To the disgruntlement of some people, I have been skeptical of best practices since I was first exposed to the idea. But now more than ever, I fear that teams strive to implement and follow best practices in situations where novel ideas are needed instead. The assumption that published works are the correct approach to take is an interesting topic. I acknowledge the irony of this statement given I have suggested practices and guidance in my book. It’s just that people seem to read things and … [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...]
Announcing Immersion Courses: An On-Demand Learning Experience
Since the publication of The Phoenix Project in 2013, IT Revolution has been dedicated to helping improve the lives of technology workers around the world. We've worked to spread the word on best practices in DevOps through the ongoing publication of books and papers. We've invited the top thought-leaders and practitioners from across industries to present their learning at the DevOps Enterprise Summit. We've brought business leaders from inside and outside the tech world to share the leadership … [Read more...]
Optimize Your Time with The Balanced Calendar
What prevents you from getting work done? One of the top answers is too many meetings! Too many interruptions, meetings, and tools overburdens workers and can lead to burn out. In this post, we visit Dominica DeGrandis's advice for creating a balanced calendar to optimize your time. Too Many Meetings A calendar full of meetings leads to little time to complete actual work. We double book, triple book, and even quadruple book our time. Dominica DeGrandis describes three common types of … [Read more...]
Providing Visibility over Multiple Work Management Systems
Adapted from the DevOps Enterprise Forum Guidance Paper Overcoming Inefficiencies in Multiple Work Management Systems by Scott Prugh, Dominica DeGrandis, Rosaline Radcliffe, Pat Birkeland, and Keanen Wold. Large enterprises are traditionally organized by function and managed to optimize vertically for specific outcomes. In IT, this often means organizations specialize in functions such as design, development, QA, and operations. Many decisions are made in the context of those functional … [Read more...]
Balanced Flowchart Exercise
By Dominica Degrandis The balanced flowchart exercise is a companion to Chapter 3.1 of Making Work Visible: Exposing Time Theft to Optimize Work & Flow. This exercise includes four useful metrics—all on one sheet—to help people see metric trends over time and understand how to become more predictable. TIME: 45–60 minutes PURPOSE: To discover what lead time, throughput, change failure rate (CFR), and probabilistic percentiles are by performing themby hand, and to learn what each can … [Read more...]
Why the Full Stack Engineer Is Problematic
Excerpt from the DevOps Enterprise Forum Paper Full Stack Teams, Not Engineers, by Jason Cox, Christian Posta, Cornelia Davis, Dominica Degrandis, Jim Stoneham, and Thomas A. Limoncelli. Can you possibly be good at everything? In the digital era, the sheer quantity of tools, frameworks, programming languages, and methods/models overwhelms the brain. Technologies come and go, and learning a new technology often involves intense effort. Learning a new environment and domain knowledge … [Read more...]
Making Work Visible at Parts Unlimited
By author Dominica DeGrandis. When Demand is Greater than Capacity Rarely do I use the word always, except when it comes to requests on my time. Requests always exceed my capacity to meet the demand. As I write this blog post, two other blog requests sit idle, along with two workshops to prepare for, and three books to read. They all need to be completed in the next two weeks. But, I am not alone in this regard. Surveying Parts Unlimited, one of the top replies as to why work isn’t completed on … [Read more...]
