In Episode 17 and Episode 18 of The Idealcast, I was blown away by Dr. Ron Westrum's notion of Technological Maestros, a definition and list of characteristics for a leader that resonates deeply with me. First, let's look at Dr. Westrum's definition of a technological maestro. This is a term that is used in history of technology a lot. First of all, you're dealing with somebody who has very high energy, that's critical. The second thing is they know what questions to ask. The third thing is … [Read more...]
Organizational Culture and Integrated Problem Solving: Excerpt from Ep. 17 of The Idealcast
The culture of an organization is important. It makes a difference in how everything comes out. In this excerpt for Episode 17 of The Idealcast, Gene Kim espouses on Ron Westrum’s question: How do you measure culture? --- I just wanted to break in quickly and give some more information on what Dr. Westrum was just referring to, because believe it or not, this also came up in the workshop that I took at MIT with Dr. Steven Spear in 2014. NASA: Experimental versus Compliance-Driven … [Read more...]
Westrum’s Organizational Model in Technology Organizations
This post was adapted from Chapter 3 of Accelerate: the Science of Lean Software and DevOps: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations by Nicole Forsgren, PhD, Jez Humble, and Gene Kim. --- It is practically a truism in DevOps circles that culture is of huge importance. However, culture is intangible; there exist many definitions and models of culture. Our challenge was to find a model of culture that was well-defined in the scientific literature, could be measured … [Read more...]
Announcing Season 2 of The Idealcast with Gene Kim
I loved Season 1 of the The Idealcast because it was a way to further learn from some of the people I admire most within the DevOps Enterprise community. It has really helped me clarify, in my own mind, why organizations work the way they do—both in the ideal and not ideal—and what the conditions are to really enable greatness Season 2 is going to be incredible because it includes guests from outside the DevOps Enterprise community whose work I truly admire. We’ll hear from Admiral John … [Read more...]
