I'm in Dallas today co-presenting at the global sales conference for a large BPM software provider. The topic, using return on investment to drive strategic sales, was well received by the audience. The CEO and VP of Marketing in the company were familiar with the case study I presented from previous work together. The CEO …
Agile Development is so Old Fashioned
The functioning principles of Agile (and process improvement more broadly) can be found in lean manufacturing and six sigma. These concepts date back to just after World War II and include error proofing, eliminating waste, creating flow, adding customer value, and empowering workers. If you are interested in deeper understanding I suggest reading the above links and: …
Measuring Outputs Expanded
I talked at a high level in my Measure Outputs post about the types of measures that are useful. That post stated broadly that input measures do little to help improve, control or predict performance. In this post, I will expand on that concept to cover in more depth what types of measures focus on …
Team Charters
If you need more than one person to get a project done, start with creation of a team charter. Charters document and communicate a team's purpose. The process of creating and maintaining the charter builds understanding of and broad commitment to that purpose.
Why Sign on the Dotted Line
Consulting organizations often require signoff on deliverables to ensure that the client acknowledges that contractual obligations are met. Across organizational lines, these signatures, serve mostly a legal purpose. I often wondered about the use of signoff on deliverables inside of an organization where there is no external relationship. I've seen some development shops average as …
Cycle Time as a Primary Measure
Mishkin Berteig has a great post up at his blog titled Measuring Process Improvements - Cycle Time. In it, he eloquently details why development teams should care about and manage cycle time. It complements nicely my First Law of Development and I encourage giving it a deep read.
BA World Symposium Conference
BusinessAnalystWorld Symposium put on a great conference in Denver. Slides to my presentation Agile Thoughts – Exploring the Philosophy and Mechanics that Make Agile Work can be downloaded from this post.
Horizon Line Group 