The Transformation Blog

In recent weeks, there has been increased discussion among some in the Agile PMI community who are seeking empirical proof for how and why autonomy and team empowerment actually works. What I find interesting is how difficult it is for Agilists to provide much more than anecdotal evidence supporting this foundational Agile principle.

This discussion interested me because I have reached beyond the Agile community over the last year to learn more about how human performance is influenced by our work environments and our cognitive biases

The latest research from Osterman on the state of test processes and automation revealed what those of us pursuing Agile engineering practices have known for nearly a decade… that the manner in which Test and QA are typically executed in most companies is appalling and worse, dishonors the QA and Test professionals who aspire to add real strategic value to software products and solutions.

The last few months at Gear Stream has revealed a recurring client challenge that I’d like to highlight that has the potential to undermine Agile success and worse, introduce outcomes nearly as dysfunctional as those we’re seeking to eradicate with Agile.  What is this challenge you ask?  Agile teams routinely lack insight and appreciation for who their real customers are.

The fine folks over at Forrester know a good trend when they see one,  and CIO Magazine, not to be left out of the party is using Forrester’s latest report on Agile adoption to publish their own commentary (Agile Goes Mainstream) on why this is such wonderful news.  With Forrester and CIO Magazine essentially declaring victory over software and product development practices long ago proven ineffective in the modern world (waterfall, ad-hoc, etc.) and in it’s place

Are you a Scrum-Bot?   What’s that you ask?  You know, Scrum-Bot… the people we program with Scrum, wind-up, put in a box-about the size of two weeks, and watch as they work furiously to complete the tasks that have been assigned inside the box, only to be asked to do it all over again in another two weeks.  Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?

As the march towards broad Agile adoption in larger Enterprise companies continues, the implications for changing roles and responsibilities is significant.  Companies have spent literally millions of dollars and decades training staff to master the skills and responsibilities of roles like Project Manager and Business Analyst.

The drum beat around Bottom-Up values and practices has become so widespread that I now routinely find my new prospective clients designing entire organizational transition plans based on an absolute belief that Top-Down is “bad” and Bottom-Up is “good”.  As the saying goes, be careful what you ask for…

I’m a simple guy, so I’m always looking for simple ways to convey the powerful truth of an idea or concept. This clip from I Love Lucy is a classic and it’s a sobering reminder of how incredibly important it is for larger organizations to decide carefully if Agile is really worth the hassle.

I was like a kid on Christmas morning recently when I learned that Google was releasing a backwards-compatible version of their Android Turn-by-Turn GPS App for the G1.  Yeah, I know, my G1 is rather ugly sitting next to an iPhone, but what my G1 lacks in the hip and style department it makes up for in utility.  The new GPS capability was yet another practical way for me to enjoy all of Androids goodness… or so I thought.