Blog: Agile & Business

The CSM Test

September 26, 2009

As you may know, Scrum Alliance is implementing a CSM Test on Oct. 1. Here are a few basic statements. First, the real purpose for you should not be certification and all that alphabet soup. It might be helpful, but it is not the main purpose. The real purpose is improving people’s lives. The customers, […]

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To know ourselves

September 19, 2009

We are in a recession, so we think especially now that money is important. Some of us are introvert technical guys — people skills are not our strongest skill set maybe. So we think strong technical thoughts are the most important things. But at the end of the day, I believe we live for other […]

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The ability to create knowledge together

August 22, 2009

I would like your opinion. I have, for the last few months, been playing with these ideas. To create a new product, the team is all about knowledge creation. Not management of existing knowledge, but creation of new knowledge. Note: The picture to the right relates to Nonaka’s ideas about knowledge creation, and tacit and […]

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Against Central Planning

August 18, 2009

Do we like central planning?  No. In general, to some of us it seems simpler to have one central brain plan everything, to assume that that brain has it right and that “everything will work out for the best in this best of all possible worlds” if the central planner plans it for us rationally. […]

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Knowledge Decay & Tacit Knowledge

August 17, 2009

Daniel Brown did an interesting post on this topic. His main area is testing. Disclosure: He mentions my talk about the Lean within Scrum. See here.

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Learning more

July 31, 2009

If you are looking to do some more learning, may I suggest these resources. Many rooms to visit, many different kinds of resources. It includes people of many persuasions. But all of them, in one way or another, are saying the same thing: “Go, and do. Better than we have done yet, you will do. […]

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One impediment at a time

July 28, 2009

Why is it important to focus attention on one thing at a time, one impediment? Well, there are many reasons. But let’s take a few. First, get something completed. So often we try to do “everything” and nothing gets done. Second, we need fast feedback. For example, sometimes our “improvement” is a stupid idea. Only […]

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Thinking for Yourself

July 27, 2009

Here is a great blog post by Kenji Hiranabe about why thinking for yourself in your specific context is important in Lean. In the picture to the right is Mr. Satoshi Kuroiwa, the chairman of the Association for Support for Economic Sustainable Development in Japan.     

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Hold the mirror

July 26, 2009

How do we get managers to change? You know, if it were not for them, everything would be just fine. [smile] We got this question in a class on Friday. (The question did not include the second snarky sentence, at least not explicitly.) My immediate answer, maybe an intuition, was to quote part of this: […]

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Defining Business Value // #2 Customer Smile

July 22, 2009

Imagine that you want to make a new camera. And in the first release you will make 1,000 cameras and basically “give them away” — to key influences, etc. So, all of that work makes the customer smile. Imagine that the picture to the right is not of Scarlett Johansson. It’s just a girl, and […]

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