In an ideal system, every team would be self-sufficient, without any dependencies on other teams or decision-makers. Are there really any organisations that work like this? Everywhere I have observed or worked has had to deal with some kind of dependencies, however infrequently. In the world of Gantt charts, controlling dependencies can be a full-time… Continue reading The Dependency Wall
Have a look at this post from Mark Sailes, a squad team leader at Sky Betting and Gaming: This is something I paired with him on - to use team 'confidence poker' as a way of setting expectations on when increments might be ready in a situation where there is no delivery/flow data to back… Continue reading The Confidence Meter
The time-box is an integral part of the idea of sprints, popularised in Scrum and (latterly) by the Google Ventures design process. In creating a time-box, though, we are saying, "We will only spend [some amount of time] on this" not "it will take us [some amount of time] to do this". This is a… Continue reading Time-boxes are not estimates
If you disassembled a juicer you could understand how it functioned by studying each individual part and how it connected to other parts. Although the juicer looks pretty complicated, it behaves in a predictable and repeatable way (unless it's broken of course). Compare that to this: If we want to understand how road traffic behaves… Continue reading Your business is complex
You have teams to form, teams that are struggling to work effectively, processes to improve, products you want to build, ideas to prioritise and systemic issues to uncover. You know your organisation could move faster but it feels like your culture and processes won't budge an inch. This kind of story is universal - and… Continue reading Maybe we could work together?
