The Transformation Blog

Sadly, for many companies today, Agile is in the trough of disillusionment.  Why?  Simple -- the support needed to foster success from Agile practices requires deep, engaged cooperation to work differently across a number of enterprise departmental silos.  For those familiar with Moneyball, Billy Beanes found himself in exactly the same situation during the 2002 rebuilding season

I was watching Moneyball this weekend for the first time and was riveted by the story of Billy Beanes and the Oakland A’s miracle of 2002. I’m not much of a baseball fan (I grew-up and live in the heart of ”tobacco road” where college basketball is king) so I was only superficially aware of Billy’s bold, perhaps reckless move in 2002 to pursue an unproven, unorthodox approach to building a championship baseball team.

I won't recount the film's entire storyline, but the basics go like this--Team wins big one year, loses talent the next, due to free agency, and “rich teams” like the

Virtually all Agile developments project will eventually meet the user experience design process. It's inevitable. Unless you're working on something that will run unseen by anyone -- some middleware, perhaps, or an application that integrates data flow between two existing systems -- someone has to interact with the software being designed and built. Even the most compelling UX design will literally do nothing without

Over the last year Gear Stream’s larger clients have increasingly sought to learn and apply methods to business and software innovation that are more commonly found in scrappy, modern, software start-ups.  The latest trend emerging from the software start-up community is LeanUX.  In this and future articles I’ll be exploring the key concepts behind LeanUX and their potential application to those doing software and innovation work in larger companies.

While those of us in the Agile community have for years fostered the values of employee empowerment and creating productive work spaces for our employees and teams, I’m increasingly bothered by the degree to which some Agile advocates place employee happiness above nearly everything else.  Is this the key to business and innovation success as some claim?  Is this a smart thing to do?  Maybe not.

Two of the most profound trends over the past 10 years driving software innovation are Agile software development and Human centered design (often known as UX in software circles), yet these trends have often moved independent of one another, or worse, been at odds.  First, let’s do a quick review of what we mean by UX and Agile:

While many took exception to my last article on the demise of Nokia, I will continue to raise the question on the relationship between Agile software/product development promises and the real world results of companies championing Agile values and methods. RIM is the latest example in what is surely not the last of a company that has, to varying degrees, championed Agile as a way of building better products more quickly.  In my last Nokia article, many accused me of playing loose with the facts. This time I will let others comment first before...

My last blog article incited a riot among the Scrum purists.. Well, maybe not a riot, but it certainly invoked emotions and passions which I love... but what I don't love is how the Scrum faithful are increasingly resistant to critical thought and debate... so let me attempt to clarify my motives and objective in writing my last article..

Yesterday’s dramatic announcement (link at Engadget) of layoffs and R&D cutbacks by Nokia (which has been leaking out for months) should be a sobering reality check for Agile and Scrum advocates who have exploited Agile mythology by packaging Scrum and Agile into lucrative “solutions” that can be easily purchased for those willing to whip out their check books.  For those that missed the news, Nokia is laying off...

We’ve all experienced it at one time in our lives or another, you “think” you’re working on a team for the collective good BUT someone is constantly demonstrating destructive, self-serving behaviors.  These individuals’ behaviors put the team’s collaboration at risk all in the vein to make themselves look smarter or more-hard working than their counterparts.  Ironically, often times that competitive, back-stabbing conduct is a direct result of the metrics put in place by the team’s leader.  So, how do you encourage peaceful, productive collaboration?