Month: February 2014

  • Metrics, Trust and Communication
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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 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?
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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: 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
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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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