simple strategies for software development that I’ve talked about from time to time—Build Less Software and Start Sooner. I thought I’d follow up on Jeff’s blog and revisit these simple, but powerful strategies. First, managers and executives complain a lot about not delivering software (or any other product [...]
Archive | Speed-to-Value RSS feed for this section
Velocity is Killing Agility!
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 [...]
Shortening the Tail
In Agile Project Management, I wrote a short section on a performance metric called “shortening the tail.” I liked using the metric, tail length, because it is easy to calculate and tells a lot about an organization’s Agile implementation. It’s not a vanity metric, like the number of developers who have attended a refactoring seminar, [...]
Don’t Plan, Speculate
One thing people are learning is that you can’t plan uncertainty away. Plans are good for things we know, or things that we may have some control over. However uncertainty—and its close cousin’s ambiguity and velocity—defy planning. When I originally introduced my Adaptive Life Cycle in Adaptive Software Development, the three high-level phases were Speculate, [...]
Cycles, Cycles, Cycles
One of the problems in integrating Agile delivery or continuous delivery into enterprises is the differences in cycles. Companies have tended to run on annual budgeting cycles, longer strategic planning cycles, with some, although not always close coordination between the two. Product management tends to run on product cycles—that depending on the product type can [...]
IT’s Changing Value Proposition
The MIT Center for Information Systems Research issued a very interesting research briefing last December titled “The IT Unit of the Future.” Nearly 90% of respondents to this study indicated that IT’s value proposition would change in the next 3-5 years. Part of the study, developed from interviews with 50 CIOs, identified four IT value [...]
Scope Issues in an Agile Project
I was talking with a colleague the other day about troubles with scope management in an Agile project. She was lamenting problems that were arising with a particular client who was concerned about the progress of the delivery team. Since Agile teams use time boxed iterations and let scope adjust, this shouldn’t be a problem—should [...]
Affiliations
- APLN.org - Cofounder & Board Member
- Agile Alliance - Cofounder
