Tapabrata “Topo” Pal is a thought leader, keynote speaker, evangelist in the areas of DevSecOps, Continuous Delivery, Cloud Computing, Open Source Adoption and Digital Transformation. He is also a DevOps Enterprise Summit programming committee member, and a coauthor of Investments Unlimited: A Novel About DevOps, Security, Audit Compliance, and Thriving in the Digital Age (available September 13, 2022). What to Measure? After more than a decade into the DevOps movement, “what to measure?” … [Read more...]
Doing it All is Not a Good Strategy
Product teams in the midst of change at one of the biggest US insurance companies came up with an experiment they called “Doing it All.” The sarcastic title was intentional, as it magnificently described the nature of a theme that I observe across multiple industries. From finance to insurance to transportation, carving out capacity for you and your teams to implement a new way of working requires herculean efforts. Change takes time. It’s not enough to just give teams approval to do something. … [Read more...]
The Five Time Thieves
If your wallet was stolen, you’d notice. If your security badge to your office was filched, you’d know it when you arrived. And if you opened the fridge to find your lunch missing, you’d make sure your office mates heard about it. So why don’t people notice when they are robbed of something more valuable than their wallet, badge, or lunch—their nonrenewable time? We grumble that there just aren’t enough hours in the day and that someone else sure seems to have a lot of free time. But we regular … [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...]
Five Papers to Improve Software Delivery
Measure Efficiency, Effectiveness, and Culture to Optimize DevOps Transformation Metrics for DevOps initiatives Successful software outcomes depend on negotiation of requirements, accurate scoping of work, value judgments, innovations, team collaboration, software architecture, economic tradeoffs and user demand. Success is less dependent on contract quality, Gantt charts, critical path schedules, earned-value measurement, laws of physics, material properties, mature building codes, and … [Read more...]
OKRs & DevOps: From Micromanagement Misery to Finding Flow
Many organizations are having trouble rolling out OKRs or objectives and key results, especially when top leaders overreach into the planning process using OKRs to bludgeon their favorite project or feature into the plan. Dr. Mik Kersten, Founder and CEO of Tasktop, talked at the recent DevOps Enterprise Summit about his seven years of experience using OKRs and what he's seen go right and wrong in large complex organizations. You can watch his full presentation here. I've now had eight years of … [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...]
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...]
Historical Performance: Four Frameworks for Portfolio Management
The first framework we'll look at as part of our Four Frameworks of Portfolio Management series is historical performance metrics as an indicator of future performance. Evaluating Historical Revenue Growth and Profitability When evaluating a portfolio of investments, it helps to review historical performance and leading indicators. In this section, we will discuss how to illustrate an effective historical view of a company’s portfolio. When assessing past performance, it is important to evaluate … [Read more...]
Measure Software Delivery Performance with Four Key Metrics
This post has been adapted from Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps by Nicole Forsgren, PhD, Jez Humble, and Gene Kim. There are many frameworks and methodologies that aim to improve the way we build software products and services. We wanted to discover what works and what doesn’t in a scientific way, starting with a definition of what “good” means in this context. This post presents the four key metrics to measure software delivery performance. MEASURING SOFTWARE DELIVERY … [Read more...]
