Exploring Intersections of Process and People — The message of a forthcoming pervasive Agile Transformation may not be well received by employees. Lessons learned indicate that more agility is not what to expect — despite the name. However, more often, there are opportunities for anyone in our organization to influence the outcome of these change projects. After…

How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life — A remarkably influential book was written in 1973. Half a century later, in 2023, it has essentially been forgotten. …

Too Many Tasks Crying for Action Prevent Us From Acting — It’s easy to get rid of things when there is an obvious reason for doing so. It’s much more difficult when there is no compelling reason. Marie Kondō has taught us to throw away all the things from the past that no longer contribute to our lives. One example is…

Eleven Things to Consider before We Start a Transformation — Between 2008 and 2015, Volkswagen’s engineering teams intentionally and repeatedly tampered with the emissions of car engines in laboratory tests. On the road, the vehicles emitted up to forty times more nitrogen oxides. A pithy observation that seems to contain a general truth comes to mind: Culture eats strategy for…

The Quest to Achieve Market Fitness — “That gum you like is going to come back in style,” the elderly room service waiter (Hank Worden) famously said in episode 16 of the 1990s TV series Twin Peaks. This line is not only game-changing for the plot, but it also predicts the emergence of a reaptive event. We…

It’s too early to say. — In 1972, when Chinese Prime Minister Zhou Enlai was asked about the impact of the French Revolution in 1789, he replied, “Too early to say.” The fact that he misunderstood the question does not make the answer less ingenious. This is especially true when we dance with path-dependent processes. Ouch…

Busyness-Driven Versus Value-Driven Teams — Scrum is a straightforward way for new teams to start working both iteratively and incrementally in short timeboxes — a.k.a. sprints. However, despite careful planning and daily sync meetings, the sprint rarely results in a viable product. Do not blame that on scrum. “Why is it every time I ask…

How Do You Choose an Approach? — “Planning a big project is like eating a big cheese,” the project manager told me. “I can start by cutting the whole cheese into a large number of cubes, which I eat one by one. Alternatively, I can cut a thin slice and defer any further decisions until after I…

Introduction “I define UNIX as 30 definitions of regular expressions living under one roof.” Turing Award winner Donald Knuth said that, and it doesn’t stop there. All mainstream programming languages host regular expressions as a domain-specific language (DSL). …