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Troy Magennis: 2013 Brickell Key Award Winner for KanbanSim
We feel a little embarrassed that we didn’t announce Troy Magennis was one of two Brickell Key award winners, when it happened in 2013. This award is granted to people who have shown outstanding achievement, leadership and contribution to the Kanban Community.
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Smart and Lazy: Our best generals!
“I divide my officers into four groups: smart, diligent, stupid, and lazy. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are smart and diligent—their place is the General Staff. Some are stupid and lazy—they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Some are both smart and lazy; they are qualified for…
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Metrics, Trust and Communication
Good managers try to measure important aspects of their business with leading metrics (aka “key performance indicators”) that precede desired outcomes. Managers seeking agility often try to measure behavioral compliance to agile practices, but can inadvertently create a lying culture. When people don’t understand the metrics or can’t provide feedback, they perceive metrics as bureaucratic…
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The Goal Revisited
The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt is a business novel that recounts how a factory manager shakes off complacency and isolation to save his factory and its employees. Many MBAs, system scientists and agilists have read it. I read The Goal 7 years ago. I was so excited I sent our CEO an email. “Have you read it? It has…
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Forecast Horizon: Does Your Team Communicate?
Good communication between product manager and team, between value appraisal and product development, leads to success. It helps you build the right thing at the right time. When the Product Owner and Development Team communicate well, the Product Owner can forecast feature delivery dates with a statistical likelihood. It promotes great architectures. The Development Team…
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Four-part User Stories: Functionality that Matters
Four-part user stories improve communication between Product Owner and Development Team. They include context about the user and the sponsor of the work, which inspires creativity and better architectures from the team. They also make Grooming and Sprint Planning meetings faster, they yield more successful outcomes, and they facilitate Product Owners making better trade-offs. Are…
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Daily Mantra: Contribute 10× the Value You Capture
I have a little mantra I say to myself whenever I walk in the door of an employer. “How will I save or gain at least 10 times my daily salary for my organization today?” This question challenges us, especially if we are buried in the beast of a large organization. We might not even…
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Failure Rates
“If you want to succeed, double your failure rate.”—Thomas J. Watson, IBM
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Pair-Author Backlog Items for Faster, Better Results
Product Backlog Item (PBI) writing in Scrum is best done by pairing a Product Owner with an architect or team member. The Product Owner brings a stakeholder perspective to the table, and PBIs should include that “value perspective” in every case. When the PO is not “primary”, you get PBIs that have no demonstrable stakeholder…
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How We Charge Our Clients
Senex Rex charges by the day, not the hour. This allows us to focus, to think, to innovate. Tracking time obsessively, as many lawyers and consultants do, turns them into automatons who can follow the rules, color inside the lines, who might take a dysfunctional situation and make it average. We’re reasonable, of course. If…
