Replace the impersonal RACIs with meaningful job responsibilities — because we are so much more than our job titles. — We love coming up with titles. Chief Product Owner (CPO). Chief Digital Officer (CDO). Engineering Lead (ED). We do it because we need an anchor to encapsulate what we do. But titles alone can be confusing. People can easily misunderstand their true meaning and role. Is my definition of a…

A heuristic-based approach to frictionless agile software development planning — Plans. Detailed. With all the activities and their durations and dependencies. Hard cast dates. Can we produce them, please? And if the estimated dates don’t fit the expected ones, let’s mark the plan red — we will crank up the project management activities to turn these dates into green ones…

Discovery, “the fact of discovering what was previously unknown”, is such a great word. Rich enough but not overly precise, lending itself to many uses. The concept of discovery is often used at the beginning of a software development project or product development as a phase concerned with discovering the…

Focus on the right things — I spent the last decade working on digital transformation projects and learned that we tend to focus and devote energy to the wrong aspects of transformation. Digital transformations often start with creating a benefits case — a way to justify such change. More often than not, though, these cases never…

Part 2. A self-reflection on remote working, one year on Forced by the pandemic, same as those people fortunate enough to be able to do it, I am working remotely for over a year. I am thankful and blessed, but I ask myself — am I genuinely working remotely? Or…

We create value in software development by building the right thing, building it well, at the right time. The “right thing” implies identifying the most valuable work items, “building it well” covers the quality of what we produce, and “the right time” means getting it in the hands of our…

Use of incremental design in improving ways of working — “We are unique. We are doing something special. In our case, all that Agile stuff is not applicable, and it goes out of the window.” And this is how it begins — an endless energy-sapping battle of whether Agile applies to us or not, to what is Agile. How can…

Part 1. Starting the journey of optimizing for remote working — explicit commitments and creating space for work to happen. — Many people around the world have been forced by current circumstances to work from home, and they find themselves needing to adapt very quickly. Given this swift and abrupt transition, it is reasonable than the new way of working can be unsettling, and potentially even less productive for a while.

Something is not right. We ought to do better, I know that. But how? I think I need to consult an expert. This is a common thought process for someone who cares and wants to improve the working practices of an organisation. It is very tempting to rely solely on…