Quantcast
Channel: The IT Risk Manager
Browsing all 31 articles
Browse latest View live

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

“Go to the Gemba” and the Power Distance Index

The two cultural dimensions that differentiate innovate and traditional cultures are “uncertainty avoidance”and the “power distance index”. Innovative organisations have a low power distance index,...

View Article



Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Managing Serendipity.

Yesterday I was chatting to Marc Burgauer when one of us said “Leaders need to be facilitators, not decision makers.” Marc tweeted this and a small conversation ensued. Although a small thing, it is an...

View Article

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

The tragedy of Given-When-Then.

When all you have is a hammer, everything in the world starts to look like a nail. Twenty five years of doing analysis and helping others do analysis has shown me that there are at least three...

View Article

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Shared vision as enabling constraint.

Transformations are hard. Transformations are even harder when only the executives know where the destination is meant to be, if they even know that. A shared vision One of the most important...

View Article

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Whence road kill?

One of the largest companies in the world has a saying “Its nothing personal, you are just road kill.” The message. Your career and reputation is destroyed. You are sacked. But, it was nothing...

View Article


Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Goodbye Martin

It was with great sadness that I heard Martin passed away last night. My thoughts are with Lucy and his family. Martin and I were part of the LASCOT set. A group of Agile types that were drawn to each...

View Article

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

The London Agile Software Camerata

Gitte recently recommended this fantastic must-read article on Cameratas by Jessica Kerr. My only criticism is this statement: One camerata emerged inside ThoughtWorks (consultancy) in London around...

View Article

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

There are no stakeholders in (Scaled) Agile

A month ago a colleague of mine asked me about stakeholders in Agile. After a moment of thought I told them that there are NO STAKEHOLDERS in Agile. What is a stakeholder? In traditional development,...

View Article


Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Stress testing Skills Liquidity

Corona virus has raised the importance of Skills Liquidity or “key person dependency”. As well as managing the normal skill liquidity risk, organisations now need to consider the “summer holiday”...

View Article


Wrong-order-o-meter (An experience report)

About a year after implementing Capacity Planning ( aka Delivery Mapping ) at Skype, the product leadership team asked for reporting to support the process. Tony Grout, Lisa Long and myself...

View Article

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Introducing Failureship – The dark twin of Leadership

The culture of an organisation is vital to its ability to change and acquire new capabilities so that it can adapt to new contexts. Whilst academics and thought leaders will tell you that culture...

View Article

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Failure Cultures Reward failure.

For over twenty years I have been reciting the mantra: “In agile, we fail fast to win early. Traditional teams are afraid to fail!” For many years I have been observing agile teams and non agile...

View Article

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

aacennprrsTy and the failureship

I ran an exercise where I asked a group of executives “What is transparency?”. Take a moment, think what it means to you and say it out loud before you read the answer I gave. Transparency is when you...

View Article


Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Step away from the office, and join the team!

Years ago I shared a table at a wedding with a primary school (Kindergarten) teacher. We were not surprised to discover that my job in technology was very similar to their job. Understanding behaviour...

View Article

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Failureship and EXPENSIVE, low cost people

One of the key differences between organisations with “risk managed” and “failure” cultures is the attitude towards talent. “Failure” cultures prefer large teams of “cheap” individuals who have little...

View Article


Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

The failureship and turkeys voting for Christmas.

In some organisations, the individual succeeds if the organisation as a whole is a success. This is often where the organisation is at risk, either a start up, an organisation in trouble, or...

View Article

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

We need to talk about failureship.

Reading these failureship blogs, you may be mistaken into thinking that I am critical of individual leaders. The very name “Failureship” is deliberately provocative by design. The purpose of these...

View Article


Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Failureship deliver things instead of value

The failureship deliver things rather than value. The successful delivery of things is normally under the control of the failureship, whereas successful delivery of value is often outside of their...

View Article

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Why failure cultures hate Agile.

We have been discussing failureship for many years. It has helped us understand motivation, and helped us predict the behaviour of individuals and teams in a failure culture. One coach contacted me to...

View Article

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

UNLIMITED work in progress

One of the most effective strategies that the failureship deploy to justify failure is the concept of UNLIMITED work in progress. The failureship justify Unlimited Work in Progress by stating that...

View Article
Browsing all 31 articles
Browse latest View live




Latest Images