The Transformation Blog

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

As we work with clients who are moving up the Agile maturity curve there is increasing interest in the subject of Lean management frameworks for complementing Agile practices.  Because the two value systems and supporting management techniques share so much in common, it’s often helpful to compare and contrast the two in order to better understand how they fit together.

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.