Agile
Tying the Investment Tier Back to Agile Delivery (via Leading Agile)
- Many transformations start grass-roots (team level) where there’s delivery. How do we scale to the program level (related projects)? Then to the portfolio level (all org efforts)? Then to the investment level (C-suite) that sets strategy?
- You need to tie strategy to execution. The delivery teams need to understand how their daily work aligns with that strategy.
- Investment level is still working off old funding playbooks and project-based thinking. They’re disconnected from how the factory provides value.
- Clearing conditions needed from execs… 1) form complete, cross-functional teams at all level of the org, 2) manage flow of work, balance capacity/demand, ensure well-groomed backlog, 3) hold teams accountable for producing output on a regular cadence, 4) help org break dependencies over time because they lead to less agility.
- https://www.leadingagile.com/podcast/tying-the-investment-tier-back-to-agile-delivery-w-matt-smith/
Business
A Survival Guide for Startups in the Era of Tech Giants (via Harvard Business Review)
Big tech companies (e.g., Google, Amazon) will often copy what startups are doing and outgun them. If you can answer “yes” to these questions, you may have a chance at avoiding copycats.
- Does the big company have a major strength that is predominantly responsible for its success?
- Do you offer something which a big company would be challenged to do because of its major strength?
- Would copying your offering hurt the big company’s main business?
- If your offering gained traction, could the big company have to give up its strength to copy or compete?
Career
Building an Ethical Career (via Harvard Business Review)
Prepare in advance for moral challenges by using implementation intentions (e.g., If I’m solicited for a bribe, then I will consult my company’s legal team). Make good decisions in the moment by asking 1) whether you’d be comfortable having your decision be front-page news, 2) if you’d be comfortable having anyone else in your place make the same decision, and 3) whether you’d still be comfortable with yourself. Reflect after the fact to learn from moral successes and failures.
Case Study: Give Your Colleague the Rating He Deserves—or the One He Wants? (via Harvard Business Review)
This is one of my favorite aspects of HBR — realistic situations with no clear next path that we encounter in our work lives paired with opinions from industry experts about how they’d handle a situation.
Communication
How to Create the Perfect Meeting Agenda (via Harvard Business Review)
Instead of a list of topics to cover, formulate questions that must be answered.
Health
It’s Time to Start Talking about Menopause at Work (via Harvard Business Review)
Admittedly I knew little about how this stage in women’s lives impacted them physically and cognitively, especially as their age lines up with the career transition into top leadership positions. Leaders need to be more open about what menopause is, how it affects individuals and organizations, and what accommodations can be made to create win-wins.
Leadership
Building Bridges as a Technical Leader (via Software Lead Weekly)
“Finding a sponsor, seeking to hear and understand the needs of people high and wide across your organization, finding your people to support your journey, nurturing all these relationships… it’s a constant learning curve, but these are some of the practices that I’ve found helpful in communicating effectively across the company.”
Process
Use Data to Revolutionize Project Planning (via Harvard Business Review)
This seems like a no-brainer: Use information from projects you’ve completed in the past to predict how long the next project will take. The article talks about optimism bias and the planning fallacy. I wonder how much of that is more of a flaw in the contract acquisition process, where bidders are incentivized to over-promise on cost or time. I’m curious what patterns machine learning could derive for complex projects.
If You’re Overworked, Learn Which Tasks to Hand Off (via Harvard Business Review)
- Why is this task necessary?
- Does it fit into my “time portfolio”?
- What would happen a month from now if it isn’t done?
- Who wants this task done, and who is the right person to do it?
- How often do you give more importance to a task than it is actually worth?
- What’s the story I’m telling myself?
Team Objectives – Overview (via Software Lead Weekly)
OKRs (objectives and key results) work best when you have a product-focused team, rather than a feature-focused team. People get confused (and likely aren’t properly empowered) when they have OKRs for their role, their team, and themselves. Get everyone lined up with the product for clarity.
Technology
Use This Framework to Predict the Success of Your Big Data Project (via Harvard Business Review)
- Can we access data that is valuable and rare?
- Can our employees use data to create solutions?
- Can our technology deliver the solution?
- Is our solution compliant with law and ethics?
Production Oriented Development (via Software Lead Weekly)
- Engineers should operate (deploy, monitor, etc.) their code
- Buy almost always beats build
- Make deploys easy
- Trust the people closest to the work
- QA gates make quality worse (automate the testing)
- Boring technology is great
- Simple always wins
- Non-production environments have diminishing returns
- Things always break
The Unicorn Project – Part 6
Our weekly book club post, this time covering chapters 16-18.