This post is adapted from A Seat at the Table: IT Leadership in the Age of Agility. Accompanying our transition to an Agile IT world, and subtler in its implications, has been the rise of community as a way of practicing IT. This change is due in large part to the rise of open source, but can also be traced to the demographics and inclinations of today’s emerging workforce, as well as to the interdependence of participants in a DevOps model. A successful business can harness this community … [Read more...]
ASREDS Learning Loop
Humans are tribal. We need to belong to groups. But this instinct to belong is also an instinct to exclude. Besides the positive benefits of these social structures, they all share some undesired antipatterns and bubble effects, including: Silo Mentality: people and teams within the bubble want to protect their information, not share it with others in the same company. Limited Discoverability: learnings, knowledge, and information outside the bubble cannot be reached and discovery is limited … [Read more...]
Test-Driven Development for People: The Art of Conversation
This post is an abridged excerpt from Agile Conversations: Transform Your Conversations, Transform Your Culture. In his book, Kent Beck says that Test-Driven Development (TDD), the practice of writing a test concurrently with the code it exercises, gives him “a sense of comfort and intimacy.” That is exactly the feeling we want you to have during the Trust Conversation, and the tool to help you achieve it is the Ladder of Inference, another concept from Chris Argyris and colleagues in the book … [Read more...]
Six Papers for DevOps Transformation Leaders
Mythbusting DevOps in the Enterprise Addressing Culture and Leadership Aspects during Transforming The DevOps movement has been primarily driven by practitioners, which is why we’ve ended up with such success at the practice level. As success and awareness have risen, we’ve now seen new challenges and questions around the path to success and applicability for larger organizations. Some have done this very well, others are struggling, and others yet have no idea where to start. This paper focuses … [Read more...]
Seven Papers on Organizational Change
1) Thinking Environments Evaluating Organizational Models for DevOps to Accelerate Business and Empower Workers While the traditional IT organization is structured into functional silos, DevOps relies on empowered, cross-functional teams. Is it possible to blend the two approaches and work within the traditional structure? Or do you need to restructure your organization to support DevOps? The traditional structure offered a way to continuously improve skills in individual practice areas—software … [Read more...]
Playbook to Bust Bureaucracy
So, you’re in an organization, running up against bureaucratic impediments when you try to do what you’re pretty sure is the right thing. Perhaps you’re leading a digital transformation and your company’s bureaucracy is resisting change, fighting to lock in ways of doing things that belong to the days before the Paleolithic era. You’re up against a vast leviathan of a bureaucracy. What should you do? Like many business and technology authors, I’m going to tell you a bunch of stuff based on my … [Read more...]
How to Fix Bureaucracy
This post is an excerpt from Mark Schwartz's The (Delicate) Art of Bureaucracy. There are three things we must do to eliminate bureaucracy’s Kafkaesque aspects. We must make it lean by removing waste and shrinking lead times. We must make it capable of learning; that is, changing as the environment changes and as better ways are found to accomplish goals. And we must make it enabling—that is, helpful as a way to get things done rather than a no-saying, gatekeeping, troll-controlled … [Read more...]
Zone Management: Four Frameworks for Portfolio Management
In the final installment of our portfolio management series, we'll look at the four zone management framework. Segmenting and Categorizing to Prioritize Investments and Tailor Approach The challenge for well-established, successful companies is to free their company’s future from the pull of their legacy operating models and cultures. Part of this change involves moving from a traditional, hierarchical, vertically structured operating model to a cross-functional, cross-business, horizontally … [Read more...]
Cynefin: Four Frameworks of Portfolio Management
In this edition of our Four Frameworks of Portfolio Management series, we'll look at sense making approaches to portfolio management, specifically how to use the Cynefin framework for this purpose. Sense Making Approaches During an era of disruption and massive change, business leaders should use multiple cognitive models to evaluate their strategic positioning. Leaders need multiple approaches that help them create opportunities to avoid making the wrong decisions. When trying to make portfolio … [Read more...]
Predictive Metrics: Four Frameworks for Portfolio Management
Now that we've looked at historical data, let's turn to predictive metrics for portfolio management. In this edition of our Four Frameworks of Portfolio Management series, we'll take the predictive qualities of The Flow Framework and more to predict next steps. Considering Leading Indicators to Inform Future Results To thrive in times of technological disruption and economic uncertainty, organizations depend on their ability to adapt quickly to a changing market environment by rapidly evolving … [Read more...]
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