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Servant Leadership and management by measurement
I was reading a strange post on Linkedin Pulse about some wacky new system for story point estimation. The details of it aren’t interesting or important. What is interesting is the motivation behind it. The imaginary problem that many people think needs to be solved is that traditional managers, when moved (kicking and screaming) to […]
Continue readingTheory of constraints in Agile
A concept from Management Theory called “theory of constraints” has become popular in Agile and Lean circles. The theory is quite simple, and relates to the constraints or bottlenecks in any process (manufacturing or knowledge work). This article will explain the theory of constraints and how it relates to agile software development, in a micro […]
Continue readingThe history and future of management
Many organisations today are run according to management principles which are 50 to 100 years old. These methods are not appropriate to the fluid and fast-paced world we live in, but many organisations are struggling to change. In this article, I will talk about the history and future of management theory, so we can understand […]
Continue readingAgile managers – what do they do?
People might be wondering what managers do in an Agile organisation. You might wonder if they are still needed. Agile managers aren’t measuring or forecasting anymore, because your teams should do their own measuring and forecasting. They don’t micro-manage people’s work anymore because teams are empowered to work how they want. So if we still […]
Continue readingThe myth of culture change
A lot of people talk about culture change in organisations. “We want our place to have an innovation culture!”. “Our leaders keep telling us about culture change initiatives”. “The problem with that company is its culture”. “How do we copy Google’s culture?”. You hear these phrases all the time. People write books, go to conferences, […]
Continue readingObligation to dissent and the circle of safety
I read an article recently about “obligation to dissent“. It’s an interesting phrase with some important concepts behind it. Some of these concepts tie closely into the principles of Agile. Some organisations foster a culture where dissent is welcome, others don’t. This is an important clue to the overall health of that organisation and its […]
Continue readingWhy agile projects need to fund BML properly
One of the key concepts from Eric Ries’ seminal book, the Lean Startup, is “Build Measure Learn”, or BML. This means that rather than deliver projects in a sequence, organisations should build something small, measure behaviour and learn from those measurements, then loop back and build again (i.e. extend or change the product). While many […]
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