As long as I can recall, the topic of aligning Business and IT is mentioned in every presentation that professional services companies give. It is also mentioned by nearly all technology companies. Whether the focus is on a product or a process, you ultimately arrive at that slide or page that tells you how buying “this” will solve your alignment issues.
The mythical business and IT alignment topic is really not that mysterious. It is not solved by a product or a process but rather...
I get asked quite often how lean and/or agile practices apply to the area of sourcing within an enterprise. My answer, not meaning to be sarcastic, is usually to say “as lean and agile as possible”.
In other words, many of the same disciplines and practices that make great teams also make traditional sourcing processes much better. One of my favorite examples involves a global telco that historically took 90 days on average to generate an RFP for a large project and get it to their...
We’ve had lots of fun at Agile 2010 and here are the materials for our two presentations. Download and have fun!
Agreeing on Business Value Modelling Using Systems Thinking
Pinocchio: On Becoming a Lean Leader
- Portia and Pascal
I’ve been thinking a lot about writing build scripts for code recently, and have come to a few conclusions.
So, I’ve never really liked writing code in xml. It’s normally verbose, akward, and counter-intuitive. There, I’ve said it.
It’s a very unpopular point of view, and has caused a number of arguments in the past (techies are very passionate, and entrenched, in certain design choices).
Xml is a great as a way of describing data (and is indeed the reason it was...
You’re a mischievous wooden little boy who dreams of becoming a real manager. Now that your dream has come true, you find yourself stuck inside a whale’s stomach, stewing in a jacuzzi of digestive juices. The satanic little voice in your head says everything will be ok, but your protruding nose knows otherwise.
Join us in the latest Agile Fairytale being told this Tuesday of ‘Pinochhio – On Becoming a Lean Leader’ at Agile 2010.
You’ll embark on an journey where you...
I’ve decided to add a little more discipline around my blog entries, as they’ve become sporadic of late, and have been looking around for topics that would be of use based on some of the stuff I’ve done before.
The idea is that I’ll stick up some titles of potential blog postings, and people can comment on what one they’d like to see first, or indeed can comment on titles in this space they’d like to see (if no-one votes I’ll simply start working my...
Its a fair statement to say that I am fairly typical in the UK in that I have never really cared about money, or more precisely, money as an end goal, or the ability to use it to bend people to your will.
I know a lot of people who feel the same way.
I’m bothered whether I can eat, but that’s about it. I actually care more about being cerebrally challenged. It’s also fair to say that I won the birth lottery and come from a country where I don’t really need to care about...
Organizations turn to outsourcing their IT related needs for various reasons but few understand the different models available to them and typically arrive at their strategy through the recommendation of an employee, some analyst research or a previous experience. This is not to infer that any of those vehicles are the wrong way to decide but they are usually only a part of the whole evaluation process.
Recently a large global enterprise looking to “save money” turned to an...
For the many enterprise companies that do outsource, the percentage of outsourcing they do for IT related services is on average 50% and in some cases 80%. These statistics represent dozens of enterprise companies that our network is involved with. These stats may surprise some but they represent several trends, one of which is our topic and a common dilemma.
Outsourcing percentages that are this high translate into the reality that half the personnel on a given IT project team will be made up...
Recently published in Agile Journal
The CEO of a financial services company had blocked off a day to take his management team offsite for a dedicated session focused on using agile to run the organization. After devoting the first half of the day to understanding agile practices and principles, the balance of the day focused on taking the specific initiatives and goals of this financial services company and translating them into tangible stories. These stories could be used to populate...
