Ten Suggested Practices for Applying Agile/Lean Software Management Principles to Other Knowledge Work

Introduction
Recently, I’ve been asked to help some teams apply lean/agile/Scrum/XP-like project management practices to non-software development knowledge work.
These organizations have seen agile methods produce huge benefits in visibility, productivity, quality, empowerment and motivation in their software teams. They naturally want to understand whether these techniques can be effective in other knowledge work activities such as [...]

Patterns and Anti-patterns in Enterprise Adoption

I gave this presentation to a SPIN meeting the other day and promised that I would post it. So here it is:
Patterns&Antipatterns in Enterprise Adoption
I’ve blogged on this topic before ( see post) but as agile continues to cross the chasm to the enterprise, new anti-patterns emerge (or perhaps they were always there and I just didn’t [...]

My Agile Executive Interview/Podcast

Recently. I was interviewed by Michael Cote, of the Agile Executive, to get my perspective on current issues, topics and strategies in enterprise agility. The interview does a pretty good job of exploring some of the larger issues in enterprise level adoption, including the best guidance I can provide on approaching the project office (or PMO) and how to address the [...]

Reaching the Agile Enterprise Tipping Point – A Workshop

Recently, I’ve been working with a number of large companies who are reaching the agile enterprise tipping point. In most cases the development teams or some outside agents have introduced agile as a potential solution to a host of problems – productivity, quality, time to market, whatever – but the managers and [...]

The Agile Enterprise Acid Test – Updated

In a prior post, I referred to a post by Paul Beavers of BMC (Is it Possible to be Half-Agile?) which gave his perspective on the agile acid test- the quintessential test of whether or not an organization is truly achieving agility at enterprise scale. In my post, I also provided my viewpoint on the [...]

Balancing Traditional and Agile Belief Systems- Israel Gat on the Equipoise of Agile

Recently I’ve again been pondering the balancing act of implementing new agile practices alongside extremely well entrenched, existing enterprise practices. While it’s always fun to criticize our past behaviors from the perspective of the rear view mirror, it’s also the fact that most of these prior practices actually worked dang pretty well pre-agile. After all, [...]

On, Agile, Outsourcing and the Social Contract with Our Teams

Israel Gat (BMC VP) and a number of commenters have been opining on the potential for agile development to increase our ability to make better social contracts (implied commitment for continuous employment) for our resident teams. The question is:

Are the productivity gains of agile development sufficient to help us warrant that we can keep [...]

Agile Executive – Final, Six Part BMC Executive Interview Now On Line

Israel Gat (VP, BMC Software) has just completed a six part interview series on the BMC agile transformation experience at the Agile Thinkers blog that I’ve been highlighting in some recent posts. This series is an open, honest and direct perspective from an experienced senior executive faced with all the challenges of implementing agility at [...]

Empowerment: The Agile Executive Acid Test

Israel Gat (BMC VP) and I have had a continued dialog on the interview series he’s posting at the Agile Thinkers blog. One recent comment really stuck out and I thought I’d highlight it in this post. When discussing the role of empowerment, Israel notes:
“Think once, think twice, think thrice whether you are really, really, [...]

More on the Virtues of the Agile Executive

Israel Gat continues his “view from the executive suite” discussion of BMC’s successful transformation at the Agile Thinkers blog, noting that agile has now reached approximately 1,000 practitioners at BMC. That puts it in the class of one of the three or four largest transformations that I am personally aware of, truly enterprise scale. [...]