Category: Agile

Many years ago I was introduced to Value Stream Mapping and its been a fantastic tool ever since. The idea is to look at your processes and become more lean and efficient by identifying the waste in the process. Mapping time doing actual work and the time wasted waiting for emails or meetings or another meeting after that (you know how it goes) for someone to get to a decision shows a great metric, usually along the lines of actual work 35 minutes resolution time 3 weeks. By mapping the process you can look at where the delays are and identify the areas to focus your improvements on.

Link to Atlassian’s more detailed explaination

Give it ago let me know what you think!

The story of a US Navy captain who transformed the worst ship in the fleet in to the best.

A great story showing thought processes of the captain, how he came to his view on management and the pit falls he discovered as he tried to transform the attitudes, working styles and morale of the submarine crew. Reminds me of the Phoenix project because it’s a real life example not a text book – this book is more of the memoirs of the captain than a fictional place though.

There are too many points to mention in this book but some of the takeaways for me are:

• Management should be a place of responsibility not a place of privilege
• The managers don’t know best – implementing an ‘I intend..’ ethos allows the people who do the work to offer sensible suggestions with thought out explanations so the manager can agree (or not) rather than ordering people who probably know more about the topic to do something.
• Objectives not being met tend to lead to processes being created. Those processes fail so checks are put in place for the process – at this point the objective has been lost and you become less efficient in achieving the objective and more focused on making sure the process ‘works’
• Empowering everyone as much as possible will bring morale and work satisfaction up but make sure everyone has the knowledge needed to make sensible decisions first.
• Repeating messages may seem boring but the message needs to get across and repetition is better than the message being forgotten or changing all the time.

Turn The Ship Around!: A True Story of Building Leaders by Breaking the Rules

The Phoenix Project was the first agile book I’ve read.

Its a great introduction to agile concepts via a fictional company going from typical waterfall towards working more agile with incremental changes and explanations about why they happen. I’m sure everyone reading the book will relate to or recognize some of the characters as people they may have worked with.

As an introduction to agile its great as it draws people in with a story rather than a clinical textbook approach.

Highly recommended for people starting or progressing through an agile transformation.

The Phoenix Project: A Novel about It, Devops, and Helping Your Business Win