There was a Twitter interaction about testers being invited or not to team meetings and about providing value to the team.
And it got me thinking.
Competition is widely believed to have a corrosive impact on trust, but what happens when that competition comes from a rival firm? Does the external "threat" bind us together? That was the conclusion reached by a recent study from the University of British Columbia, Princeton University and Aix-Marseille University.
The researchers collected data from the manufacturing sector in both the United States and Germany, and it emerged that the more intense the competition within the sector, the more likely it was for pro-social behaviors, such as cooperation and knowledge sharing, within each company.
The inventor of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, has launched a plan to build a “Contract for the Web” as part of a global campaign to defend a free and open web for everyone. Speaking tonight, at the opening of the Web Summit conference in Lisbon, Sir Tim unveiled a set of principles that define responsibilities that governments, companies, and citizens each have to create a better web.
According to the World Wide Web Foundation, the free and open web faces real challenges. More than half the world’s population still can’t get online. For the other half, the web’s benefits come with too many risks: to our privacy, our democracy, our rights. That’s why we’re launching a global campaign to connect everyone to a web that works for people.
In search of a sort of customer-centric product development Nirvana (and the organizational tenants that allow it to flourish) known as high-tech anthropology, executives are willing to pay upwards of $20,000 to spend time with the founders of Menlo Innovations, according to an article in Forbes. The Michigan-based software design consultancy has achieved Apple-like mystique with its unique philosophy that guides both how it works and the work it completes for its clients.
In fact, according to the Forbes coverage, a full 10 percent of Menlo Innovations’ $5 to $6 million in anticipated revenue for 2018 will come from the fees it charges for tours and consulting.
Rugby Approach
In their research paper titled ‘The New New Product Development Game’, Hirotaka and Ikujiro (both professors at the Harvard Business School) observed that the sequential approach to developing products is not best suited to the fast-paced competitive world. Instead, they recommended a rugby approach for enterprises to attain speed and flexibility to meet the ever-changing market requirements. The rugby approach refers to the Agile way (scrum) of working with practices like small batch sizes, incremental development, self-organizing teams, enhanced collaboration, cross-functional teams, and continuous learning. To put things in perspective, this research paper was launched way back in 1986! If the traditional approach was being questioned back then, it definitely needs to be relooked at now. Enterprises need to adopt agile practices to stay relevant in a market which has become extremely dynamic due to the proliferation of digital technologies. Agile practices enable enterprises to deliver solutions faster with better quality by considerably shortening the feedback loop.
Scaling Blues
Though most enterprises have realized the significance of Agile, most organizations, especially the large ones have been struggling to scale Agile at the enterprise level. This is substantiated by a recent survey through which it was found that the enterprises who had claimed to be Agile have admitted that they had adopted Agile practices only in certain pockets. Interestingly, smaller and nimbler companies have adopted the agile way of working and achieved considerable success in the market. These companies released products at a remarkable speed with high quality and reacted faster to the market needs. Take Tesla’s case (by no means a small company now!!), which launched electric cars with the auto-pilot option when the Toyotas and Bugattis of the world only had prototypes of electric cars. By the time they launched their own electric vehicles, Tesla had captured a huge pie of the market!! To the defense of these large enterprises, scaling Agile is easier said than done. These behemoths have many portfolios, with large applications requiring multiple teams, complex systems, diverse operating environments, and multiple vendors, making their Agile transformation journey a herculean task.
I woke up Friday morning at 3 am for the second consecutive day and yet again I couldn’t fall back asleep. The day before was the second and final day of my first experience co-training the new Scrum.org Professional Scrum Master II course. My head is full of new information and experiences which has seemingly created an endless loop in my brain.
I attended the PSM II course myself back in June at a Train the Trainer event at Scrum.org HQ ahead of its launch. It was a privilege to experience the course stewards Barry Overeem and Christiaan Verwijs facilitate the course in a way that I could only strive to reach. The experience was powerful and provided a mirror into my experiences as a Scrum Master. It changed the way I think.
The seventh Hands-on Agile webinar Scrum Sprint Anti-Patterns analyzed 12 ways a Scrum team can improve its effectiveness by avoiding typical sprint anti-patterns. Learn more about gold-plating, delivering Y instead of X, absenteeism, side-gigs, and organizing people instead of the flow of work.
The video of the webinar is available now:
I’ve seen a number of individuals make transitions to new careers through all walks of life. Heck, I’ve seen English and History majors excel at IT consulting and end up being great senior IT executives!
It can be done just like Ray Kroc started McDonald’s in his early 50s. Nothing is ever too late.
With the soaring number of task management applications, finding the ideal tool can be time-consuming and confusing. The criteria for each tool depends on the organization, their needs, and requirements, as well as work processes. A range of features, ease of use, reliability, security, and expense can greatly affect your choice in management tools.
So how do you make sure you are investing in the right tool that can facilitate your task management without complicating work processes?
I used to write software for a living. I did that for a lot of years, as a matter of fact. And, in doing so, I learned a lot about how to write software.
But I learned this from the perspective of, well, a wage software developer. Today, I’d like to reflect on how my view has evolved over the last number of years.
