This post is adapted from Chapter 1 of Sooner Safer Happier by Jonathan Smart, with Zsolt Berend, Myles Ogilvie, and Simon Rohrer. Do you want to do or are you currently doing an Agile, Lean, or DevOps Transformation? If so, my best advice is: Don’t. Instead, focus on the outcomes you want to achieve. Then you will achieve agility. Focus on: Better Value Sooner Safer Happier. This is the number one lesson I’ve learned after almost thirty years as an agile and lean practitioner … [Read more...]
IT: The Biggest, Baddest Bureaucrats
This post is an excerpt of Mark Schwartz's The (Delicate) Art of Bureaucracy: Digital Transformation with the Monkey, the Razor, and the Sumo Wrestler. IT Bureaucracy: Not Fooling Anyone Among the biggest, baddest, bullyingest bureaucrats in a large enterprise are the IT folks. Yes, us, the very IT folks who so hate bureaucracy when we find it imposed on us. Your password, we say, must be in a format that guarantees you’ll never remember it, and you must change it every few … [Read more...]
Q&A with Mark Schwartz and Gene Kim
Recently, Gene Kim had a chance to speak with Mark Schwartz about Mark's new book, War and Peace and IT, Business Leadership, Technology, and Success in the Digital Age: Gene Kim: What inspired you to write a book about IT management for business leaders? Mark Schwartz: I meet with executives from over a hundred large enterprises each year. It’s amazing how patterns emerge: so many of them are trying to transform digitally, trying to find new sources of growth and to survive disruption—and yet … [Read more...]
Guest Post: Project to Product, Software, and Safety: Getting in the Same Plane
Guest Post by Mik Kersten, author of Project to Product Project to Product tells a story of what we can learn about building software by walking down the BMW Group Leipzig plant production line. The other wonder of mass production that makes repeated appearances throughout the book is the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, which has long been an inspiration to me and whose silhouette graces the cover of Project to Product. Not only is it a marvel of engineering and beauty, it is a marvel of supply chain … [Read more...]
Project to Product: How to Survive and Thrive in the Age of Digital Disruption with the Flow Framework
IT Revolution is excited to announce the release of our latest book, Project to Product: How to Survive and Thrive in the Age of Digital Disruption with the Flow Framework. Dr. Mik Kersten, CEO of Tasktop, has written a book that every business, big or small, will need to read if they want to survive the Age of Software. Tech giants, startups, and digital natives are disrupting every market. No one is immune. And just as happened in the Age of Manufacturing, any business that doesn’t rise to … [Read more...]
Insights for Spanning the Divide Between Business And Technology
The DevOps Enterprise Summit London 2018 conference may have come and gone, but the wealth of information springing forth from before, during, and immediately after the show continues to flow. Indeed, while the conference itself is an absolute treasure trove of knowledge-sharing and collaboration, one of the most amazing outcomes of DevOps Enterprise is its ability to inspire and facilitate discussions of important industry topics for years to come. One of the hot topics surrounding the … [Read more...]
Q&A With Mirco Hering and Gene Kim
Recently, Gene Kim had a chance to speak with Mirco Hering about Mirco's new book, DevOps for the Modern Enterprise. Gene Kim: What inspired you to write DevOps for the Modern Enterprise? Mirco Hering: To be honest, there are a number of DevOps books in the market and I was wondering whether I had something unique to say. But then I realized that not a lot has been written of the complex organizational environments that people find themselves in with legacy applications and multiple … [Read more...]
Q&A With Dominica DeGrandis and Gene Kim
Recently, Gene Kim and Dominica DeGrandis had a chance to discuss Dominica's new book, Making Work Visible. Gene Kim: What inspired you to write this book? Dominica DeGrandis: When I was a Kanban for DevOps flow consultant, I facilitated a lot of workshops to help organizations design and improve their workflow. Workshop attendees repeatedly requested a handout that they could reference during the workshops. They wanted to look at the example kanban boards and policies while doing the … [Read more...]
Q&A With Mark Schwartz and Gene Kim
Recently, Gene Kim and Mark Schwartz had a chance to discuss Mark's upcoming book, A Seat at the Table. It was an enlightening discussion about inspiration, common misconceptions and the often bumpy journey of a CIO. Gene Kim: Share the story of what inspired you to write A Seat at the Table, as well as the first time you realized that a) you didn’t have one, and b) when you finally got one? Mark Schwartz: I remember a conversation I had with the CEO of a company where I was CIO. My IT … [Read more...]